Revisiting educational equity and quality in China through Confucianism, policy, research, and practice

The promotion of educational equity and improvement of educational quality in China are contextualised in tenets of Confucianism and policy directives, inspiring educational research and practice. In this paper, we first explore the historical and cultural roots of educational equity and quality through Confucianism and elaborate on the current policy priority that aims to address educational equity and quality. We then present an overview of research on equity and quality in Chinese education. Informed by Confucianism, policy, and research, we pose a framework to structure our investigation and analysis of three illustrative examples, namely the Special Post Teacher Plan, amalgamation of rural schools, and schooling of floating children. Drawing insights from Confucianism, policy, research, and practice, we conclude that the promotion of educational equity through high quality provision of education for disadvantaged groups can help to narrow the gap in educational quality currently existing in China.     

冬天的快乐

冬日里,孩子们都很高兴,紧紧地聚在一起,感受炉火的暖意。当大风刮起,厚厚的飘浮物在窗周聚集,片片爆米花像雪花一样,在炉旁纷纷落下     

Bullying in the academy: understanding the student bully and the targeted ‘stupid,fat, mother fucker’ professor

Bullying within academia often focuses on peer bullying or the student victim. However, the student bully who targets professors is a neglected area of study yet just as destructive, demeaning, and intimidating. Using a narrative lens analysis, the researchers share how the story of bullying unfolds in the classroom. Distinct triggers, such as entitlement or expectation management, mark the beginning of the narrative. As the narrative progresses, students display a variety of aggressive behaviors in an attempt to establish power or dominance over the targeted professor. The resulting academic contrapower harassment (ACPH) display may negatively impact the professor psyche, learning environment, and overall level of satisfaction with the professoriate, leaving a potentially open-ended narrative that impacts targeted professors for years to come. Thematic analysis reveals shared themes among targeted professors, indicating bullying is problematic on multiple levels. The findings suggest a lack of formal training and education while reinforcing the importance of peer networks.     

Pre-service teacher education students' epistemological beliefs and their conceptions of teaching

A study using both quantitative and qualitative methods was conducted in the final year of a Bachelor of Education programme to examine the student-teachers' epistemological beliefs and conceptions of teaching. The results show that most of the student-teachers (i) strongly believed that learning effort was more important than innate ability, (ii) strongly believed that knowledge changes, and (iii) were inclined to question the authority of knowledge. Although student-teachers who had sophisticated or mixed epistemological beliefs tended to believe in constructivist or mixed conceptions of teaching as predicted, inconsistent cases were identified. Implications for teacher education programmes are discussed.     

Reflective judgment and enlarged thinking online

This paper deals with forms of communication aiming at a better informed public or publics. The main idea is that democratic societies are dependent on toleration of a plurality of publics, and simultaneously there is a need for communication between the different publics. The ethos underlying this assumption is that democracy requires a transcendence of subjective conditions in order for the public(s) to gain legitimacy and recognition of opinions. Validity of opinions presupposes a public aspect that is available through communication. More specifically, the validity in question is obtained through its claim on universality – i.e. the transcendence of purely private subjective conditions. This kind of validity is found in reflective judgment or enlarged thinking, as displayed in Kant’s third critique. In the last part of the paper it is discussed how new information technologies and the internet may contribute positively to facilitate modes of communication that are associated with the particularity at work in reflective thinking. Storytelling technologies and virtual realities are of particular interest in envisaging how this might work.     

Strategic Assistance in Toddler Disputes: II. Sequences and Patterns of Teachers' Message Strategies

Adopting the view that peer conflict is a zone of proximal development in which adults may provide strategic assistance in negotiating interactional opposition, this study analyzed message strategies used by 13 teachers in the course of intervening in 135 toddler disputes. Spontaneous oppositional episodes precipitating teacher intervention were transcribed and analyzed with lag sequential techniques. The teachers used one of three message strategies to begin processing the toddlers' disputes: (a) summon disputants' attention (CALL); (b) physical restraint or removal of objects (STOP); or (c) ask the disputing toddlers to identify the problem (ASK). Each strategy was associated with certain act-to-act sequences suggesting unique patterns for terminating peer opposition. The predominant pattern began with STOP, in which teachers exercised high control over the intervention and adjudicated its outcome. Dispute negotiation failed to develop, however, from the CALL entry strategy. The process of negotiating peer opposition was more information-based and child-involving when teachers intervened with an ASK strategy, but this strategy was used in only 10.4% of the episodes. Findings are considered relative to evaluating day-to- day teacher practices and refining curriculum models for dealing with toddler disputes in the classroom.     

Financial aid and student persistence in online education in the United States

Distance education has historically had lower completion rates. Several models of persistence, for on-campus students, indicate that students’ financial status affects their decision to persist. This study involved providing distance education students’ financial aid in the form of institutional scholarships (N = 545) at Penn State University in the United States. The recipients were students who were not overachievers and not at-risk of failing, but somewhere in the middle. The purpose of the study was to test if receiving financial aid was related to students’ persistence. Using logistic regression and Chi-square analysis, this study found that scholarship-receiving students with higher financial need were two times more likely to persist in their studies than those with lower financial need. Results suggest that there is a positive relationship between providing even small financial aid to students with high-financial need and their persistence in their studies.     

Teaching interpretation

CHIRONOMIA; OR A TREATISE ON RHETORICAL DELIVERY: COMPREHENDING MANY PRECEPTS, BOTH ANCIENT AND MODERN, FOR THE PROPER REGULATION OF THE VOICE, THE COUNTENANCE, AND GESTURE. TOGETHER WITH AN INVESTIGATION OF THE ELEMENTS OF GESTURE, AND A NEW METHOD FOR THE NOTATION THEREOF; ILLUSTRATED BY MANY FIGURES. By The Reverend Gilbert Austin, A.M. [London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1806]. Edited with Bibliography and Introduction by Mary Margaret Robb and Lester Thonssen; Foreword by David Potter. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966; pp. xxix+13+xvi+584+15. $12.50.

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IBID. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966. Paper. $16.85.

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THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH, VOLUME 1, 1915 [Chicago: University of Chicago Press], New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1966; pp. 331, including Index. $20.00.