In China, formal school groupings known as 'education collectives' have become one of the most common forms of school-to-school collaboration, promoted by policymakers to narrow the achievement gap between schools and optimise resource allocation. Previous research has focused on the purposes and achievements of education collectives rather than…

Chinese is a highly complex language with internal variation unprecedented in most other languages. Yet, that does not mean Chinese is unique in the sense that it cannot be compared to other languages and new concepts need to be introduced for the description of it. This paper is dedicated to the question of how to apply the notion of…

Qualifications frameworks are tools for describing qualifications of an education or training system by classifying them into levels. Each level provides a clear description of what the holder of a qualification knows, understands and is able to do. They are important tools for making qualifications transparent and comprehensible, within and…

The axiological research in contemporary Chinese Marxism has always oriented itself towards the practice of reform and opening up, profoundly expressing the practical logic of reform and opening up by way of the theoretical logic of axiology. First, contemporary Chinese axiology focuses on the concept of value and reveals its essence, it explores…

This paper discussed the relationship between language, ecology, and culture, and claimed that the study of linguistic communication as pragmatics should not be confined to the traditional context, but should focus on a broader ecological environment. It analyzed the context of practical communication from the perspective of language ecology…

Providing diagnostic feedback about growth is crucial to formative decisions such as targeted remedial instructions or interventions. This article proposed a longitudinal higher-order diagnostic classification modeling approach for measuring growth. The new modeling approach is able to provide quantitative values of overall and individual growth…

Based on Jenny Thomas's dichotomous classification of pragmatic failure, this study proposes a new perspective and classifies pragmatic failure in interpretation into three categories: pragma-linguistic failure, socio-pragmatic failure and malaprop-pragmatic failure. Specific examples are given to illustrate the causes and effects of each category…

Current research on the medical English curriculum system is in an unsystematic state. According to the modular teaching theory and ESP classification, especially Hutchinson & Waters's (1986) and Jordan's (1997) categories, three modules of medical English curriculum system are put forward for non-English speaking countries to cultivate their…

In this paper, I narrate highlights of my long process of learning and teaching English as a foreign language in mainland China and Australia, presenting a picture of the practices of learning and teaching English in mainland China from the bottom up. Over the past 50 years, English learners in mainland China, as Gao Yihong has written, have…

Since the release and implementation of the Outline of the National Plan for Medium and Long-Term Education Reform and Development (2010-20), Sino-foreign cooperative education has achieved great progress, gradually entering a new phase of high-level model development. At the same time, the profound conflicts and issues accumulated over the years…

Higher education in China is currently undergoing a process of re-orientation. This paper focuses specifically on the development of transnational higher education (TNHE) in China over the last decade, as well as its implications for university governance. Major features of TNHE programmes in China will be explored, and a corresponding typology…

This article presents a case for adopting a constructivist approach in the teaching of culture to federal, business and civilian personnel. In support of this argument, the author: (1) outlines the history of culture teaching as it progresses from behaviorist through cognitive to constructivist orientations; (2) argues that a constructivist…

The huge technological improvement in data processing and the globalization have increased the demand for and the supply of indices that quantify the consequences of a policy. However, there are certain cases in which quantification may be misleading in the sense that it gives the impression of an accurate measurement while in reality it is not.…

Assigning difficulty level indicators to the knowledge units helps the learners plan their learning activities more efficiently. This paper focuses on how to use the topology of a knowledge map to compute and rank the difficulty levels of knowledge units. Firstly, the authors present the hierarchical structure and properties of the knowledge map.…

Since 2002, the University Evaluation Task Force of China University Alumni Association Network (CUAA), "University Weekly" and "21st Century Talent Report" have made joint efforts in the evaluation of higher education institutions in China. Compared with the ranking in 2007, China's University Ranking in the 2008 report is…