Over the past 50 years, China's initial teacher education (ITE) system has undergone significant changes and improvements. To review and reflect on these experiences, we construct a multi-level, context-specific conceptualisation of ITE professionalisation. Guided by this framework, we segment the history of ITE professionalisation into three…

"Virtual Reality" (VR) is increasingly being viewed as one of the most effective and efficient instructional tools in educational settings. The successful implementation of this innovative instructional technology presupposes teachers' acceptance and diffusion. And prospective teachers, as the teacher talent pool, their beliefs and…

The teacher shortage is a critical issue in many rural areas around the world. This paper presents the findings of two studies that investigated the impact of financial incentives on teacher attraction and retention in rural schools in Western China. Using the theory of compensating wage differentials and a mixed-method approach, we found that…

Every year, a number of Chinese undergraduates from urban teacher universities are selected as volunteer pre-service teachers to teach in schools located in underdeveloped rural areas. In this qualitative case study, the researchers explore four pre-service teachers' 1-year experience as volunteer educators in rural schools, their communities of…

Understanding educational aspiration is pivotal for studying access to and success in higher education, given its influence on academic, occupational, and societal trajectories. Yet, aspiration is a challenging topic to research, in part because of its complex definitions, measurements, and contexts. This review focuses on the educational…

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the principal's leadership behaviors on teacher self-efficacy and its effect on the success of the students of Chinese rural schools in the College Entrance Exam. This study used a mixed-methods design. A total of 100 teachers and 15 principal subjects responded to surveys that collected…

Since the restoration of the "Gaokao" (College Entrance Examination) in 1977 and the nationwide higher education expansion that started in 1998, millions of rural students have enrolled in urban universities. Though Chinese rural students' educational trajectories have received extensive attention, their subjective experiences in the…

Drawing on a broader study that focused on understanding rural college students for equity and personal growth in higher education, this paper presents Ying's story of learning and living as a female college student from rural China. Adopting the thinking tools of habitus and reflexivity, the paper aims to understand the constraints Ying has gone…

Given the big gap between rural areas and cities and developed areas of China in basic education, it is of great significance to train a large number of excellent teachers for basic education in the vast rural areas so as to boost basic education there and achieve educational equity. Hanshan Normal University is a regional normal university…

Despite a surge of research interest in pre-service teachers' identities over the past years, scant attention has been paid to the "process" of their identity construction during their teaching practicum. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, this study seeks to fill this gap by examining the identity construction experiences of…

This study examines the burgeoning trend of Hong Kong university students conducting English language teaching as service-learning in mainland China, specifically in rural primary schools. The study reports the results of a questionnaire administered to Hong Kong undergraduate students after a series of such trips spanning a 4-year period. In…

The Gaokao, a mandatory postsecondary entrance examination for all Chinese students, is often associated with psychological stress among Chinese students in their final year of high school. This project was conducted in summer 2017 in urban Beijing and rural Xi'an, China. The purpose is to explore the perspectives of urban and rural secondary…

Globally, much of the criticism has been directed at the quality of university-based teacher education in preparing teachers for impoverished schools. Drawing on data from an incentive program of teacher education in China, the authors comparatively investigated the field experiences of pre-service teachers from contrasting setting (urban and…

In this study, the teacher support scale, the hardiness scale and the learning adaptation scale were used in a kindergarten teacher's college in Changde. A survey was conducted among 1148 college students to analyze the relationship between teacher support, hardiness and learning adaptation, and to explore whether hardiness plays a role in the…

The "county high school phenomenon" of Chinese rural high school education to pursue higher education has attracted much attention from the education field and society. Earlier studies were mostly from the perspective of education and believed that the "county high school education model" was contrary to education's essence…