Confucianism has been widely perceived as a major moral and cultural obstacle to the donation of bodies for anatomical purposes. The rationale for this is the Confucian stress on "xiao" (filial piety), whereby individuals' bodies are to be intact at death. In the view of many, the result is a prohibition on the donation of bodies to…

Mainland China has been embarking on a nation-wide education reform as part of its modernisation project for the past few decades. A relatively under-researched topic is teacher agency in non-elite schools where educators critically shape their reactions to new situations brought about by the reform. Focussing on the introduction of school-based…

Instead of relying on colonial and Western developmental logic to understand and research gender, this paper proposes interfering as a strategy toward generating gender knowledges that are more inclusive to other-than-Western concepts and contexts. This paper shows how post-developmental perspectives interfere with psychological and biological…

The features of Korean higher education development are related to sociocultural tradition (Confucian tradition), the model university ideas, and economic development in Korea. The modern university ideas adopted in Korean are based on the German model which was established by the Japanese colonial government and drawing on the US university model…

While increasing attention is being paid to the ideological debate on Confucian-influenced cultural values communicated in Chinese language textbooks, EFL textbooks remain under-examined since the TEFL/TESOL is typically assumed to be "technical" and "neutral". Drawing on critical theoretical perspectives on curriculum,…

It is argued that it is unnecessary to propose that Confucian values explain the high achievements in math and science of the North East Asian peoples, and that these can be satisfactorily and more parsimoniously be explained by their high IQs.

This article is a pragmatic, classroom-focused conversation about the teaching of writing among three teachers living in the United States and China, separated by many thousands of miles and many centuries of tradition and culture. Our focus here is on classroom concerns: actual student writing, assignment design, and assessment. We seek to…

This article describes self-cultivation practices originating from the cultural traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. It delineates the therapeutic implications of the three states of self pursued by these three traditions: namely, the "relational self", the "authentic self", and the "nonself". Several…

This book takes a critical look at why issues of language in higher education are routinely marginalised, despite the growing internationalisation of universities. Through analyses of a variety of intercultural encounters, the book highlights the range of interpretative possibilities available for understanding these encounters, and suggests the…

Research evidence indicates that formative assessment is one of the most effective ways of enhancing student learning. It is, however, difficult to implement successfully, principally because what is tested through summative assessment has such a powerful influence on teacher and student actions. This book scrutinizes the relationship between…

Western and East Asian people hold fundamentally different beliefs about learning that influence how they approach child rearing and education. Reviewing decades of research, Dr. Jin Li presents an important conceptual distinction between the Western mind model and the East Asian virtue model of learning. The former aims to cultivate the mind to…

The postmodern critique of modernity has focused on the construction of the modern subject and the self-disciplining and self-cancellation tendencies within it. This critique, however, fails to consider what happens during the early years of children's development--the period during which the modern subject is made, and the one in which the…

Uses a Confucian-Socratic framework to analyze culture's influence on academic learning, comparing and contrasting ideals for learning that are culturally more Chinese (Confucian) with those that are more western (Socratic). Discusses expressions of these approaches in modern postsecondary contexts, noting the effects of these approaches on…

Confucianism has been identified as the major cultural factor that explains the economic success of the Asian Five Dragons (Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan). This paper explores the impact of Confucianism on the organizational communication in these nations, based on the four key principles of confucian teaching: the…

This paper argues that the re-traditionalisation of 'wishing for dragon children' creates difficulties for China's current education reforms and informs the disquiet expressed by Chinese-Australians about Australian education. We develop this argument around three key propositions. First, we explore Confucianism and the civil service examination…