Abstract: The number of qualitative education research has mounted since the mid of 1990’s when Professor Chen Xiangming at Peking University introduced it into China. In 2015, the Faculty of Education of East China Normal University launched a national “Educational Empirical Research Forum”, which accelerated the development of qualitative research and mixed research with qualitative design. This paper first draws on the Chinese traditional concepts of “Dao” and “Qi” to distinguish the scientific pursuit of the scholarly community and the forms of qualitative research, and proposes to revisit the “scientific” mission of the Chinese education research. Then, this paper scrutinizes the qualitative research papers published in the 37 key Chinese education journals in 2015—2019, focusing on the research design, sampling method, qualitative data source, qualitative data analysis, credibility and ethics. By comparing those qualitative research papers published in 2004—2014 with English qualitative papers published in 2015—2019 in four top education journals in the United Kingdom, the United States and Europe, this review reveals the patterns and features of the qualitative education research in China in the past five years. Finally, this paper concludes by encouraging the Chinese scholarly community to consolidate their consensus and further the internationalization, localization and diversification of Chinese education research.

Key words: qualitative research, mixed research, Dao and Qi, scholarly community, systematic review