China’s policy of Chinese as a foreign language and the use of overseas Confucius Institutes

China’s economic power is changing attitudes towards Mandarin Chinese worldwide. Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) consequently emerges as a subject for research as well as an educational market. This article investigates the modern evolution of CFL curriculum policy that has led to the current rapid growth of the Confucius Institute (CI) around the world, using media sources including government policy, Confucius Institutes themselves, newspaper reports from the Internet, and individual blogs posted by teachers of Chinese language, as well as university academics’ observations. It opens up a discussion of the implications of the development of China’s CFL policy, particularly through the Confucius Institutes, in diversifying the world’s lingua franca and sharing the market of education in the coming era. The analysis indicates that it is unlikely that Chinese will displace English as the world’s most widely used language in the foreseeable future, but the view that the Chinese language is an important element in the future unity of the world has been voiced.     

Cultivating national identity with traditional culture: China’s experiences and paradoxes

Constructing national identity with collective memory based on traditional culture has long been a policy and research concern. China’s recent revival of its traditional culture, previously denounced by the Communist Party of China (CPC), has caused diverse academic concerns. Yet few studies have addressed how the CPC-led state interacts with domestic actors in cultivating students’ national identity with a previously denounced culture, and what paradoxes lie therein. Documentary review shows that in the process, the state is concerned about creating a consensus around providing traditional Chinese culture (TCC) education, and about maintaining its defining role in designing the project, especially when interacting with diverse actors who had different interests in TCC education.     

Generation III pressurized water reactors and China’s nuclear power

The design philosophy, overall performance, safety, and economy of three typical generation III (GIII) pressurized water reactors, EPR, AES2006, and CAP1400, are analyzed comprehensively in this paper. Based on comparison with and the lessons learned from the Fukushima nuclear accident, we forecast a future reactor for China’s commercial nuclear power plant. Moreover, we put forward important technological fields of GIII nuclear power plants to which attention should be paid, including the enhancement of defense in depth, defense against extreme external events, severe accident mitigation, design simplification and standardization, improvement in economic competitiveness, load following capability, and adaptation to climate change.     

Confucius’s view of learning

Drawing textual evidences from the Analects (Lunyu論語) and other Confucian classics, this article attempts to clarify the contents, methods, and ultimately the nature of learning in the eyes of Confucius. The paper set out to argue that a better understanding of the concept of learning by Confucius must be angled on: (i) Confucius’s political aspiration and life pursuit (zhi志) rather than his teaching; (ii) The personal preference (hao好) of Confucius along with his zhi that has motivated his study and practice of the finer aspects of the Zhou legacies. And on the above basis, the paper suggests that: (iii) TO BE one’s mandate self (wei ji爲己) is at the core of Confucius’s concept of learning and that naturally determines the methods and characteristics of learning; (iv) the three opening lines of Lunyu in fact made a statement on the way Confucius learns.     

Chinese students’ groupwork practices and experiences in China

Chinese students constitute the most rapidly growing international cohort of students enrolled in many Western tertiary settings, and it is important to understand more about their preparation for engaging with commonly used teaching approaches such as groupwork. This study investigated their attitudes and experience of groupwork while enrolled at a large Chinese university. Semi-structured and video-stimulated recall interview data were collected from 16 third-year Finance students over a 5-week field study. Results showed that this group of Chinese students experienced more out-of-class than in-class groupwork activities. These out-of-class groupwork sessions fell into three categories: (1) student initiated, (2) student league initiated and (3) teacher initiated. Students identified both individual and collective benefits from groupwork, highlighting that Chinese students value groupwork and actively seek to engage with it in the Chinese tertiary context. This study contributes to the understanding of Chinese students’ group practices in Chinese tertiary settings.     

Review of the Confucius Institutes’ Strategy for the Dissemination of Chinese Culture

Abstract

Following four years of continuous expansion in scale, the Confucius Institutes have begun entering the stage of implicit development: the most pressing question that needs answering is whether the Confucius Institutes, which are devoted to the dissemination of Chinese culture, can achieve the spread of Chinese culture overseas through day-to-day Chinese teaching. This paper reviews the Confucius Institutes’ strategy for the dissemination of Chinese culture from four perspectives: first, it dissects the connotations of Chinese culture, to clarify precisely what aspects of Chinese culture the institutes are seeking to disseminate; second, it analyzes the current international cultural order and challenges that may be faced in the process of cultural dissemination, and uses this foundation to draw lessons from other countries’ strategies for linguistic and cultural dissemination; third, it clarifies the methods, channels, and mechanisms for cultural dissemination; and last, it tracks the results of overseas cultural dissemination by the Confucius Institutes, and offers a scientific assessment.     

Corporate practices and ethical tensions: Researching social justice values and neoliberal paradoxes in a ‘no excuses’ charter school

In recent years, there has been growing debate over the corporatisation of schooling, specifically the managerial practices of expanding charter school networks in the USA, often referred to as charter management organisations (CMOs). By definition, CMOs are consistently high-performing, well-financed networks of small schools operating in urban spaces, which adhere to a very specific ‘no excuses’ (NE) model of education in serving primarily students of colour living in poverty. This article is an autoethnographic account of my work as a leader in a CMO, which I theorise as a neoliberal project. We know very little of how neoliberal policies and ideologies are enacted in daily school life. I consider how the ethical responsibility of an educator is positioned within the daily practices and lived experience of leaders and educators working in a CMO. In focusing on my own ethical tensions, the article captures how this corporatised model of schooling influenced my values as an educator, my conflicted sense of social justice and the emotional labour of enacting a model of schooling founded on surveillance and accountability.     

Aspiration paradoxes: working-class student conceptions of power in ‘engines of social mobility’

This paper examines the relationship between ‘aspiration’ and identity as rendered within discourses of power. Focusing on the deeply ingrained values of a group of 23 white working-class boys from South London (aged 14–16), the research critically considers the conception of power within a neoliberal era which produces both new subjectivities and new counter-narratives. The research examines a group of boys who fully acknowledge that post-compulsory education would enhance their power in society but who simultaneously articulated how accruing power made them feel uncomfortable. There exists a tension between the working-class values inculcated in the community and the neoliberal prerogatives of the school; as a result, their shared habitus engages in a continual process of reconciling competing and contrasting conceptions of what it is to be powerful.     

Shopping :Men’s and Women’s

“M en say they hate to shop,”says Zhukin,C ity U niversity of N ewY ork Sociology (社会学) professor. “Y et w hen you ask them deeperquestions,it turns out that they like to shop.M en generally like to shopfor books, m usic and hardw are. But ifyou ask them aboutthe shoppingthey do for books or m usic, they ll say, ‘W ell, thats not shopping.Thats research.’”In other words,what m en and w om en call “buying things”and howthey com plete thattask are different.W om en will wander thr…     

Global Ambitions: Internationalization and China’s Rise as Knowledge Hub

The four decades since reform and opening up have seen dramatic changes in China’s higher education system. Focusing on international dimensions, the analysis supports the view that reform and opening up was not merely an economic and political reform, but an opening of the mind to the outside world, after the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. But it is important to be reminded that China’s relations with the outside world have a much longer history, with the spread of Confucian ideas to East and Southeast Asia, and the importation of Buddhism from ancient India; both during the Tang dynasty. The article points to key ongoing debates in China about the extent to which it can incorporate ideas from outside, while still retaining a Chinese essence. The rise of China as a knowledge hub and destination for international students is also charted, and the prospects for further development are assessed.     

Third and fourth grade teacher’s classroom practices in writing: a national survey

A random sample of teachers in grades 3 and 4 (N = 157) from across the United States were surveyed about their use of evidence-based writing practices, preparation to teach writing, and beliefs about writing. Teachers’ beliefs included their efficacy to teach writing, their orientations to teach writing, their attitude about teaching writing, and their attitudes about their own writing. The teachers’ responses raised some concerns about the quality of writing instruction third- and fourth-grade students receive, as teachers reported spending only 15 min a day teaching writing and students spend only 25 min a day at school writing. While teachers indicated they used a variety of evidence based writing practices in their classroom, a majority of these were applied infrequently. Further, three out of every four teachers reported that their college teacher preparation programs provided no or minimal instruction on how to teach writing. They further rated their preparation to teach writing lower than their preparation to teach reading, math, science, or social studies. On a more positive note, a majority of teachers asked students to write multiple paragraph texts relatively frequently (4 times a month or more often) and complete at least one narrative, informative, and persuasive writing assignment monthly. Teachers were also generally positive about teaching writing, their efficacy to teach writing, and their beliefs about their own writing. Finally, efficacy to teach writing and philosophical orientations to teaching writing each made a unique contribution to predicting teachers’ use of evidence based practices, whereas teacher preparation did the same for reported time spent teaching writing and reported time students wrote at school and home.     

Beyond Rote-Memorisation: Confucius’ Concept of Thinking

Confucian education is often associated with rote-memorisation that is characterised by sheer repetition of facts with no or little understanding of the content learnt. But does Confucian education necessarily promote rote-memorisation? What does Confucius himself have to say about education? This article aims to answer the above questions by examining Confucius’ concept of si (thinking) based on a textual study of the Analects. It is argued that Confucius’ concept of si primarily involves an active inquiry into issues that concern one’s everyday life, promotes inferential thinking, and facilitates self-examination. Far from advocating rote-memorisation, Confucius highlights the need for us to take ownership of our own learning, engage in higher order thinking, and reflectively apply the lessons learnt in our lives.     

Hannah Arendt and Norwegian Muslim children’s schooling: in pursuit of democratic practices

The aim of this paper is to consider whether Hannah Arendt’s (1996) [Arendt, H. (1958/1998 Arendt, H. (1958/1998). Vita Activa. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago. [Google Scholar]). Vita Activa. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago] concept of ‘public space’ is a potentially useful and creative way of thinking about aspects of Muslim children’s experiences within the context of education. Following a terror attack in 2011, when 77 people were killed, the then Norwegian prime minister stated that ‘our answer to this violence is more openness and more democracy but not naivety’. Accordingly, this paper draws on data so as to put concepts drawn from Arendt to work. In so doing, we indicate possibilities for ‘more openness and more democracy’ where Norwegian children can have Islam as an important element within their lives in ways that avoid the charge of naivety.     

Parental migration and children’s academic engagement: The case of China

In the context of China’s increasing rural-urban migration, few studies have investigated how parental migration affects children’s experience in school. The high cost of schooling, taken together with the institutional barriers in destination cities, have compelled many rural parents in China to migrate without their children, leaving them in the care of their spouses, grandparents, relatives or other caregivers. Still other parents migrate with their children, many of whom then attend urban migrant schools in their destination city. Understanding the academic engagement of children of migrant workers is particularly salient because the poor qualities of migrant schools, a lack of parental support, and exposure to competing alternatives to schooling may render both migrant children in the cities and left-behind children in the rural villages vulnerable to disengagement, and ultimately school dropout. Using data collected in 2008 in the urban Haidian and Changping districts of Beijing and rural Henan and Shaanxi provinces, the authors of this paper investigate the association between parental migration status and two measures of academic engagement, academic aspirations and the odds of liking school, by comparing migrant children attending migrant schools and left-behind children with their rural counterparts who do not have migrant parents. The authors’ findings show that migrant children attending migrant schools have lower academic engagement compared to rural children of non-migrant parents. The correlation between academic engagement and parental migration status can be accounted for in part by the support children receive from family and teachers. The association between certain measures of family and school support and academic engagement also varies by parental migration status: for example, high teacher turnover rates significantly reduce migrant children’s odds of liking schools, but do not affect children of non-migrant parents.     

China’s Man-made Satellite

On April 24,1970 came the news that China had launched her first man-made satellite. Since then several other satellites have been launched for the collection of scientific information. In 1977 China succeeded in recovering the satellite. This marked a big step forward in the development of our satellite technology (技术).