1st Edition
Equity Issues in Chinese Higher Education Policy A Case Study of the Enrolment Expansion Policy
Investigating the highly influential enrolment expansion policy in Chinese higher education, this book outlines how educational equity issues were understood and addressed in the formulation and implementation of the policy, and its impacts on the socio-economic fabric of China in the past decades.
Drawing on Chinese policy documents and interviews with government and university representatives, Zhang examines the education system under the Mao era and the post-Mao era and outlines the different approaches to equity that have characterized education in China in the 20th and 21st centuries. Stephen Ball’s "policy cycle" is used as a framework to analyse the various contexts (text, discourse, and social practice) in which policy is formed. Zhang argues that education policy was not simply driven by concerns of equity but also by economic interests and political discourse. Zhang further goes on to analyse how education policy was implemented by provincial governments and highlights the tension between central policy and on-the-ground implementation.
Bringing analysis of Chinese policy and research to a wider audience, this text will interest education policymakers and academics in the field of educational equity and higher education research.
1. Framing equity issues in Chinese higher education 2. Research trajectory of Chinese education policy and educational equity 3. Policy and policy analysis 4. Context of influence (I) 5. Context of influence (II) 6. Context of policy text production 7. Context of practice 8. Main arguments and contributions of knowledge
Biography
Hongzhi Zhang is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia. His main research interests are educational equity, education policy, higher education, Asia study, and curriculum and pedagogy. Hongzhi is a co-editor of Asia as Method in Education Studies: A Defiant Research Imagination (Routledge, 2015). He has established "Asia as method" as a researchable concept and contributed influential theoretical and empirical developments in research about "Asia as method" in educational studies, particularly how it can be developed in multicultural, post-colonial Asian countries and for it to be culturally expansive in Western education systems as an ideal and as a practice across cultures.
