This Forum article addresses some of the issues raised in the article by Ying-Syuan Huang and Anila Asghar's paper entitled: "Science education reform in Confucian learning cultures: teachers' perspectives on policy and practice in Taiwan." An attempt is made to highlight the need for a more nuanced approach in considering the Confucian…

The approaches to governance employed by various societies have become increasingly similar, following a pattern of reforms that move away from the control mode to the supervisory mode. To this end, direct central involvement is being replaced by a model that relies on more sophisticated forms of funding, monitoring, and performance review. This…

The number of students who enrol in Master's programmes has significantly increased in recent years; however, their learning motivations have not been adequately investigated, especially those from developing countries. This article reports a two-phased study that investigated Vietnamese students' learning motivations for attending Master's…

This article reports a qualitative case study that explored challenges that Vietnamese early childhood preservice teachers faced when undertaking the teaching internship in regional schools and how these challenges influenced their career intention. Qualitative content analyses of 20 semistructured interviews revealed that despite several…

In contrast to the continued decline and bleak future of liberal arts education and liberal arts colleges in Europe and America, there has been a revival of the liberal arts model in Asian countries in recent years. This paper compares the liberal arts tradition of education in the West and Confucian tradition of education in the East, in the…

Since the early 21st century the number of doctoral students leaving their own country to study abroad has risen significantly adding to swelling numbers of domestic students. The process of doctoral studies has been acknowledged as identity transformation, a process of "becoming" for domestic students and international students. What…

This article is based on an investigation of the experiences of six native Chinese teachers working in British schools through the Confucius Institute and the British Council programmes. This qualitative study is located in the interpretivist tradition. It reveals that the target group of teachers construct their professional identity by means of…

This book provides significant information regarding the policies and provisions for early childhood teacher education programs in universities in fourteen different countries. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is expanding rapidly across the globe with unprecedented numbers of children attending EC centres, requiring the investment in…

This book traces the historical background of liberal arts education from west to east, expounds its implication and fundamental goal of universities, and introduces its application in Western and Chinese universities, particularly its experimentation at University of Nottingham Ningbo China. It takes the University of Nottingham Ningbo China as…

This literature review explores the current body of research pertaining to learner autonomy in the Vietnamese English for Academic Purposes (EAP) context, investigating themes and research methodologies, conclusions drawn, limitations and possible avenues for further study and new research directions in the future. We demonstrate that although…

This article approaches Confucianism as a lost art of living and asks how we can make it relevant again for us. Central to this approach is the cultivation of heart-mind ("Xinxue," ??) designed to help cure ourselves of self-oblivion and self-centeredness so prevalent in our culture today. It is based on the idea of "Li" (?),…

In this article, I trace a shift in Confucian scholars' interpretations about the idea of "learning for one's self" vs. "learning for others" from "the Analects": a shift from the philological interpretation to the philosophical one. Despite its defect, most Neo-Confucians accepted the philosophical interpretation,…

In this philosophical paper, I propose a theory of music education inspired by ancient Chinese philosophy. In particular, I draw on five classical Chinese philosophical texts: the Analects (lunyu [Chinese characters omitted]), the Mencius (Mengzi [Chinese characters omitted]), the Zhuangzi ([Chinese characters omitted]), the Xunzi ([Chinese…

Spirituality encourages the individual to make sense of oneself within a wider framework of meaning and see oneself as part of some larger whole. This article discusses Confucian spirituality by focusing on the spiritual ideals of "dao" (Way) and "he" (harmony). It is explained that the Way represents a shared vision of human…

Italy, a country with a great cultural tradition and a founding member of the European Union (EU), since 2004 very actively contributes to the cultural cooperation activities of EU with non European countries. This paper is a detailed review of the status of those activities, which can be subdivided into joint "Master Mundus" Actions and…