Jun Li

• PhD
• Chair at Western University

By investigating 28 pre-service teachers’ learning in a comparative and international course at a Chinese university, this case study examined how to foster teacher students’ global competence, through their global engagement and critical dialogue with human capital discourse that focuses on measurement, competitiveness, and accountability for huma...

Education and One Belt and One Road

Based on broad observations of the development of Confucius Institutes and Classrooms in Africa over a decade, this article focuses on educational partnerships between Chinese and African educational institutions and their implications for international development, as they relate to international development in the era of post-Covid-19. The author...

As a country with the largest system of teacher education in the world, China has initiated a series of national policies for teacher education improvement since the 1990s. Based on a case study, this chapter aims at an interrogation of the implementation process of the national improvement from a critical framework. It presents the jigsaw of imple...

The global drive for world-class universities is twinned with a radical movement to create research assessment indicators, and universities have never been pressured as much as today by global rankings. This chapter aims to focus on how research assessment exercises have reconfigured the institutional missions of the university in terms of knowledg...

The global landscape of higher education has been systematically reshaped and redefined by research assessment and ranking schemes in recent decades, whether they be termed “the global ranking regime” (Gonzales and Núñez in Education Policy Analysis Archives 22(31): 1–24, 2014; Ishikawa in Education Policy Analysis Archives 22(30): 1–27, 2014; Li i...

This article builds on the ambiguous concept of the autonomy of universities with three historical turns in two dominant types of universities in the world – the Anglo-Saxon and American models, represented by the British and American institutions, and the Continental models, including the recently emerging Chinese University 3.0. Based on empirica...

Improvement Science is a newly emerged science centered on problem-identification through evidence-based research. In recent years, it has been gradually promoted in the field of education, and provides new theoretical perspectives, methods and technologies for educational improvement. From the analyses of related theories and cases, this article t...

With the foundations laid by improvement science and sociological theories, Professional Improvement Communities (PICs) are communities which vision, objectives, principles and benefits are shared, with capacity building as an approach for improvement through scientific paradigms of system thinking, shared thinking and the multiperspectival approac...

In recent years, Educational Improvement Science has made great advancement in the wave of rethinking educational reforms for quality and efficiency, and its practices have emerged from theoretical discourse worldwide. Its core value aims to unfold individual freedom and collaboration of development, equipping learners for a life and development en...

The limits of large-scale measurements and the neglects of background factors such as culture and region often discredit or even fail governmental decision-makings. In order to improve service quality and reduce policy cost, in the 1970s the United States launched the Quality Movement, and Improvement Science began to emerge in the field of public...

Educational Improvement Science (EIS) emerged from the Improvement Science in the fields of industry and public health in the 1990s. It has begun to grow and develop rapidly in the early 2010s. In order to build and explore this new disciplinary area in China, it is imperative to first look into its disciplinary foundations and frameworks, then con...

Educational science is complex in terms of its mission for human development and social progress, being hardly defined from perspectives of pure science. The disciplinary status of educational research rests on its scientific and professional nature. Educational research demands of both philosophical judgments of values and scientific exploration o...

Recently China has miraculously transformed itself from a learner in the 20th century to a re-rising leader of educational excellence. The enduring policy endeavors over the past few decades have largely enabled China as the largest educational system in the world move to a recently emerging status as a global leader of educational improvement, rec...

The term model refers to an ideal typical concept for analysis, according to Max Weber (1949). The concept represents the features of various relationships in a context as an internally consistent system (Li 2012a). Recent efforts to characterize various models of higher education have grown apace around the globe. Altbach (1992) rightly points out...

Over the last century, knowledge has been actively applied as a key power source for the privileged to further advance their status and entitlements (Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. New York, NY: Pantheon.). The knowledge-power correlations undergo numerous shifts at individual, institutional...

University partnerships have been a key dimension of higher education development. Based on documentary analysis and empirical data, this study compares two distinct models of university partnership experienced by China, first as a recipient of the Soviet Union in the 1950s and later as a provider with African countries in the 2000s. The different...

This book investigates how the political underpinnings of global power shifts, caused by hierarchically concerned knowledge makers, have evolved on the post-Soviet periphery of higher education and have been anxious to move to the top of the global knowledge hierarchy. This volume engages distant and recent histories of two global superpowers – the...

Special issue for Guangming Daily

This article focuses on rationality and challenges in the latest policy development of education in China since the 2000s, critically examining related national ideologies which have shaped the formation of educational policies. Key themes of educational policies in recent decades are teased out with regard to a democratic mission of education for...

University partnerships have been a key dimension of higher education development. Based on documentary analysis and empirical data, this study compares two distinctive models of university partnership experienced by China, first as a recipient with the Soviet Union in the 1950s and later as a provider with African countries in the 2000s. The diffe...

This special issue of Chinese Education and Society focuses on “New Trends of Educational Policies in China: Transcending Localization and Globalization”, providing updated empirical findings, policy insights and critical reflections on various dimensions of policy development in China’s education for the 21st century. The nine articles published i...

This chapter begins with some reflections on philosophy and comparative education. The philosophical ideas of East Asia are taken as an “other,” from which to look comparatively at some of the fundamental values that underlie educational thought in the West. Given the history of European colonization, and the attraction European models had for mode...

As of year-end 2014, the Confucius Institutes—the largest international educational cooperation project in human history, and the largest internationalization project in the history of Chinese universities—celebrated their first decade of existence. This case study examines 27 Confucius Institutes in 15 countries spread across six continents around...

The global drive for world-class universities is twinned with a radical movement to create research assessment indicators, and universities have never been pressured as much as today by global rankings. This paper aims to focus on how research assessment exercises have reconfigured the institutional missions of the university in terms of knowledge...

The very core of teacher education reform lies in the redefinition of the identities of the teaching profession in a new global age. It is through teachers’ new identities that all other aspects of school system come into contact with learners, making teachers central to any meaningful changes in the practical process of learning, teaching, and sch...

If Shanghai students are top students in the world, in terms of their international standing of academic achievements, Shanghai teachers are without doubt world-class too. Over past decades, Chinese government has taken many policy actions to pursue a world-class teaching force by reforming teacher education, and TEIs have often been targeted for r...

Policy analysis is usually defined as “an applied social science discipline that employs multiple methods of inquiry, in contexts of argumentation and public debate, to create, critically assess, and communicate policy-relevant knowledge” (Dunn. Public policy analysis: an introduction, 2nd edn. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, , pp xiii–xiv, 1994)....

In this final chapter, the research questions of the study will be revisited, and I will bring back the Multiperspectival Approach, which is consisted of the Rational and Critical Perspectives, and the Operational Analytic Model to reflect upon the implementation process. Drawing on the Chinese experiences, this chapter also discusses implications...

The Chinese model of teacher education is conceptualized by critically revisiting the developmental trajectory of the teacher education system in China over a century, and re-examining current provisions and latest challenges of teacher education in China since the 1990s. It interrogates the Chinese model of teacher education with two macro lenses:...

Some contend that almost all universities follow institutional patterns derived from Western models and that all Asian universities are based on European academic models and traditions. However, the Chinese University 3.0 may be exceptional, demonstrating key characteristics of China’s scholarly tradition, though it has been strongly influenced by...

This chapter introduces the sociopolitical and historical context of China’s teacher education system and outlines its rich educational legacy and developmental trajectory in different stages. It also provides an overview of current provisions for teacher education and policy efforts made by the Chinese government in recent decades.

Utilizing a case study method and a Multiperspectival Approach, this volume presents a pioneering, in-depth study about China’s teacher education policy since the 1990s. It critically investigates the rational, dynamic and complex implementation process taking place at the micro institutional level for the transformations of teacher education insti...

Report by the Education Policy Unit at the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong

This article explains how diversity has been maintained in spite of the homogenizing pressures of globalization on Chinese higher education. As a result of national policy and institutional initiative, normal universities, agricultural universities and universities focusing on minority cultures have maintained their unique identities.

World-class teacher education for the Post-2015 Agenda? Critical reflections on the Shanghai Miracle. Norrag News, 50, 90-91

This article reflects upon three seminal articles published in Higher Education Policy (HEP) on academic freedom and university autonomy. The reflections indicate that HEP research contributes to a sophisticated and systematic understanding of the complexity of academic freedom, addressing both the original theoretical issues and burning current is...

Teacher education has been undergoing significant transformations worldwide in recent decades, and China has made continuous efforts in its quest for world-class teachers. This paper aims at a comprehensive investigation of the complex policy process in China's national initiatives to nurture a world-class teaching force, with qualitative findings...

The general focus of this research is on the role played by the reform of the education system in Hong Kong SAR, China with particular reference to the development of the lifelong learning sector. Up to 1997, the Hong Kong education system used to roughly follow the British pattern but after the handover of sovereignty to mainland China, reforms ha...

In recent decades, the revolutionary expansion of Chinese universities has emerged as one of the most significant phenomena in the worldwide transformation of higher education. Since 2003, China has become a country with the largest national higher education system in the world, with nearly 31 million students in 2010. What have students’ experienc...

China’s recent quest to develop world-class universities is a significant phenomenon within the worldwide transformation of tertiary education. Taking a cultural approach and drawing on empirical findings, this article investigates the emerging Chinese model of the university, considering its key features and contributions to global communities. Fi...

This article aims at a comprehensive examination of the Chinese model of teacher education by critically revisiting the developmental trajectory of the teacher education system in China over the past century, with a particular focus on policy trends since the 1990s. It interrogates the Chinese model of teacher education with two macro lenses: the h...

This article aims at a comprehensive examination of the Chinese model of teacher education by critically revisiting the developmental trajectory of the teacher education system in China over the past century, with a particular focus on policy trends since the 1990s. It interrogates the Chinese model of teacher education with two macro lenses: the h...

Yanbian University (YBU) is the only university among our twelve case studies that has as its main mission serving Korean minority students in China. It has played a critical role in the development of the Yanbian autonomous prefecture, and in many ways reflects the history of ethnic minority development in China over the past sixty years. In recen...

Xi’an International University (XAIU) is another private university that has successfully established its institutional reputation in China. While forging an ethos oriented towards international outreach, it has also nurtured a large private higher education community in the heartland of Northwest China, the major city of Xi’an. This chapter depict...

The University of Science and Technology of China has a relatively short but remarkable history. If Peking University is commonly viewed as a national higher education icon, the University of Science and Technology of China, for its part, might be regarded a landmark in terms of higher education development after the founding of People’s Republic o...

Southwest University (SWU) in Chongqing presents an interesting contrast to East China Normal University. Originally one of the six national key normal universities established in the early 1950s as Southwest Normal, it is the only one which was given permission by the Ministry of Education to enter into a major merger and give up the title of norm...

In the first half of the 20th century, Nanjing University (Nanda) once had a similar national leading status to that of Peking University. Its history is almost as long, but its location in the former capital of the Nationalist regime, and its position as the successor to the National Central University, the leading higher institution of the Nation...

The Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan provides an interesting contrast to the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), which has been profiled in Chapter 9. While the USTC resisted pressures for both merger and the rapid expansion of undergraduate enrollments, HUST embraced a complex merger and more than tri...

This book examines the ways in which China’s universities have changed in the dramatic move to a mass stage which has unfolded since the late 1990s. Twelve universities in different regions of the country are portrayed through the eyes of their students, faculty and leaders. The book begins with the national level policy process around the move to...

In China’s rapid move from elite to mass higher education, students have experienced dramatic changes. How have they been affected by the expansion process? How do they view the radical institutional changes? And how are they being nurtured to act as dynamic citizens? In this chapter, we will examine three major aspects of how students have been af...

Since the late 1990s the Chinese government has implemented two key policies for the development of higher education. The first was launching Project 985, with the purpose of seeking excellence through creating internationally competitive universities. The second was a radical move to a mass system of higher education. In this context, China’s top...

The establishment of normal colleges and universities is an important component of building a modern country, which possesses different value ethos with the universities. The emergence of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and the local normal schools has set a new model for teacher education around the world and promoted values and knowledge pa...

Incl. bibl., abstract This study examines the patterns and interplay of college students' political orientations and socialization toward citizenship and civil society in the Chinese sociopolitical context, alongside China's move to mass higher education. Data were collected from a nationwide survey conducted in 12 Chinese universities in 2007. The...

The history of the development of formal technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in China can be traced back to the late Qing Dynasty (1840–1911), but it was not until the early twentieth century that the framework of the modern school system began to emerge. It has only been in the last three decades that reform measures accelerated...

Within recent decades, higher education has undergone a radical transformation in many countries. The transformation takes quite different specific trajectories projected by disparate national policies and conditioned by particular economic and political contexts. The new initiative of higher education expansion launched by the Chinese government s...

Utilizing a case study method and a Multiperspectival Approach, this volume presents a pioneering, in-depth study about China’s teacher education policy since the 1990s. It critically investigates the rational, dynamic and complex implementation process taking place at the micro institutional level for the transformations of teacher education insti...

This research focuses on students’ learning of social studies in urban public schools in Japan and China through a comparative analysis. Two different scenarios of civics (social studies) teaching and learning in different social milieus are explored by factor analysis and ANOVA based on empirical database, as presented by a variety of tables and f...