After witnessing creativity in China's test-centric culture, the author calls for developing learners' creativity as a global proficiency emanating from a belief in one's capacity to create.

This paper reports on the first stage of an international comparative study for the project "'Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures--EduArc,'" funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This study reviews the situation of digital educational resources (or…

By using the concept of "alignment," this case study explores how a Sino-U.S. university partnership creates university transformation through the multitude of interconnections both within and between the two universities. The study investigates how the contextualized alignments of both universities co-shape and are impacted by the…

This paper sets out the main findings of the International Instructional Systems Study (IISS), conducted by the UCL Institute of Education and funded by the Center on International Education Benchmarking (CIEB). The study examined the instructional systems and intended curricula of six "high performing" countries and two US states. The…

China aims to become an innovation-led nation by 2020, but its leadership is generally sceptical--and oftentimes hostile--to the market forces, open exchange of ideas, and creative destruction that have unlocked innovation in other countries. Instead, Beijing hopes to promote innovation in China through a massive expansion in higher education,…

China has adopted an unbalanced policy for economic development to improve its domestic economy and international competitiveness for more than three decades. During this process, rural education has undergone a series of reforms. With reference to compulsory education, this article argues that rural education in China is a pragmatic instrument…

The Chinese Government has conducted a series of top-down reforms of teacher education over the past several decades. The reforms have established a relatively stable teacher education system, regulated teacher education programmes and curricula, and provided opportunities for in-service teachers to be trained and to upgrade their educational…

Teaching Chinese students in an American university can be both challenging and rewarding. Cultural and language differences can lead to some superficial confusion and interpretational problems. However, the vast differences in the ways Chinese students view the role of the public sector, as compared to the US, can mean that the instructors and…

The Chinese National Quality Course Plan is a large-scale project by the Ministry of Education, which has led to the production of more than 12,000 courses from some 700 universities since 2003. This paper describes in detail the purpose of the project and how it is organized at all levels, including how individual courses get selected at…

This article provides a cross-national perspective on successful school principalship in three countries derived from an analysis of case studies in the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP). The ISSPP aims to investigate the characteristics, processes and effects of successful school leadership across eight countries (i.e.…

Based on a survey of rural school districts in Western China, this essay explores the effects of fiscal centralisation on the relationship between local governance and school district management, most particularly on how managerial power is distributed in the rural education sector. The essay also examines some of the possible effects that changes…

Evaluated the early implementation of a central standardized school management system, the School Administration and Management System (SAMS), in Hong Kong (China). Data from 294 schools responding to a survey suggest that the requirements for the design and large-scale implementation of a successful information management system have not been…

Examines the trend toward institutional amalgamation and the establishment of cross-institutional consortia in higher education in China and explores policy issues connected with this trend. Uses national data and a case study of a consortium in Beijing. (SLD)

The current preoccupation in the United States with test-based accountability is founded on a set of faulty assumptions--about education practices elsewhere in the world, about international test score comparisons, and about the extent to which test scores are valid indicators of the quality of education or the state of the economy. For example,…

This paper examines the characteristics and status of China's primary school teachers and their ability, as members of the intelligentsia, to exert political influence in the formation of educational policy. It is concluded that, in periods when educational policy is of high concern, these teachers have little influence. (SJL)