Education is seen by the Chinese as a key element in the modernisation of their country and in maintaining socialism. This book, first published in 1984, examines the nature of modern education in China since 1976, and looks at different parts of the system, the content of teaching and teaching styles. It considers how far the Chinese educational system has been affected by foreign powers and changing political ideology and is unique in that, using empirical data, it places the Chinese system in a world perspective.

This book uses Bourdieu’s sociological approach for research as a jumping-off point for framing our understandings and analyses of China and Chinese education. Three major themes—inequality, competition, and change—are explored across several theoretical and contextual bases. Bringing together top scholars in the field, the volume examines empirical studies that analyse social (im)mobility through education for students affected by the social divides of class, culture and rural/urban locations; teacher identity and the field of schooling in the current Chinese environment and going forward; and the university as an institution for the production of knowledge about education in the globalising academy. Offering insights into the historical and cultural context for China’s educational landscape, the contributions of this book revisit Bourdieusian concepts from a new empirical vantage point and bring together key studies that illuminate new pathways for the study of Chinese sociology of education.

This book argues that constructivism and realism, two prominent theories of scholarly inquiry in a variety of fields, both have their strengths and weaknesses as descriptive models of how research is conducted and written up and as normative models for improving inquiry.