Crafted from a research project that lasted for three years, this book examines the impacts of China’s universal two-child policy under the lens of education and focuses specifically on early childhood. This book not only provides number projection, but also the prediction and judgment of the supply and demand of service resources in early childhood education. It attempts to reveal the attitudes and views of families and stakeholders on the universal two-child policy and present the public's policy requirements for the quality of early childhood education. In addition, it analyses possible problems and challenges in current kindergarten layouts and resources allocation. Lastly, it aims to provide references and bases for formulating the plan that adapts to changes of Chinese preschoolers, supply guarantee of future early childhood education and the construction of public service system. Offering rich insights into the current and future status of education in China, this text will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers of sociology, early childhood education, contemporary China studies, East Asian educational practices and policy.

By concentrating on the topic of school enrolment policy for rural-to-urban migrant children in China, this book analyses the unequal power relations and structural inequalities that can appear in the context of education. The author complements current knowledge by applying theoretical resources of policy sociology, in particular the thinking of Pierre Bourdieu, into analysis of educational policymaking in the Chinese context. He takes a policy trajectory approach to trace the (unequal) power relations and structural inequalities invested and realised in the school enrolment policy. Rooted in rich qualitative data from five metropolises, he examines both external influences of politics, economy and public policy on educational policy agenda setting and discursive practices within the educational policy cycle, inherent in the post-2013 restrictive school enrolment policy. Structural constraints and agency in the local context are also explored, indicating that the intersectional effects of political, economic, and civic logic can result in differentiated modes of policy enactment. The study will be of interest to scholars, students, policymakers and practitioners in helping address policymaking and social justice in education for migrants and other marginalised groups.

Integrating brain science, cognitive psychology, education and information technology, the books studies how technology has promoted deeper learning on mathematics in Chinese primary schools. After introducing the theoretical basis, connotation and mechanism of deeper learning, the author fully explains its practice, including the composition of deeper learning teaching content, the development of digital resources, classroom teaching technology and teachers' professional development of deeper learning. He especially adopts multiple and interdisciplinary research methods, such as deeper learning "triangle evidence" paradigm, learning brain observation, education big data analysis, artificial intelligence education analysis, education action, and qualitative and quantitative research. On one hand, the book will give researchers of learning theory and pedagogy an in-depth understanding of what deeper learning is and why it provides a systematic theoretical system; on the other hand, it will also provide school practitioners with operational methods and cases to learn from.

Drawing from the discourse of practice-oriented teacher education, this book investigates the state of pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge in mainland China, providing insights into the reform of initial teacher education programmes for teacher educators. Conducting empirical studies at a university in Beijing, involving 400 pre-service teachers, the author investigates factors influencing pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge. Five innovative methodologies, namely concept mapping, visual metaphors, video analysis, epistemic network analysis, and formative interventions are employed to make pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge visible, helping to increase our theoretical understanding of practical knowledge and proposing practical guidelines for the reorganisation of initial teacher education. While the study is grounded in mainland China, the methodological thinking and theoretical discussions can inspire international scholars and teacher educators, and therefore contribute to the global reform of teacher education.

Within a Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning context, this book investigates how teachers and learners interacted and articulated their understanding of English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP)-related knowledge in a synchronous EFL classroom. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way people receive education, causing an almost overnight switch from on-campus instruction to distance learning. Under the use of three different learning analytics approaches, this book has moved beyond the usual descriptive understanding of the online learning process to an in-depth exploratory and inferential analysis of the entities, structures, relations, and processes of learning. The findings enrich current understandings of the complexity of ERPP teaching and learning in synchronous learning contexts. These findings also drive us to rethink and reshape the way ERPP instruction is delivered post-pandemic. An essential read for students and scholars of education and academic English. This book will also be a vital source for researchers in the field of learning analytics, data analysis, and data interpretation in language teaching and learning.

The widening of income and wealth inequality has become one of the most important obstacles on the road to China’s common prosperity. In the context of inequality reduction and anti-poverty strategy in China, this book investigates the complex relationship between education and intergenerational mobility in terms of occupation and income. Based on large-scale social survey data, cutting-edge econometric models and statistical methods, the book examines the role of education in breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty and promoting intergenerational mobility. It analyzes the characteristics of birth cohorts in intergenerational mobility, the long-term trends of educational, occupational, and income mobility among rural and urban residents across generations, and also the different regional patterns of intergenerational mobility against the background of social changes in China. Based on empirical findings, the author advances suggestions on an education policy conducive to poverty alleviation. The book will appeal to scholars and students studying the sociology of education, the economics of education and Chinese education, as well as policy makers interested in the topics of education policy systems and poverty alleviation, as well as education equity and social mobility.

This book dissects the reproductive intentions and behaviours of the one-child generation cohort in China, situated in the wider context of changing family life patterns and gendered lenses. Demonstrating that the one-child family is still favoured by the one-child generation, this book uncovers the socioeconomic dimensions and mechanisms of family relations underlying young people’s decision-making processes. It also incorporates individual considerations and experiences of childbearing from over 50 interviews to contribute to the development of China's social policy. Whereas men’s childbearing beliefs were relatively unexplored in the literature, the author included male interviewees to better reflect gender differences in relation to childbearing, employment and family. Analysing the relationship between life routine and the desire (or lack thereof) to increase China's population, the author argues that the current childbearing policy fails to accommodate the needs and demands of young people, thus limiting the uptake of China’s new policy.

In the mid-1980s, after the Indochina Wars, a shortage of men meant that many single women in Vietnam found themselves without suitable marital prospects. A number of these women chose to pursue single motherhood by “asking for a child” (xin con)—asking men to get them pregnant out of wedlock. Xin con appeared to be a radical departure from traditional Vietnamese kinship values and practices, which were based in Confucian patriarchal and patrilineal reproductive interests. However, this innovative solution was rooted in both pre- and postwar values, practices, and notions of gender, kinship, love, and sexuality. This ethnography explores the practice of xin con among single mothers in the postwar era and today, and considers the ways their reproductive agency was embraced rather than rejected by the Vietnamese state as it entered the global market economy. Rather than condemning or trying to restrict older single women’s reproductive agency, government officials enacted policies that would accommodate both the women and the state—a strategy that represents an intriguing alignment of Confucian heritage, Communist ideology, and governing tactics and demonstrates the social power of women.

In this fully revised and updated second edition of An Anthropology of Biomedicine, authors Lock and Nguyen introduce biomedicine from an anthropological perspective, exploring the entanglement of material bodies with history, environment, culture, and politics. Drawing on historical and ethnographic work, the book critiques the assumption made by the biological sciences of a universal human body that can be uniformly standardized. It focuses on the ways in which the application of biomedical technologies brings about radical changes to societies at large based on socioeconomic inequalities and ethical disputes, and develops and integrates the theory that the human body in health and illness is not an ontological given but a moveable, malleable entity. This second edition includes new chapters on: microbiology and the microbiome; global health; and, the self as a socio-technical system. In addition, all chapters have been comprehensively revised to take account of developments from within this fast-paced field, in the intervening years between publications. References and figures have also been updated throughout. This highly-regarded and award-winning textbook (Winner of the 2010 Prose Award for Archaeology and Anthropology) retains the character and features of the previous edition. Its coverage remains broad, including discussion of: biomedical technologies in practice; anthropologies of medicine; biology and human experiments; infertility and assisted reproduction; genomics, epigenomics, and uncertain futures; and molecularizing racial difference, ensuring it remains the essential text for students of anthropology, medical anthropology as well as public and global health.

An Anthropology of Biomedicine is an exciting new introduction to biomedicine and its global implications. Focusing on the ways in which the application of biomedical technologies bring about radical changes to societies at large, cultural anthropologist Margaret Lock and her co-author physician and medical anthropologist Vinh-Kim Nguyen develop and integrate the thesis that the human body in health and illness is the elusive product of nature and culture that refuses to be pinned down. Introduces biomedicine from an anthropological perspective, exploring the entanglement of material bodies with history, environment, culture, and politics Develops and integrates an original theory: that the human body in health and illness is not an ontological given but a moveable, malleable entity Makes extensive use of historical and contemporary ethnographic materials around the globe to illustrate the importance of this methodological approach Integrates key new research data with more classical material, covering the management of epidemics, famines, fertility and birth, by military doctors from colonial times on Uses numerous case studies to illustrate concepts such as the global commodification of human bodies and body parts, modern forms of population, and the extension of biomedical technologies into domestic and intimate domains Winner of the 2010 Prose Award for Archaeology and Anthropology