This book contextually explores the rural education reform in China from a policy mapping perspective. It discusses a wide range of topics in the context of China's rural areas, including rural school layout adjustment, rural teacher development, rural students' all-round education development, vocational education in rural areas, and rural education informatization development. With the challenges outlined and recommendations provided, the chapters offer a holistic view on China’s rural education reform. This book serves as a guide for scholars and researchers who are interested and work in research on China’s rural education reform, administrators, and stakeholders in China's education system and graduate students who major or minor in the field of rural educational policy.

Transformative market reforms in China since the late 1970s have improved living standards dramatically, but have also led to unprecedented economic inequality. During this period, China’s educational system was restructured to support economic development, with educational reforms occurring at a startling pace. Today, the educational system has diversified in structure, finance, and content; it has become more market-oriented; and it is serving an increasingly diverse student population. These changes carry significant consequences for China’s social mobility and inequality, and future economic prospects. In Education and Reform in China, leading scholars in the fields of education, sociology, demography, and economics investigate the evolution of educational access and attainment, educational quality, and the economic consequences of being educated. Education and Reform in China shows that economic advancement is increasingly tied to education in China, even as educational services are increasingly marketized. The volume investigates the varying impact of change for different social, ethnic, economic and geographic groups. Offering interdisciplinary views on the changing role of education in Chinese society, and on China’s educational achievements and policy challenges, this book will be an important resource for those interested in education, public policy, and development issues in China.

This open access handbook brings together the latest research from a wide range of internationally influential scholars to analyze educational policy research from international, historical and interdisciplinary perspectives. By effectively breaking through the boundaries between countries and disciplines, it presents new theories, techniques and methods for contemporary education policy, and illustrates the educational policies and educational reform practices that various countries have introduced to meet the challenges of continuous change. This volume focuses on policies and changes in schools and classrooms. The studies on school changes present the differences in the policies and challenges of K-12 schools and universities in different countries and regions, and in connection with the contradictions and conflicts between tradition and modernization, as well as the changing roles of various stakeholders, especially that of teachers. In terms of curriculum and instruction, many countries have undertaken experiments and introduced changes based on two major themes: “what to teach” and “how to teach”. International education assessments represented by PISA not only promote the improvement and extensive application of educational assessment and testing techniques, but have also had far-reaching impacts on education policies and education reforms in many countries. Focusing on the changes in educational policies at the micro level, this volume comprehensively reveals the complex interactions between school organizations, teachers, curricula, teaching and learning, evaluation and other elements within the education system, as well as the latest related reforms worldwide.

The educational system in China is marked by its dramatic inequality between rural and urban schools. The challenges facing rural schools are usually understood as disadvantages in funding, facilities, and staffing, which consequently result in undesirable student performance in general. This book, however, penetrates these phenomena on the surface and brings forth a much deeper moral crisis in rural education, a crisis that is entrenched in the complicated interlocking of formal and informal institutions within and beyond the school. The Demoralization of Teachers describes the work and workplace in a rural school from the perspective of teachers who were working there. It faithfully depicts the lamentable state of teachers’ work morale in the school and, little by little as if a detective story, reveals the reasons for the teachers’ demoralization by vivid narratives. The book demonstrates the profound impact on the meanings of teaching exerted by the state curriculum reform, the formal and informal norms and regulations in the school, and the erosion of moral integrity in the state bureaucracy and the society at large. The crisis in the rural school stops to be a “rural” or educational problem in nature, but mirrors the societal-wide transformation in political economy as well as in ideology in the current reform China. The sheer complexity of the moral crisis in this ethnography calls for renewed efforts to identify and investigate the educational problems in rural China from fresh theoretical perspectives that situate rural education in broader historical and social contexts and processes.

Globalisation, Ideology and Education Policy Reforms, which is the 11th volume in the 12-volume book series Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, presents scholarly research on major discourses concerning globalisation and the politics of education reforms. It reviews some of the ideological imperatives fueling education reforms. It examines critically education reforms within their social, political and global dimensions. It provides an easily accessible, practical yet scholarly source of information about recent developments in globalisation, ideology and trends in education reforms. Above all, the book offers the latest fi- ings to the critical issues concerning major discourses surrounding the nexus between ideology and education reforms in the global culture. It is a sourcebook of ideas for researchers, practitioners and policy makers in education, and schooling around the world. It offers a timely overview of current policy issues affecting education reforms globally. It provides directions in education, and policy research, relevant to progressive pedagogy, social change and transformational educational reforms in the twenty-first century. The book critically examines the overall interplay between the state, ideology and current discourses of education reforms in the global culture. It draws upon recent studies in the areas of globalisation, academic achievement, standards, equity and the role of the State (Apple 2004; Carnoy 1999; Zajda et al. 2008). It explores conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches applicable in the research covering the State, globalisation and quality-driven education reforms.

This book examines the extensive reforms at the early childhood, primary and secondary levels which have taken place in China in recent years, including those in curriculum goals, structure and content, teaching and learning approaches, and assessment and administrative structures.

The first comprehensive book to cover the whole sweep of twentieth-century Chinese education.