Abstract
Shanghai’s educational success takes place against a backdrop of globalisation where global forms interact with situated sociocultural values and practices.
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Notes
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The full name of the national higher education entrance exam is ‘National standardised exam for student admission into ordinary higher institutions in China’ [zhongguo de putong gaodeng xuexiao zhaosheng quanguo tongyi kaoshi]. For a good introduction of the national college entrance exam in China, see Daveya, Lian, and Higgins (2007).
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The numbers are taken from Shen (2007) and the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (2011c) and may have changed slightly since the publication of these two sources. While Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (2011a) reports that there are 754 secondary schools and 764 primary schools with 1.3228 million students in total, Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (2011b, p. 1) reports that there are 755 secondary schools and 766 primary schools with 1.2960 million students in total. The total number of 88,600 full-time teachers is obtained from Shen (2007) who was the director general of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. He reports that there are 51,200 full-time teachers in the secondary schools and 37,400 full-time teachers in the primary schools (2007, p. 14). It is instructive to note that the majority of the secondary schools are ‘regular schools’ or academic schools that prepare their students for a place in the university, while the rest are predominantly specialised and vocational schools (Shen 2007, p. 127).
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Stigler and Hiebert’s concept of cultural script is similar to what Jin and Cortazzi (2006) term as a ‘culture of learning’. Jin and Cortazzi use that term to refer to ‘taken-for-granted frameworks of expectations, attitudes, values and beliefs about how to teach or learn successfully and about how to use talk in interaction, among other aspects of learning’ (p. 9).
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Some authors such as Dohn (2007) and Grek (2009) have questioned the validity of PISA questions in assessing the students’ ability to apply knowledge and solve problems in a variety of situations. It is beyond the scope of this book to discuss the extent to which PISA accurately measures the ability of the students across the countries. Suffice it to say that PISA is a written assessment and therefore tests the students’ ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges in a test situation. Ross, Cen and Zhou (2009) rightly point out that international assessments such as PISA ‘are outcome and/or reputation-driven and have overlooked the student experience and educational processes’ (p. 34). That is why this book, while acknowledging Shanghai’s remarkable achievements in PISA, goes beyond PISA to focus on the broader concept of educational success.
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Such an attitude of not seeing the importance of sending their children to school is evident among some parents in Cambodia and China. During my fieldwork in Cambodia, I met a Cambodian principal of a primary school who shared with me her frustration in persuading parents from the village to send their children to school. According to her, a number of Cambodian parents prefer their children, especially sons, to contribute to the family income by working in the field. In the case of Muslim parents in China, their reluctance to send their daughters to school stems partly from the traditional mindset that does not value education for girls and partly from their concern that the school does not provide adequate facilities such as separate lavatories for their daughters. For more information, see Tan (2008a) and Tan and Ding (2012).
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Tan, C. (2013). The Beginning: Shanghai, PISA and Globalisation. In: Learning from Shanghai. Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 21. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4021-87-6_1
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