History Commons^™

Elements And Perspectives Of Educational Accountability In China And Denmark, Yihuan Zou, Palle Rasmussen

Summer Workshop on the Comparative History of School Accountability

Different types of accountability systems may be found in education. For instance Anderson (2005) distinguishes between the following three main types, namely (1) detailed institutional regulation of educational activities and compliance to this; (2) acknowledgement of professional norms and adherence to these and (3) specification of expected results and evaluation of performance. For all three types a range of instruments to evaluate and to improve may be used. Accountability through performance has become more widespread in many contexts during recent years, but that does not mean that institutional regulation or even professional norms have disappeared. The three types coexist in …

A Response To Professor Wu Zongjie’S ‘Interpretation, Autonomy, And Transformation: Chinese Pedagogic Discourse In A Cross-Cultural Perspective', Thomas D. Curran

History Faculty Publications

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 reform suggest that patterns of Chinese thought and culture have proven resistant to change. Not only have deeply rooted tendencies to perceive the world in ways that may be distinguished from Western analogues persisted but, not unlike contemporary school reformers, educators in the early twentieth century typically …

A Study Of Modern Mass Education Bureaus (Book Review), Thomas D. Curran

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Zhou, Huimei. 近代民众教育馆 = A Study of Modern Mass Education Bureaus. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press, 2012. ISBN 9787303137077 (pbk.)

Prof. Zhou’s book is a general history of the Mass Education Movement that the Guomindang government conducted in the 1920s and 1930s. Topics covered include the movement’s ideological objectives, its organizational characteristics, it activities, and its reception by and impact on local communities. The work is carefully balanced between exposition and analysis, and it is supported generously by evidence drawn from a wide range of primary sources. Those sources include government publications, local gazetteers, …