The Logic of China's New School Reforms: Selected Essays on Education by Qiquan Zhong

The official launch of the New Curriculum Reform (xin kegai) in Chinese elementary and secondary schools in June 2001 marked a crucial milestone in the history of educational reform in the country. This unprecedented nationwide education reform aims to promote quality-oriented education (suzhi jiaoyu) through reforming multiple aspects of Chinese education such as its curriculum goals, structure, and content; pedagogical approaches; curriculum assessment; teacher training; and school management systems. Qiquan Zhong's The Logic of China's New School Reforms: Selected Essays on Education addresses the wide scope of the new curriculum reform in China. The book discusses a series of educational theories undergirding the New Curriculum Reform and the educational practices emerging in the reform. As Zhong highlights in the preface of the book, curriculum reform is at the center of school reform, and it is also key to reconstructing China's outdated education system. The core of curriculum reform is classroom activities while teachers' professional development is the primary concern of classroom reform. Thus, the twelve chapters of the book focus on the issues particularly related to curriculum reform (chapters 1–4 and 6), classroom teaching and culture (chapters 5 and 8), teacher education (chapters 7, 9, and 10), as well as various reflections on relevant theories (chapters 11 and 12).

Many readers of this journal may still want to know: Who is Qiquan Zhong? Qiquan Zhong is a professor in the School of Education at the East China Normal University (ECNU). He serves as the Honorary Director of the Institutes of Curriculum and Instruction and of International and Comparative Education at ECNU. Born in China in 1939, Professor Zhong is the author of more than 20 books and 100 journal articles on educational research and new curriculum and education reform in China. He has been selected and has served as Chair Councilor of the national Experts Working Committee for the New Curriculum Reform in Basic Education. He is also a leading scholar in the field of education in China who advocates for student-centered education in the current curriculum reform. Since the 1980s, Zhong has been a visiting scholar in several Japanese universities and has been invited to various universities in the United States and European countries for academic activities. These experiences not only enrich his international perspectives on curriculum and educational reforms, but also establish him as a pioneer in the field of comparative and international studies of curriculum theory and practice in China. He has actively introduced cutting-edge educational ideas from all over the world to Chinese scholars, graduate students, and policymakers to propel the ongoing curriculum reform movement, which is well reflected throughout the book The Logic of China's New School Reforms. I will discuss the intricacies of this shortly.

Contemporary Chinese education is in a state of crisis, and quality education (suzhi jiaoyu) is proposed as a solution in this critical time (Zhong 2006). Education for economic development has become the dominant discourse that guides educational reforms in contemporary China (Liu 2020). In the era of globalization, the knowledge economy increasingly depends on new information and technologies. To meet the demands of the burgeoning knowledge economy on a global scale, the Chinese government aims to utilize the new curriculum reform to produce innovative talents who can further the international competitiveness of the state. Zhong's interpretation of quality education is in alignment with the Chinese state's education ideology. Developing well-rounded students is highlighted as central to quality education in The Logic of China's New School Reforms. The book clearly points out that to meet social needs, the new reform must transform examination-oriented education into quality-oriented education, shift knowledge-based curriculum to student-centered curriculum, and transform lecture-centered teaching models into dialogue-based teaching. Zhong underscores that teachers play a key role in the new reform movement, elucidating that teachers' professional development and teacher education reform must be put on the agenda. He calls for the reconstruction of teacher education in China and the cultivation of reflective educational practitioners who value children-centered and lifelong learning. These prominent themes are thoroughly discussed with reference to various educational theories and practices from Europe, Japan, and the United States.

As mentioned above, one of the strengths of the book is that the author draws on various educational and curricular theories to support his advocacy for student-centered learning and teaching. For instance, Zhong articulates the notions of knowledge, learning, teaching, and classroom culture (pedagogy). Comparing the research on knowledge acquisition from behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism, he underscores the idea that an international trend toward a more student-centered teaching and learning approach is well supported by constructive learning theories because constructivism emphasizes the role of students in the learning process. Zhong further distinguishes Vygotsky's social constructivism from Piaget's individual/personal constructivism and emphasizes the importance of valuing children's development and their potential areas for intellectual development. Building on this point in the book, a good direction the author could have potentially taken here would be to go further in addressing the sociopolitical construction of knowledge that social constructivism also underscores (Tan 2017). This way the book could take a more critical lens on knowledge construction and how the sociology of knowledge (curriculum) can impact China's new curriculum reform, particularly pedagogical reform.

Zhong advocates for the construction of a student-centered democratic curriculum. He draws on John Dewey's progressive educational thoughts on experience and education, as well as his ideas on democracy and education to highlight why and how a meaningful curriculum should engage students in the construction of their personal knowledge through their interaction with nature and society. The author also calls for the construction of dialogue-based classroom culture by taking up Paulo Freire's critiques of "banking education" and communication theories. Readers could find that educational theories, such as pragmatism, humanism, and constructivism, particularly social constructivism, greatly influence Zhong's perspective on the new curriculum reform.

In addition, Zhong draws upon international educational research on curriculum development and international reform cases to establish the legitimacy of his interpretation of quality education. The book recognizes the limitations of Ralph Tyler's behaviorally oriented, technical model to curriculum development and Elliot Eisner's call for incorporating aesthetic criticism into educational evaluation. International and comparative studies on curriculum development and reform serve as resources that the book draws upon to support Zhong's arguments for Integrated Practice Activity Course as an innovative model of curriculum development and humanistic curriculum evaluation in China's New Curriculum Reform.

Another strength of the book is that it foregrounds the debates, tensions, and challenges surrounding the implementation of the New Curriculum Reform. For instance, in contrast to Cesan Wang, another influential Chinese scholar who advocates for a knowledge-based curriculum in the new reform, Zhong contends that students, rather than knowledge, should be placed at the center of the new curriculum reform. He reveals that the theoretical foundation underpinning Wang's argument is Kairov's pedagogy, which was imported from the former Soviet Union in the 1950s and has profoundly shaped and influenced contemporary Chinese education. From a historical perspective, Zhong criticizes the limitations of Kairov's pedagogy such as overlooking the role of children in the learning process, arguing that continuing to learn from Kairov's Pedagogy in the current reform movement would be "a historical retreat for Chinese education" (Fu 2020, p. 3). Zhong emphasizes that China's New Curriculum Reform marked the end of the Kairov-Era pedagogy. The debate between Zhong's student-centered curriculum and Wang's knowledge-based curriculum for quality education not only shows the tension between two competing curriculum traditions and ideologies (Deng 2011), but it also presents a complex picture of how China's particular political, economic, and cultural contexts influence the curriculum reform movement. Readers can find the struggles, challenges, and efforts of Chinese intellectuals in reforming the Chinese state education system (Gu 2014). The New Curriculum Reform marks the era of experimentation and exploration, as Zhong points out.

In 2001, when I was a teacher in a public secondary school in China, I read the book edited by Qiquan Zhong and his colleagues (Zhong, Cui, and Zhang 2001), For the Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation, for the Development of Each Student: Interpretations of the Guidelines for Curriculum Reform of Basic Education (Trial). It is one of the "most influential books" that "has been widely read by researchers, policy-makers, and schoolteachers" (Zhang 2014, p. 55). That book introduces the theoretical foundations of the new curriculum. It also inspired me and many other educational practitioners to actively engage in pedagogical reform (jiaogai), which has been placed at the center of China's New Curriculum Reform, as also pointed out in The Logic of China's New School Reforms. Twenty-one years later when I read Zhong's The Logic of China's New School Reforms: Selected Essays on Education, I couldn't help but be fascinated once more by the depth and complexity of his discussion about the new curriculum reform in China. As a curriculum scholar who is also interested in curriculum theories and using an international and comparative lens to the study of China's New Curriculum Reform, I found Zhong's book to be engaging and thoughtful. The book brought back memories of my experience as a classroom teacher with "effective teaching," "teacher collaboration," "school-based curriculum development," and many other pedagogical reforms proposed by the new reform movement.

The book provides a thorough and deep discussion of China's New Curriculum Reform. Zhong thoughtfully points out many challenges and tensions in the implementation of the new reform. This book represents Zhong and many other intellectuals' endeavor to seek to construct a meaningful and balanced curriculum to promote every student's individual development and to support the development of the modern Chinese nation-state. The book reminds us of the questions: Who actively participates in the decision-making process of China's New Curriculum reforms? Whose interests are represented in the reform? I wish that the author could be more critical about power relations embedded in the reform movement in general and in the transformation of the teaching paradigm in particular. The book bears a respectful attitude toward ancient Chinese educational beliefs and practices, but does not further elaborate on how they should be inherited. These issues could be further explored with a focus on cultural politics in education (Apple 1996, 2012, 2019; Apple et al. 2018). The book also contributes to introducing and promoting the understanding of China's curriculum research and practice to the international scholarly community. This book is a must read for educational scholars, graduate students, policy makers, who are interested in Chinese education reform and cross-cultural curricular research.