While enjoying the respect and prestige in some countries, in others, despite being a significant educational sector, vocational education continues to suffer from low status and negative societal sentiments. Vocational education in China has been positioned at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, absorbing the 'left-over' students with 'less…

Cultivating "wenhua dacai" (great cultural talent) is a central goal of the ongoing "dujing" (classics reading) education movement, which is an integral part of the broad Confucian revival in contemporary China. Focusing on the concept of "wenhua dacai," this article explores three interrelated issues. First, as a…

While historically and ideologically peripheralised in modern Chinese politics, traditional culture has been discursively rehabilitated by the Chinese communist regime in recent years. Existing literature on this phenomenon tends to focus on the politicisation of culture, that is, how Chinese culture, particularly the Confucian tradition, is…

The changing context and increasing professionalization in higher education have ushered in challenges for liberal arts education worldwide. Situated this discourse in the context of Chinese universities, this paper explores (1) Why do we need a liberal arts education that has been accused of being elitist in the twenty first century? (2) Should…

Learner-teacher relationships have a profound impact on teaching and learning quality with many universities focusing on relationship-rich educational experiences. Engaging students as partners (SaP) has emerged as a way of enhancing learner-teacher relationships with research reporting numerous benefits and challenges. In this article, we address…

Existing academic literature on higher education in China tends to promote an argument that current norms of academic freedom and the broader intellectual-state relationship can be attributed primarily to Chinese political and cultural traditions, particularly Confucian political thought, creating a false dichotomy between 'Western' liberal…

This paper examines the relationship between the concepts of humility and competition in Confucianism and Daoism, and discusses their relevance to contemporary education. It argues that while both philosophical traditions value humility and caution against excessive competition, they do not outrightly reject competition; instead, they advocate for…

This paper discusses the nature of Chinese ideology and the policy of citizenship education from a cultural perspective, in the light of traditional life philosophies and current tendencies. The aim is to understand the Chinese conception of citizenship and the education of citizens as a nation-specific cultural formation and a production of…

Between 1919-1920, while giving a series of speeches in China, John Dewey raised a doubt about Chinese education: Can Chinese education cultivate children with independent consciousness? Based on the sevenyear "Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education between Canada and China" project, we have the answer to Dewey's…

In this article, we examine how the concept of world-class universities has emerged in Chinese higher education at both the sectoral and institutional level. We examine policy decisions related to creating world-class universities on China's mainland and institutional responses to these policies. We then read these policies through "cultural…

This paper delineates the rise, fall and re-emergence of "tongshi" education in Chinese higher education history, and in doing so hopes to reveal the underlying forces behind the two waves of "tongshi" education and capture their important 'Chinese' characteristics. Based on a comparative-historical examination of the Chinese…

In traditional Chinese philosophy, silence occupies a pivotal position by not being merely treated as the absence of speech, but also as the transcendence of it. Silence in early Confucianism implies the timing, subjects and issues to which one should not teach and talk about, and in depth it also refers to the manifestation of utmost sincerity…

The Chinese "tianrenheyi" thesis bespeaks a correlative cosmology irreducible to the Western metaphysics. This article historicizes "tianrenheyi" for new implications to help rethink the given concepts of 'person/thing,' 'environment/nature,' and 'relationality' in contemporary ethical and environmental education in three…

In China as elsewhere in the world, human bodies and body parts have long been used for a wide range of medical and non-medical purposes. In recent decades, China has played a considerable role in some of the public exhibitions of plastinated bodies and body parts, and the commercial trade in organ donations. These contemporary developments have…

Active participation of learners has been viewed as the key to the learning process. To constructivists, challenging materials and cooperative activities where students participate and become engaged are essential in classroom instruction. In comparison, classrooms in Chinese heritage culture classrooms, where lectures are the main form of…