Guest Editor's Introduction

This issue and the next deal with aspects of the examination system in China, in particular the gaokao (college and university entrance examination) and huikao (upper middle school general graduation examinations). The aim is to provide background information regarding policies, recent reforms, opinions, suggestions, and criticisms. While most attention is focused on the changes in the period since 1988, brief references are also made to reforms since 1949 and even earlier periods, including the keju (imperial examination system). Aside from such contextual references, occasional comparisons are also made with American and other Western examination systems.     

Guest Editor's Introduction

Quality education was a hot topic in Chinese educational circles in 1996. The wide-ranging discussion of quality education is a sign of a continuing debate about the basic philosophy of education in China: educate to select or educate to nurture; education for a few or education for all. As to the latter question, although the nation is on its way toward achieving the goal of schooling for all, there are those who would point out that the focus on examinations and promotion rates falls short of a true education for each and every student. Thus the discussion of quality also comes to include the content of what students are learning in school. The articles in this volume attempt to demonstrate how the debate over these issues has come to permeate all levels, and many aspects, of education in China. Part 1 includes three articles that provide definitions of quality and quality education. Those in part 2 deal with various societal and educational problems that have led to the call for a shift to quality education. Part 3 provides a sample of areas where quality education is needed. The question of ways in which quality education can actually be implemented in schools is dealt with in part 4. Finally, part 5 demonstrates, through case studies, how the idea of quality education can succeed in allowing students to develop to their full potential.     

Guest Editor's Introduction: Technical Communication in the Age of Distributed Work

In this introduction, I review the topic of the special issue, distributed work: coordinative, polycontextual, cross-disciplinary work that splices together divergent work activities (separated by time, space, organizations, and objectives) and that enables the transformations of information and texts that characterize such work. After reviewing the literature on distributed work, I introduce the articles in this special issue.