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    01 July 2024, Volume 42 Issue 7 Previous Issue    Next Issue
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    Directions of Education in the World
    Yong Zhao, Chun Lai, Ruojun Zhong
    2024, 42 (7):  1-14.  doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2024.07.001
    Abstract ( 474 )   HTML ( 79 )   PDF (999KB) ( 452 )   Save

    In the past few decades, we have witnessed exponential increase in educational investment and reform efforts. However, education has seen a decline or regression in quality globally. This paper aims to reveal the reasons behind this paradox and envision the future of education. We argue that the standard curriculum and assessment, the uniform progression, and the selection focus that characterize the current education system is shaped by the sociocultural circumstances of the Industrial Age when modern education was born. This education system constrains students’ growth, hampers education quality, and leads to educational inequalities. This system fails to produce the type of talents needed in the new era that is characterized by the rapid advancement of knowledge, the fast development of AI, and the increasing demand for entrepreneurship, thereby constraining human’s flexibility in thriving in the current and future uncertainties. We hence advocate three key cornerstones of future education: personalizable learning, learning that centers around problem finding and solving, and learning supported by global campus.

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    “Hindsight” and “Flow the Crowd”: A Cultural Analysis of the Employability Management by Rural Students in Elite Universities
    Ailei Xie, Yunyun Qin, Qunqun Liu
    2024, 42 (7):  15-27.  doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2024.07.002
    Abstract ( 259 )   HTML ( 32 )   PDF (890KB) ( 423 )   Save

    Based on a longitudinal data on a group of rural students at four “985” universities, this study explores the causes of their relative disadvantages in employment upon graduation. The analysis of qualitative data shows that the disadvantages in employment faced by rural students can be attributed to the fact that they are not familiar with the employment culture of the middle class nature which is featured by highlighting individual responsibilities, added value to credentials, and rational-systematic action theory. This paper conceptualizes this process as hindsight by using the participants’ own language. This largely influences their strategy of managing their employability, which in general shows the characteristics of following the prescribed order, valuing hard currency and opportunism. This paper uses the participants’ own language to conceptualize it as “follow the crowd”. The theoretical significance of this study lies in the analysis of the employability management of rural college students and the cultural factors behind it, and points out that the concept of employability is a social construction. Students from different social groups have different content and strategies of employability management, which is deeply influenced by their understanding of it. And this is often the product of early socialization, which opens the way for the structural analysis of employability management.

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    Does Parental Educational Attainment Affect Relative Poverty of Offspring: An Analysis Based on the 2010-2018 Chinese Household Tracking Survey
    Hongxia Zhao, Yue Zhang, Xiudian Yao
    2024, 42 (7):  28-41.  doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2024.07.003
    Abstract ( 296 )   HTML ( 37 )   PDF (2214KB) ( 462 )   Save

    Exploring the pathway to achieve poverty reduction through education is crucial in the post-poverty era. This study aims to investigate the impact and mechanisms of parental education on the relative poverty of their offspring from the perspective of group differences. The goal is to provide insights and theoretical guidance for poverty reduction through education in the new era. Based on data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), an analysis of variables such as parental education, family size, and relative poverty in 1,143 paired households reveals the following results. First, both the educational level of fathers and mothers affect the relative poverty of their offspring and exhibit longitudinal stability. The higher the parental education level, the less likely their descendants are to fall into relative poverty. Second, looking at the longitudinal development trends, the educational level of fathers and mothers directly impacts the initial level of relative poverty. It then indirectly influences relative poverty rates through the initial level of family size. Third, the educational level of mothers directly affects the initial level of relative poverty and indirectly influences relative poverty rates through the initial level of family size. Last, higher levels of parental education enable better control over family size, reducing the likelihood of their children’s families falling into relative poverty. In summary, education has a significant intergenerational effect on poverty reduction. Efforts should be made to strengthen the long-term role of education in poverty governance in the post-poverty era.

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    Building a Discipline System for Charity Education in China
    Ting Zhao, Yuting Hu, Dongsheng Xu
    2024, 42 (7):  42-52.  doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2024.07.004
    Abstract ( 109 )   HTML ( 11 )   PDF (843KB) ( 179 )   Save

    With the changing primary contradictions in China, the importance of the third distribution is increasingly highlighted, posing urgent requirements for the high-quality development of charity. However, from the current state of the charity industry, existing talent quantity, value concepts, capabilities, professional certification, and institutional guarantees are all unable to meet the industry’s developmental needs. Therefore, the sustainable development of charity requires support from charity education. Universities should seize the opportunity of China’s new liberal arts construction and establish a disciplinary system for charity education. Specific approaches include defining the fundamental scope of the discipline, establishing a cross-disciplinary professional curriculum, building a localized knowledge system, assembling a more diverse teaching faculty, creating practical training bases, and advocating for relevant professional certifications and policy support. Through these measures, the development of charity education in China can be further improved and the charity sector can move towards higher quality development.

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    New Campuses and Debt Burden of Tertiary Technical and Vocational Colleges: An Empirical Analysis Based on Double High Institutions
    Sihui Du, Wenjie Zhang, Wei Ha
    2024, 42 (7):  53-65.  doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2024.07.005
    Abstract ( 177 )   HTML ( 14 )   PDF (1155KB) ( 299 )   Save

    Based on the education expenditure data from 2009 to 2016, this study used a two-way fixed effects model and the bootstrapping mediation test to quantify the actual impact of new campuses on the debt scale and structure of higher vocational colleges, and whether they generally rolled over debts due to new campuses. The study found: firstly, compared with their counterparts, the debt burden of Double High vocational institutions with new campus increased significantly, mainly driven by expenditure from infrastructure construction and equipment acquisition. Secondly, as time went by, the debt burden of Double High vocational institutions with new campus shrank significantly with the exception of debt payment for equipment acquisition. Thirdly, there was no obvious tendency for colleges with new campuses to roll over their debts.

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    Research on the Effects of Receiving Higher Education on Health
    Lingyu Liu, Yifan Huang, Kai Jiang
    2024, 42 (7):  66-76.  doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2024.07.006
    Abstract ( 156 )   HTML ( 13 )   PDF (684KB) ( 246 )   Save

    For a long time, while academic inquiries on the returns of higher education have focused on the monetary return, insufficient attention has been paid to the non-monetary returns of health. Based on the survey data of China Family Panel Studies 2018, this article analyzes the effects of higher education on health, and explores the heterogeneity of health returns between sub-baccalaureate education and undergraduate education and above. It finds that receiving higher education has positive and critical impacts on self-rated health, cognition, reducing overweight, and mental health. Individuals can acquire positive health returns whether they receive sub-baccalaureate education or undergraduate education and above. Compared with sub-baccalaureate education, receiving higher education at the undergraduate level and above has greater positive effects on cognition enhancement.

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    Research on Teachers’ Emotion Regulation: The Shift from Individual Orientation to Interpersonal Orientation
    Wenlan Wang, Wenyan Jiang, Hongbiao Yin
    2024, 42 (7):  77-88.  doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2024.07.007
    Abstract ( 376 )   HTML ( 28 )   PDF (771KB) ( 955 )   Save

    Interpersonal interactions are the foundation and center of teachers’ work. Therefore, educational activities are full of the flow of emotions, and emotions permeate and pervade teachers’ daily work. Due to its multi-disciplinary nature, the research on teachers’ emotion regulation has evolved three typical approaches, namely, emotion regulation, emotional labor, and emotional management. However, these three approaches demonstrate a notable individualistic inclination, and lack the adequate attention to the interpersonal characteristics and dynamic processes of emotion regulation. In the past decade, the international literature on emotion regulation has emerged a shift from an individual orientation to an interpersonal orientation. Gradually, the interpersonal-oriented emotion regulation research has experienced the stages of germination and formation. The emerging field of interpersonal emotion regulation has developed some theoretical models and measurement tools that have been applied in various disciplines. It is valuable for the researchers to further strengthen the interpersonal-oriented teacher emotion regulation research because of the interpersonal characteristics of teachers’ work and the recent perspective shift in emotion regulation research. In future, when applying and adjusting the cutting-edge theories to educational research, researchers who are interested in teachers’ emotion regulation need to pay enough attention to the issues of cultural differences and contextual adaptations.

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    How Collaborative School Culture Affects Teachers’ Teaching Strategies: An Analysis of the Intermediary Effect of Teaching Efficacy and Organizational Commitment
    Rui Pu, Xiaonan Cui, Jia Qian
    2024, 42 (7):  89-99.  doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2024.07.008
    Abstract ( 230 )   HTML ( 22 )   PDF (778KB) ( 545 )   Save

    The teachers’ teaching strategy is an effective guarantee for improving the quality of teaching. School culture provides a cultural environment for teacher professional development, and it is an important factor in improving teachers’ teaching strategies. This study, based on a survey of 4,594 primary school teachers from 14 districts in W City, uses descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, the structural equation model, and other research methods to explore the mechanism for the collaborative school culture to affect teachers’ teaching strategies, and the intermediary effect of their teaching efficacy and organizational commitment in the mechanism. The results are as follows. The collaborative school culture is significantly positively correlated with teachers’ teaching strategies; teachers’ teaching efficacy and organizational commitment partially mediate between collaborative culture and teachers’ instructional strategies, and the effect of teaching efficacy-organizational commitment has a chain mediating effect between collaborative culture and teachers’ instructional strategies. In order to continuously improve teaching strategies and the quality of teaching, the cultural leadership of principals should be given full play to create a cooperative school culture; a democratic and mutual-help teachers’ team should be established to stimulate teachers’ sense of teaching efficacy; and a management environment of coexistence, governance, sharing and co-prosperity should be constructed to cultivate a sense of organizational commitment among teachers.

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    An Investigation of the Educational Metaphors in Early Confucian Philosophy
    Lin Li
    2024, 42 (7):  100-113.  doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2024.07.009
    Abstract ( 167 )   HTML ( 15 )   PDF (877KB) ( 260 )   Save

    As a significant issue in human’s language, cognition, thinking and even “existence”, metaphor deserves serious academic attention. With the unique ideographic system of Chinese characters, early Confucianism took benevolence and righteousness as the foundation, “the fulfillment of a human” as the goal, and thus developed various metaphors based on stances of internal initiation and external molding respectively. In doing so, the possibility and necessity of educating people to “act toward goodness” are presented. These four typical images, i.e., jade, water, trees and seedlings, are commonly used in Confucian educational metaphors, which all have distinct natural attributes and agricultural characteristics for discussing the objects and ideal expectations of education. At the process level, with metaphors such as dyeing, incense, taste, archery, carpenter’s ink maker, ruler, shadow, echo, etc., the gradual, subtle, interactive and normative characteristics of education are revealed. At the same time, this also symbolizes the characteristics of Confucian education that attaches importance to embodied experience and reflective sincerity. In addition, through education and learning, the attainment of the wonderful realm, the completion of the ideal personality, and the achievement of a good order, are all holistically associated, revealing the possibility of “internal transcendence” contained in the secular activity of education. Metaphorical languages have their shortcomings, but they are omnipresent. Scholars of education should abandon treating metaphors with a mysterious or loathed attitude and try to transcend the binary opposition between objectivism and subjectivism, and then examine the referential connotation, origination mechanism and application effect of educational metaphors from the perspective of empiricism, while paying due attention to the limits from within.

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    The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Interdisciplinary Research
    Dan Zhang, Susan Robertson
    2024, 42 (7):  114-126.  doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2024.07.010
    Abstract ( 181 )   HTML ( 14 )   PDF (733KB) ( 321 )   Save

    In the new era, China is vigorously advocating for interdisciplinary research, expediting the goal of establishing world-class universities with a specific focus on dismantling traditional disciplinary barriers. The emphasis is on exploring the cultivation of exceptional, innovative talents through cross-departmental, interdisciplinary, and cross-professional approaches, expediting the integration of disciplines and proposing solutions to interdisciplinary scientific challenges, which holds significant importance. However, genuine multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary methods cannot be engendered through institutional coercion, and achieving authentic interdisciplinary studies proves challenging in current practices. Consequently, questions arise: Is interdisciplinary research imperative? How can the development of interdisciplinary studies be advanced? What opportunities and challenges exist? And what institutional pitfalls hinder interdisciplinary development? Addressing these queries, Professor Zhang Dan from East China Normal University's Institute of International and Comparative Education and Professor Susan Robertson from the Department of Education at the University of Cambridge engage in a dialogue to collectively explore the opportunities and pitfalls in the development of interdisciplinary research.

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