Shi Wei-ping (April, 1998)

An overview of the book (340 English words):

Facing societal internationalization, educational system of each country has been severely influenced by other counterparts? It is necessary to gain a deep understanding of educational development and reform changes in international and comparative perspectives. The author aims to pinpoint new dynamics of international educational development, and the scope and agendas of comparative education research internationally and in Mainland China for the twentieth first century. He hopes that such thematic explorations facilitate more exchange of educational ideas between Mainland China and Taiwan.

The whole scholarly book is divided into three sections. Section I introduces some international educational reports (by UNESCO, the International Commission on Education for the twentieth first century) about ‘lifelong learning? and ‘whole-man education’ with tension forces and implementation strategies. Global trends in educational reforms are to promote moral and multi-cultural education, to diversify and integrate school curricula, to articulate new meanings of lifelong education and to bring teachers at the core of basic education. Students’ four-fold socialization power includes learning to live together, learning how to know, learning to do and learning to be.

Section II investigates some key concepts of educational reforms, structure of educational inspection systems and school management in United Kingdom. Topics widely cover marketization of education, research crisis in quality education, Denis Lawton’s cultural analysis of curriculum studies and educational planning, and a comparative study of school governance systems in USA and UK.

Section III brings out some basic theories of vocation education and its related developmental problems in Mainland China, based on some international and comparative perspectives. With a background of recent teacher education reforms for the twentieth first century in UK, the author sketches Philip Foster’s theory of social change and vocation education and addresses implementation problems of Competency Based Education and Training (CBET) in UK. Later he articulates relationships between occupational abilities and standards in vocational education, evaluates C. E. Beeby’s analysis of education in developing countries and brings out urgent educational needs for rural population and feasible strategies. All these bring new insights for vocational education development in Mainland China.

Background about the two authors:

Prof. Shi Wei-ping received his bachelor English studies in the Dept. of Foreign Language at Shanghai Normal University and master and doctoral studies at International and Comparative Education Research Centre at East China Normal University. He was also a research fellow doing some postdoctoral studies at the London Institute of Education, England.

He is currently acting as a Deputy Director and a tutor on some master programs specified in theories and methods of comparative education at International and Comparative Education Research Centre at Shanghai Normal University. After fourteen years of doing comparative educational research after graduation, his prolific research publications have exceeded 1.2 million Chinese words.

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