We conducted interview via email with nine college students from rural areas. Data about their adaptation to college life was collected. We found that they did not adapt well and how distress, confusion, anxiety, resentment, and uneasiness in colleges. [This article was translated by Jeff Keller.]

In the early 2000s, China's Ministry of Education embarked on a program of school mapping restructure (SMR) that involved closing small rural schools and opening up larger centralized schools in towns and county seats.The stated aim of the policy was to improve educational resources and raise the human capital of rural students. Any progress that…

In 2007, the Chinese government piloted the Free Teacher Education (FTE) program in the top normal universities with the aim to enlist high-quality young graduates to join the teaching profession and to improve education in underdeveloped rural regions. However, a conflict has arisen as FTE students enrolled in the program are reluctant to work in…

This study considers the experience of school mapping restructure (SMR) in areas of rural China. It aims to understand what happened after SMR implementation. Through a combination of instruments such as questionnaires, interviews and document analysis, the study finds that SMR has impacted positively on the development of education in terms of…

This article reports on an inquiry into a group of English language teachers' professional experiences that interpreted their motivation to teach and their shifting professional commitment with reference to representations and visions that they had and did not have about themselves in rural secondary schools in China's hinterland regions. It…

Despite the frequent criticisms directed toward them, in-service teacher training (INSET) programmes remain one of the most commonly used approaches for enhancing teachers' professional development. This article reports on a study that examined the effects of a part-time masters of education INSET programme based in Central China. The main source…

Based on investigations in six midwestern provinces/autonomous regions, Hubei, Henan, Guangxi, Yunnan, Shaanxi, and Inner Mongolia, this article analyzes the reasons for problems in the process of consolidating rural schools and their solutions.

The Chinese government is pouring resources into building vocational education at all levels of the Chinese educational system. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in three vocational secondary schools in 2007-2012, this article compares rural and urban schools to highlight the persistent urban-rural divide in implementing vocational…

This article aims to explore the impact of the new curriculum reform launched in 2001 urban-rural achievement disparities. It documents a pilot study on teachers' experiences in teaching literacy to children in primary one in a poverty-stricken county in western China. Interviews with teachers in various types of schools indicate that the…

China has been promoting student-centered education under the current curriculum reform. However, teachers in rural schools continue to exercise tight control of the classroom, with lecturing taking up most of the class time. Drawing on ethnographic observation and interviews in a rural elementary school, this study analyzes the rationale of rural…

This study looks at how teachers are prepared for rural contexts in China with a focus on the representation of the countryside in teacher preparation. Drawing upon the concept of the rural as social representations of space, an ecological approach to learning to teach, and the notion of curriculum as value-laden and political in terms of both…

As rural Appalachian schools in Ohio in the United States struggle to overcome institutional bias and lack of understanding to accommodate the needs of the growing population of immigrant students from diverse countries, immigrant parents struggle to fit into a new cultural environment and to secure the best education for their children. This…

Teacher professional learning communities provide environments in which teachers engage in regular research and collaboration. They have been found effective as a means for connecting professional learning to the day-to-day realities faced by teachers in the classroom. In this article, the authors draw on survey data collected in primary schools…

Ambition has attracted a great deal of attention in the literature and philosophy of Western and Eastern cultures, if with rather different orientations, but a good deal less within the social sciences and the field of educational administration. This article draws upon these literatures, especially the work of Aristotle, to develop a framework…