There has been a transnational policy convergence in introducing professional standards for school leaders, and it constitutes a dominant discourse on school leadership. Focusing on the adoption of external references in policy transfer, this article presents a case in which the global leadership discourse was transferred to China, and the Chinese…

This article analyzes the China Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) education policy using a critical policy discourse approach. At the textual level, this paper focuses on policy framing by identifying how diagnostic (problem definition), prognostic (solutions), and motivational (rationales) framings are described in two foundational BRI education…

This study aims to conceptualize "Pyramid-hierarchy" model of the educational policy discourse system in China. Education discourse system is the external education expression form of ideological and theoretical system and knowledge system. Constructing the discourse system of educational policy with Chinese characteristics is a system…

This critical discourse analysis explores cosmopolitan nationalism as neoliberal reform within East Asian higher education (HE). Placing cosmopolitan nationalism within the Foucauldian genealogical oeuvre, we draw comparisons between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean HE policy to expand the theoretical basis of this emerging framework. Against this…

This paper examines the "Double Reduction" policy issued by the Chinese government in 2021 by using a Critical Discourse Problematization Framework (CDPF) that combines Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and what's the problem represented to be (WPR) approach. The study points out that the changing discourse of equality and equity in…

This study investigates how talent cultivation contributes to creating world-class universities in China from the perspectives of characteristics, problems, and choices. A policy discourse perspective is applied to examine the overall landscape of policy formulation and implementation, relatively. It explores the policy discourse analysis of…

This paper examines the "imaginaries" taking place in New Engineering Education (NEE). The NEE is the most recent reform of the engineering education sector in China and is used to interrogate the more encompassing backdrop of the country's national imaginary, the "Chinese Dream." Further, this paper analyzes three important…

Many governments have launched the top-down early childhood curriculum (ECC) reforms to enhance the accountability of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. The present discourse analysis of latest ECC policies across four diverse but representative countries -- Australia, China, New Zealand, and Singapore -- aims to examine the…

Researchers in China have keenly explored how lifelong education and lifelong learning, as imports from "the West," may become localized in China, although a small chorus has also tried to revitalize Confucianism to bear on the field. This paper adds to this domain of discussion with a critical discourse analysis of Chinese lifelong…

This article aims to understand how ethnicity is discursively framed in national policies in China and Vietnam and argues that policy discourses affect how the "problem" of ethnicity and educational inequalities is framed and how these inequalities can be addressed. The analysis shows how both Marxist and market-economy governing…

In the late 1980s, the Chinese government instituted massive educational reforms to promote competition between schools and between students. By the late 1990s, however, educational reforms shifted to regulating and reducing competition in primary and secondary education. Why did a rapid policy swing occur? What was the rationale for the policy…

The popularity of international league tables has intensified the competition in the global higher education market. Countries across the world have been actively participating in the global ranking exercises, aiming to enhance the competitiveness and reputation of their higher education systems globally. Like its Western counterparts, China has…

This paper analyzes China's new approaches of education aid to Africa through a case study of Cameroon. China's cooperation has been characterized by different discourses and different historic relationships with recipient countries than those of traditional donors. Sino-African policies have gone through different stages, each connected to wider…

This article examines Western and Chinese discourses of education, sustainable growth and development. Education is increasingly considered as a means to fuel economic growth, especially since the 1980s, when conservative economic values became predominant in Western development thought. Despite a discourse on sustainability favouring ecologically…