Table Of ContentEducation in the Asia-Pacifi c Region:
Issues, Concerns and Prospects 31
Chuing Prudence Chou
Jonathan Spangler Editors
Chinese Education
Models in a Global
Age
EDUCATION IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION:
ISSUES, CONCERNS AND PROSPECTS
Volume 31
Series Editors-in-Chief
Professor Rupert Maclean, The Hong Kong Institute of Education , Tai Po, NT , Hong Kong SAR
Dr Lorraine Pe Symaco, Centre for Research in International and Comparative Education (CRICE),
University of Malaya CRICE/Faculty of Education , Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia
Editorial Board
Professor Bob Adamson, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, China
Dr Robyn Baker, New Zealand Council for Educational Research, Wellington, New Zealand
Professor Michael Crossley, University of Bristol, United Kingdom
Ms Shanti Jagannathan, Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines
Dr Yuto Kitamura, University of Tokyo, Japan
Professor Colin Power, Graduate School of Education, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Professor Konai Helu Thaman, University of the South Pacifi c, Suva, Fiji
Advisory Board
Professor Mark Bray, UNESCO Chair, Comparative Education Research Centre, The University of
Hong Kong, China; Professor Yin Cheong Cheng, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, China;
Professor John Fien, Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia; Dr Pham Lan Huong, International
Educational Research Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Dr Chong-Jae Lee, Korean Educational
Development Institute (KEDI), Seoul, Republic of Korea; Ms Naing Yee Mar, GIZ, Yangon, Myanmar;
Professor Geoff Masters, Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne, Australia;
Margarita Pavlova, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, China; Dr Max Walsh, Secondary
Education Project, Manila, Philippines; Dr Uchita de Zoysa, Global Sustainability Solutions (GLOSS),
Colombo, Sri Lanka
More information about this series at h ttp://www.springer.com/series/5888
Chuing Prudence Chou ((cid:2712)(cid:12173)(cid:10891))
Jonathan Spangler
Editors
Chinese Education Models
in a Global Age
Editors
Chuing Prudence Chou Jonathan Spangler
Department of Education International Doctoral Program
National Chengchi University in Asia-Pacifi c Studies
Taipei , Taiwan National Chengchi University
Taipei , Taiwan
ISSN 1573-5397 ISSN 2214-9791 (electronic)
Education in the Asia-Pacifi c Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects
ISBN 978-981-10-0328-8 ISBN 978-981-10-0330-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0330-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936381
© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016
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Series Editors ’ Introduction
W ith the rising rhetoric of education for development and the continuous quest for
quality education, international and national policies have increasingly focused on
identifying and addressing the characteristics of what may be regarded as being an
“ideal” education model for socioeconomic advancement. In line with this trend,
international assessment exercises (such as PISA and TIMSS) have, more than ever,
expanded in infl uence and profi le into the global educational landscape. In the case
of China, with its economic, cultural, and political rise, the position of the country
in such international assessment exercises has been increasingly emphasized and
magnifi ed. Accompanying this search has been the quest to identify an ideal
“Chinese” model that will defi ne and classify the success of the Chinese education
system. The infl uence and search for an encompassing “Chinese model” also exem-
plify in the broader education literature the role of undertaking such a search.
H owever, as Chou and Spangler argue and demonstrate in this book, the plural-
istic orientation of education in China (and other systems infl uenced by it) testifi es
to the dynamic features of Chinese education, which, as they suggest, goes well
beyond a bite-sized defi nition which is so often employed by others. The book gives
readers valuable information about the various “models” adopted over time, through
a discussion of the historical origins of Chinese education with regard to policy
reforms; the role of Chinese education in different geographical contexts; and the
theoretical bases of the Chinese “model” with regard to broader teaching and learn-
ing practice. This book brings to the fore ever-persistent issues, and the bases of
Chinese education models, in this global age and seeks to engage readers in this
lively debate. The work presents the intricacies of what can only be found in a
dynamic and complex Chinese education infl uence.
(The Hong Kong Institute of Education) Rupert Maclean
(University of Malaya) Lorraine Symaco
v
Foreword
W hen I began my studies of Chinese education in the 1970s, the Cultural Revolution
was raging in the Mainland, and Taiwan was soon to be identifi ed as one of the four
little dragons that followed Japan’s striking successes with education and
modernization. It was a fascinating moment in which one part of the post-Confucian
world took the iconoclasm of the May 4th movement to an extreme in a violent
uprooting of residues of Confucianism seen to stand in the way of revolutionary
egalitarianism, while the other brought about a modern transformation that scholars
such as Ezra Vogel explained in terms of a Confucian ethic parallel to Weber’s
fabled Protestant ethic (Vogel 1991). I still have a photo of a statue of Confucius
lying broken on the ground beside his tomb in a graveyard close to Qufu, the
birthplace of the great master. It was taken on my fi rst visit there in October of 1980.
I also have vivid memories of a fi rst visit to Taiwan from Hong Kong in 1970, where
I observed the beginnings of the modern transformation that has more than fulfi lled
Vogel’s lively predictions.
At that time, there was little serious interest in Chinese education as a model that
might have lessons for a wider world. Nor were the transformations to follow
China’s opening to modernization, the world, and the future under Deng Xiaoping
or the dramatic changes in cross-strait relations between China and Taiwan easily
envisaged. It was really only in the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, when
Samuel Huntington made his dire predictions about a coming clash of civilizations
and the United Nations countered this with a call to dialogue among civilizations
that educators in the Western world were able to open their minds. Only then did it
become clear that there might be something valuable to learn in education from
Eastern civilizations whose contribution to the European Enlightenment had been
crucially important, yet largely forgotten. It was with this in mind that we organized
a conference on “Knowledge Across Cultures” at the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education, University of Toronto, in 1992, inviting scholars from East Asia, India,
the Middle East, and East Africa as well as Europe and North America to explore
Chinese, Indian, and Islamic contributions to the Enlightenment (Hayhoe and Pan
2001). It was followed by a conference in China’s Y uelu shuyuan in 1994, where the
same group of scholars from around the world lived for one week within a Chinese
vii
viii Foreword
academy founded in 961 CE, over 100 years before the earliest European university,
and discussed the ways in which East Asian epistemological and institutional
patterns could contribute to global educational thought (Hayhoe and Pan 1996).
N ow more than 20 years later, this volume bears witness to the rich possibilities
of a range of Chinese models of education for stimulating dynamic improvements
in teacher formation, pedagogy, curriculum, approaches to learning, and institutional
patterns of education, from early childhood up to tertiary education. Nor does it
avoid dealing with some of the perceived limitations of the Confucian heritage.
Rather some of the most striking chapters suggest an integration of the strengths of
this heritage with valued elements of progressive Western patterns. There are many
vivid examples in the learning of languages and mathematics, citizenship formation,
early childhood education, and graduate school pedagogy. The contexts cross a
wide range of societies where there is an active Chinese diaspora, including the
Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, USA, and Canada as well as Taiwan and
Mainland China themselves. Phrases such as dilemmatic pragmatism and neo-
patriotism are coined to elaborate the creative tensions that arise in the process of
integrating ideas that appear at fi rst glance to be polar opposites. Sensitive attention
to differences of context, within and across distinctive societies, also to the processes
whereby educational ideas and patterns are transferred and adapted, suggests most
authors are well schooled in comparative education theory.
Editors Chuing Prudence Chou and Jonathan Spangler have organized the 24
chapters in three main sections, beginning from historical origins, then moving to
East–West interactions, and fi nally considering the transition from theory to
practice. The preface by Chou provides a helpful overview of the thinking that lay
behind the development of this volume, while Spangler’s fi nal chapter highlights
the diversity and dynamism of Chineseness, using terms such as hybridity and
heterogeneity and considering norms, institutions, and individuals. The reader is
thus given some threads or lines of thought to follow in the process of digesting this
feast for the mind, heart, and spirit.
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Ruth Hayhoe
University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada
References
Hayhoe, R., & Pan, J. (Eds.). (1996). E ast-west dialogue in knowledge and higher education.
New York: M.E. Sharpe.
H ayhoe, R., & Pan, J. (Eds.). (2001). K nowledge across cultures: A contribution to dialogue
among civilizations. Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre, University of Hong
Kong.
Vogel, E. (1991). T he four little dragons: The spread of industrialization in East Asia. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Pref ace
China’s cultural, economic, and political rise has brought the country to the forefront
of global scholarly inquiry. In recent years, international assessments (e.g., PISA,
TIMSS) have placed countries of predominantly Chinese descent or infl uenced by
the Chinese writing system and Confucian philosophy at the top of student
performance rankings. These results have attracted attention from researchers,
educators, and policymakers around the world. From this, lively debate has emerged
as to whether or not a distinct Chinese education model can be identifi ed and, if
such a model exists, whether or not it is a contributing factor to the educational
successes of countries heavily infl uenced by Chinese culture and philosophy.
Inspired by these debates, this volume embraces the lack of consensus surrounding
the topic, drawing upon a diverse set of voices from researchers around the world.
It builds from the premise that there is no straightforward, clear-cut way of distilling
the notion of a Chinese education model into the bite-sized defi nition that academics
and policymakers so often desire. Even the concept of Chineseness is rich with
ambiguity, interwoven with ideas of history, culture, geography, and ethnicity.
While the contributing authors have been encouraged to conceptualize Chinese
education models from their unique, individual perspectives, the “Chinese” aspect
has been interpreted in the broadest sense as h uaren, extending the concept into the
wide range of geographic and cultural spheres in which Chinese infl uence exists in
today’s global age. By welcoming a wide range of perspectives from a diverse team
of authors, this volume aims to serve not as a book-length defi nition of the Chinese
education model but as a platform for dialogue and a foundation for future research.
T he book is divided into four parts, each comprising a distinct theme that may be
familiar to comparative education researchers as well as those with a more general
interest in education and culture. In Part I “When Past Meets Future,” a collection
of analyses of the historical origins of the Chinese education model set the foundation
for the volume. Particular emphasis is placed on the effects of policy reforms,
including educational reforms specifi cally and those related to political systems,
economics, and culture. In Part II “When East Meets West,” the key similarities and
differences between the Chinese education models in different geographical
contexts take center stage. Discussions of the role of Chinese education in Taiwan,
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