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Full-Text Articles in Education

Chinese Roots, Foreign Branches: Forestry As Self-Strengthening In The Late Qing, Emily Bunker Apr 2019

Chinese Roots, Foreign Branches: Forestry As Self-Strengthening In The Late Qing, Emily Bunker

Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award

Previous examinations of Self-Strengthening in Late Qing China have focused on the movement's military and educational dimensions. Moreover, there exists a general conception of Late Qing China as being a period of decline. This paper, based on articles and official Chinese government memorials appearing in The Chinese Times, an English language newspaper that ran from 1886-1891, examines forestry efforts in the Late Qing as an example of Self-Strengthening. Looking at the movement from this angle, several newfound dimensions of Self-Strengthening emerge, including a link to Chinese cosmology and the ruler-subject relationship, examples of localized benefits, and a reexamination of the …


Good Intentions Gone Awry: Education Policy And Paradox Of Consequences In Rural Ethnic China, Jinting Wu Jan 2016

Good Intentions Gone Awry: Education Policy And Paradox Of Consequences In Rural Ethnic China, Jinting Wu

Journal of Educational Controversy

This paper provides a situated critique of how evidence-based, “best practices”-oriented research can result in unanticipated consequences and perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophesy at the expense of deeper understanding of educational problems. I structure the paper along two analytical steps. First, I explore the sociology of unintended consequences through German Sociologist Max Weber and his contemporary critic Mohamed Cherkaoui. Second, I draw from an ethnographic study in rural ethnic communities of Southwest China to illustrate how best intentions at providing free compulsory education go awry, and how the controversial policy both fails and succeeds in fabricating its intended outcome. The ethnographic …