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Implementing the National Curriculum Reform In China: A Review of the Decade
YIN Hongbiao
Front Educ Chin. 2013, 8 (3): 331-359.
https://doi.org/10.3868/s110-002-013-0023-3
In China, the eighth round of national curriculum reform (NCR) is the most serious, systematic, and ambitious attempt to transform the basic education curriculum system since 1949. Through a review of the contexts, processes and outcomes of the implementation of the NCR from 2001–2011, this paper provides a further discussion on three pairs of apparently conflicting aspects: policy borrowing or policy learning; revolution or evolution; success or failure. It enriches our understanding of the implementation of large-scale reform in a non-western context like China in the following ways: Firstly, the NCR is China’s reaction against as well as response to the requirements of the current era of globalization; secondly, the debates and setbacks during the implementation of the NCR are not necessarily destructive, and a more integrative view should be adopted by the NCR on the balance between tradition and innovation, between localized concerns and global perspectives; thirdly, it is not wise to make a rash judgment on the reform outcomes of the NCR, especially the invisible and profound cultural changes. All those who are concerned about the evaluation of the NCR may need to rethink and clarify their views and positions on the purpose of education.
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Trends in the Mincerian Rates of Return to Education in Urban China: 1989–2009
DING Xiaohao, YANG Suhong, Wei HA
Front Educ Chin. 2013, 8 (3): 378-397.
https://doi.org/10.3868/s110-002-013-0025-7
This study examines the trends in the Mincerian rates of return (MRRs) to education in urban China between 1989 and 2009 using two sources of data: the China Urban Household Survey and the China Health and Nutrition Survey, and attempts to explain the underlying causes of the trends. The authors find that while the rates of return to education had been rising steadily since 1992 in urban China, a trend consistent with earlier studies, they have stagnated and even shown a statistically insignificant and very small decline between 2004 and 2009. Using the conceptual framework of supply, demand and institution in labor economics, the authors show evidence that the rapid rise in MRRs since 1992 has been driven by the strong relative demand for skills and productivity unleashed by the market-oriented economic reforms of the late 1980s and 1990s when relative supply of skilled labor was by and large stable. However, the “great leap forward” in senior secondary and tertiary education since the late 1990s produced huge numbers of graduates by the mid-2000s, outpacing the growth of relative demand for skilled labor due to the economy’s overdependence on low value-added industries such as manufacturing and construction. The apparent slowdown in the deepening of marketization since the mid-2000s may have also contributed to the stagnation or slight decline in the returns to education in urban China.
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Globalization and Chinese Education in the Early 20th Century
Paul J. BAILEY
Front Educ Chin. 2013, 8 (3): 398-419.
https://doi.org/10.3868/s110-002-013-0026-4
With China’s growing significance in the global economy ever more evident, studies in recent years have highlighted multiple aspects of China’s “Globalization” (or global connections) that predate the contemporary period. This article focuses on educational reform in the late Qing and early Republic as a way of illuminating a significant aspect of China’s Globalization during this period. In particular, the article highlights the role of an emerging Chinese educational “lobby” that was involved in administration, teaching, and textbook compilation; furthermore, this lobby pioneered the introduction of new ideas, concepts, and innovative practice from abroad in the specialized journals on education—the first of their kind in China—which they edited and contributed to. More significantly, contributors to these journals engaged with and discussed educational issues and problems that were simultaneously being debated in the West. In the process Chinese educators and officials were able to draw upon, either to valorize or critique, a wide spectrum of contemporary foreign educational debate and practice in their prognosis of domestic education and its future. The picture that emerges of Chinese education during this period is one in which Chinese educators perceived themselves very much as active participants in a global educational community.
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