1st Edition
High School for All in East Asia Comparing Experiences
Although late to industrialize, East Asia has witnessed rapid development whilst maintaining some of the highest educational enrollment rates and indicators of academic achievement globally. From major players, such as China, to small city-states, such as Singapore, economic success and the growth of education have seemingly unfolded simultaneously. This book seeks to better understand the relationship between these powerful economies and their commitment to educational expansion.
Exploring the universalization of upper secondary schooling, it assesses the social foundations of the region’s economic development. Chapters covering each of the countries of East Asia trace how upper secondary school functions as the support for the mass manufacturing labor force, which has been instrumental in East Asian economic expansion. These analyses then compare the experiences of the different nations along two major axes: the relationship between public and private provision and the balance between general and vocational tracks. Finally, the analyses go on to examine recent trends, including the slowing of social development and declining fertility, and ultimately asks, can East Asia maintain its world leading development and educational standards in coming decades?
Combining a wealth of quantitative data and policy analyses, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Asian and international education.
Part I Introduction, Theoretical Framework, and Preliminary Comparisons
1. High School for All in East Asia, Shinichi Aizawa
2. Towards an original contribution based on 'Asian Ediucation'?: A Review of Existing Theories of Educational Expansion, Jeremy Rappleye
3. Upper Secondary Education in Asia: A Quantitative Comparison with Western Countries, Hirofumi Taki
Part II Mass High School Societies: Processes of Expansion and Consequences
4. Postwar Japan: Provision for the Expansion of High School Education in Postwar Japan, Mei Kagawa
5. Private and Vocational High Schools within the Expansion of Secondary Education: A Case Study of Korea, Mitsuharu Tanaka
6. Structural Analysis of the Expansion of Upper Secondary Education in Taiwan: Private Schooling, Public Demand, and the Twelve-Year Basis Education Policy, Yu-Fei (Sharon) Liu
Part III Mass Education City-States: Economic Centers and Secondary Expansion
7. Expansion Strategies of Singapore's Secondary Education Amidst Processes of Economic Transformation and Nation Building, Sim Choon Kiat
8. Foreseeing the New Educational Dream Just before the Post-industrial Reality - Equality, Mobility and the Expansion of Upper Secondary Schools in the 1980s, Yuk-Man Cheung, Yuet-Man Li and Ching-Wai Ho
Part IV Mass Education in Post-Communist Societies
9. Expansion of Upper Secondary Education, 1980-2010, Jin Jiang
10. Challenges in Vietnamese Secondary Education During the Transitional Economy Era, Miho Ito
Part V Comparative Analyses and Conclusions
11. Maintaining High School Education in the Low-Fertility Societies of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, Mei Kagawa, Shinichi Aizawa and Mitsuharu Tanaka
12. Conclusion, Shinichi Aizawa and Jeremy Rappleye
Biography
Shinichi Aizawa is Associate Professor in the School of Contemporary Sociology at Chukyo University, Toyota, Japan. His research focuses on secondary education, social equality, development, and poverty from a comparative and historical sociological view. He was also Visiting Professor in Free University Berlin from 2016 to 2017.
Mei Kagawa is Lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology, Daito Bunka University, Japan. Her research focuses on school to work transition, life course, and secondary education.
Jeremy Rappleye is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Kyoto University, Japan. He was formerly a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Special Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo (2009–2011).
