Table Of ContentEducation in East Asia
Available and Forthcoming Titles in the Education
Around the World Series
Series Editor: Colin Brock
Education Around the World: A Comparative Introduction,
Colin Brock and Nafsika Alexiadou
Education in South-East Asia, edited by Lorraine Pe Symaco
Forthcoming volumes:
Education in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, edited
by Michael Crossley, Greg Hancock and Terra Sprague
Education in the Commonwealth Caribbean and
Netherlands Antilles, edited by Emel Thomas
Education in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, edited by Nadiya Ivanenko
Education in Southern Africa, edited by Clive Harber
Education in West-Central Asia, edited by Mah-E-Rukh Ahmed
Education in West Africa, edited by Emefa Amoako
Education in East Asia
Edited by Pei-tseng Jenny Hsieh
Education Around the World
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway
London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
UK USA
www.bloomsbury.com
First published 2013
© Pei-tseng Jenny Hsieh and Contributors, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.
Pei-tseng Jenny Hsieh and Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as authors of this work.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining
from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury
Academic or the authors.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-4411-4971-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
Contents
Series Editor’s Preface
Colin Brock vii
The Contributors ix
Introduction: Education in East Asia – A Regional Overview xv
Pei-tseng Jenny Hsieh
1 China: An Overview 1
Zhou Zhong
2 China: The Role of Independent Colleges in the Expanding Higher
Education System 29
Kai Yu and Hubert Ertl
3 Hong Kong: Structuring the Education System for a Diversified Society 49
Alka Sharma
4 Macao: Governmentality and Education Development in the
Post-1999 Era 79
Sou-Kuan Vong
5 Japan: Cultural Roots versus Systemic Provision 103
Shin’ichi Suzuki
6 Japan: Internationalisation in Education and the Problem of
Introspective Youth 127
Yuki Imoto
7 Japan: A Silent End to a Silent Revolution? Post-war Changes in
Resource Allocation 153
Takehiko Kariya
8 Mongolia: From Nomadic to Communistic to Liberal 175
Enkhzul Dambajantsan
9 North Korea: An Overview 193
Jeong-ah Cho, Huang-kue Lee and Ki-Seok Kim
vi Contents
10 South Korea: Education in a Multicultural Society 215
Jiyeon Hong
11 South Korea: College Admissions System and Reform Issues 233
Soojeong Lee and Eul Sook Kim
12 Taiwan: Trends and Agendas in Education Reform 257
Hsiao-Lan Sharon Chen
13 Taiwan: Examinations 279
Pei-tseng Jenny Hsieh
Index 303
Series Editor’s Preface
The volumes in this series will look at education in virtually every territory
in the world. The initial volume, Education Around the World: A Comparative
Introduction, aims to provide an insight to the field of international and
comparative education. It looks at its history and development and then
examines a number of major themes at scales from local to regional to global. It
is important to bear such scales of observation in mind because the remainder
of the series is inevitably regionally and nationally based.
The identification of the regions within which to group countries has
sometimes been a very simple task, elsewhere less so. Europe, for example,
has multiple volumes and more than 50 countries. National statistics vary
considerably in their availability and accuracy, and in any case date rapidly.
Consequently the editors of each volume point the reader towards access to
regional and international datasets, available online, that are regularly updated.
A key purpose of the series is to give some visibility to a large number of
countries that, for various reasons, rarely, if ever, have coverage in the literature
of this field.
For this volume, Education in East Asia, it has been a relatively simple task
to identify the region. The countries concerned share a combination of tradi-
tional Chinese culture and the influence of more recent Japanese occupation,
both of which have had a strong influence on education. Major languages other
than Chinese in the region have derived from it in different ways and are now
distinctive. There are of course dialects in all places but in general the countries
have a much greater linguistic homogeneity than in almost any other part of
the world. This attribute was put forward by one of the founding fathers of
comparative education, Nicholas Hans, as a particularly favourable one. Only in
Hong Kong and Macau are there any significant legacies of European colonial
languages.
The region is also notable for its rapid economic rise in recent decades. Japan
is still one of the world’s leading economies in terms of sophistication as well as
size, while China (PRC) is now the world’s second largest economy in absolute
terms. Korea and Taiwan (ROC) are world leaders in the electronic and ICT
fields, and Mongolia has the fastest growing economy in the world due to the
viii Series Editor’s Preface
recognition of its massive reserves of a variety of minerals. All of these things
have a variety of connections with education that can be problematic and not
always favourable, but they make for an important and complicated range of
educational traditions, settings, demands and problems.
As Series Editor, I would like to thank Pei-Tseng Jenny Hsieh for all her hard
editorial work, the outcome of which certainly repays its reading.
Colin Brock, Series Editor
The Contributors
Hsiao-Lan Sharon Chen is Professor of Education at the National Taiwan
Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan, where she was formerly the Director of
the Centre for Education Research and Evaluation. Her professional interests
lie in the areas of curriculum and instruction, teacher professional devel-
opment, and qualitative research methodology. Currently she heads several
public policy research projects, including one on the construction of teacher
professional standards, the establishment of a learning support system and a
teacher empowerment programme.
Jeong-ah Cho is a Researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification,
a national research institute of the Republic of Korea government which
conducts research and policy development on North Korea and the multi-
dimensional issues related to the unification of the Korean peninsula. Her
research interests include the education system and policies of North Korea.
She is also interested in identity formation as well as the current social
situation of ordinary North Koreans. Jeong-ah Cho received her PhD in the
Sociology of Education from Seoul National University, South Korea.
Enkhzul Dambajantsan is a Lecturer at the University of the Humanities,
Mongolia, with a mixed background in finance and education. She received a
BSc in Finance and an MBA from the University of the Humanities, Mongolia,
and an MSc in Education from the University of Oxford, UK. Her research
interests are academic development, professional learning and the teaching
and learning experiences of students in the fields of business and finance.
Hubert Ertl is Lecturer in Higher Education at the Department of Education,
University of Oxford, UK. He is Director of the Department’s MSc in
Education (Higher Education) programme and Senior Research Fellow of the
ESRC-funded Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Occupational Performance
(SKOPE). He is also the convener of the Higher Education and Professional
Learning Research Group and Fellow of Linacre College, University of
Oxford, UK. Hubert Ertl’s research interests include international aspects of
higher education, vocational education and training, EU educational policies,
