Given how China has been the top source of international students worldwide, there has been growing media and research interest in Chinese international students. However, much of the narratives tend to focus on their struggles. In this commentary, I draw upon insights from my personal experience as an international student and, consequently,…

Under the current neoliberal paradigm, the discussion of "good teachers" often centers on a very limited aspect of "best practices" used to effectively transmit pre-packaged knowledge to students. Soka, or value-creating education as expounded by Japanese educators Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Josei Toda, and Daisaku Ikeda, is an…

Former chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools, Michelle Rhee, recently spoke with journalist Lenora Chu about Chu's new book, "Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve" (HarperCollins). Chu and her family currently live in Shanghai, where her son, Rainey, attends local schools--part…

How might mathematics educators recognize discourses as resonating harmonies in their practices as researchers? In this paper we share individual experiential narratives guided by Ojibway author Richard Wagamese's Medicine Wheel teachings in the four directions of East (humility), South (trust), West (introspection), and North (wisdom). As we…

Chinese culture is widely regarded as being dominated by Confucian thought, which is characterized as focusing on morality, relationalism and collectivism. Also, Chinese culture has been deemed to be very hierarchical and lacking in a sense of autonomy. However, there has been little attention paid to other diverse elements in Chinese culture and…

This Forum article addresses some of the issues raised in the article by Ying-Syuan Huang and Anila Asghar's paper entitled: "Science education reform in Confucian learning cultures: teachers' perspectives on policy and practice in Taiwan." An attempt is made to highlight the need for a more nuanced approach in considering the Confucian…

This paper offers a response to Dr. Noriyuki Inoue's article published in this issue of the "International Journal for Transformative" research, entitled "The Role of Subjectivity in Teacher Expertise Development: Mindfully Embracing the 'Black Sheep' of Educational Research." Inoue freely uses the terms…

Portnoy (2013) shared a series of personal observations about central issues in Chinese college mental health based on his Fulbright year in China. While we really appreciated his personal observations and his discussion, which shed light on cultural differences and structural forces in China, we present here a different perspective on his…

In this commentary, we build on Xinying Yin and Gayle Buck's discussion by exploring the cultural practices which are integral to formative assessment, when it is viewed as a sociocultural practice. First we discuss the role of assessment and in particular oral and written formative assessments in both western and Samoan cultures, building on the…

In response to an essay by Prof Wu Zongjie that was published in the "Journal of Curriculum Studies" [43(5), (2011), 569-590], I argue that, despite dramatic changes that have taken place in the language of Chinese academic discourse and pedagogy, evidence derived from the fields of psychology and the history of Chinese educational…

This is a response to the commentaries on my essay, "Interpretation, autonomy, and transformation". However, the response is reoriented to further interpretation of Chinese pedagogic discourse in the late-19th century, which is often blamed for hampering China's educational advance. Instead of considering Classical Confucian pedagogy as…

"Grief and bitterness entwined are heaven sent. The sad person sits alone, leaning by a window." Over 70 years ago, these words were carved into the walls of Angel Island: a detainment and interrogation center for Chinese immigrants from 1910 to 1940. At the time, American workers were resentful of the Chinese, who were filling low-wage…

In their "The Prevalence of Mind-Body Dualism in Early China," Slingerland and Chudek use a statistical analysis of the early Chinese corpus to argue for Weak Folk Dualism (WFD). We raise three methodological objections to their analysis. First, the change over time that they find is largely driven by genre. Second, the…

We respond to several important and valid concerns about our study ("The Prevalence of Folk Dualism in Early China," "Cognitive Science" 35: 997-1007) by Klein and Klein, defending our interpretation of our data. We also argue that, despite the undeniable challenges involved in qualitatively coding texts from ancient cultures,…

America is not Singapore and Singapore cannot be America. So why are we often comparing ourselves to high-performing countries based on international exams? Despite the educational crisis many U.S. schools are facing, Americans should be cautious not to mimic another country's model within our diverse classrooms. We are largely grounded on the…