An overview of the book:

As an introduction, the chief editorial committee member of the National Comparative Educational Symposium, Prof. Gu Mingyuan summarizes two developmental stages of comparative education and evaluates their characteristics. The first stage refers to an objective introduction and description of foreign countries initiated after the Cultural Revolution and the second stage points to in-depth comparative studies and educational borrowing from foreign countries since the mid-1980s. Some crises of comparative education includes alienation from pragmatic aspects of China education, lack of theoretical framework, accounting for regularities of comparable patterns leading to mere descriptive studies, and lack of professional development of comparative education as an academic discipline. He makes several suggestions. Firstly, to shift the focus of comparative research to practical dimensions of China education. Secondly, to broaden the scope and deepen comparative education by including heritage cultural, socio-economic and ideo-political aspects. Thirdly to seek more updated information; fourthly, to strengthen the academic discipline of comparative education by nourishing postgraduate research students in the field. Fifthly, to increase manpower in comparative research with more stress on its research methodology, cross-fertilization with other theories and integration into Lenin-Marxist ideological doctrines.

This anthology consists of 62 scholarly periodical articles, categorized in nine themes. They are: the construction of comparative education as an academic study, international educational reforms and development, doctrines and narratives of international education, curriculum and pedagogy, free compulsory basic education, vocational-technical education, higher education, adult and lifelong education and an exchange of international educational experiences.    

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