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Korean educational migrant (kirogi) families have received widespread popular attention due to their ironic form of family that sacrifices the togetherness of a family. Recent trends suggest that this practice is spreading to the less affluent classes and that many such families are heading to ‘new’ destinations, including Singapore. This study examines the transnational schooling and life experiences of Korean transnational educational families in Singapore. It addresses the questions, why did these families choose Singapore? Why did transnational schooling, which parents almost unanimously said that they had organised for the betterment of their children's future, lead to some families getting stuck in the destination country?

Fieldwork in Singapore and Korea was conducted between April 2006 and September 2007. In-depth interviews with both mothers and fathers who have at least one child attending public, private or international schools in Singapore, at the primary or secondary level, were conducted with 18 families. The analysis was conducted using a grounded theory approach and NVivo 7/8.

Although the Korean state's emphasis on international competitiveness and parental aspirations for their children's future upward social mobility were common motivators, Koreans in Singapore were also attracted by the relatively low cost, English–Chinese bilingualism and other ‘family-friendly’ features in Singapore. However, kirogi children had highly contrasting schooling experiences and they met with mixed success in gaining what they expected. Furthermore, many children in public schools faced demotion and other difficulties in their new school environments. Some less affluent families found themselves facing dilemmas of cross-border schooling. This study shows that transnational schooling does not necessarily operate equally favourably for participants from diverse class backgrounds. It also demonstrates that the societal contexts of reception in both the countries of origin and of destination, including the buffering institutions and reference groups and peer culture, are important factors shaping the schooling and life experiences of educational migrant children and in reconfiguring their trajectories.

This study aims to interrogate and expand on the flexible citizenship framework by illuminating students' emergent identities and imagined future mobilities in China's expanding international school sector.

In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with international school students and their parents in Shenzhen, covering their motivations for overseas higher education, experience with international schooling, self-perceived identities and imagined futures.

The participants aspired to overseas higher education for both symbolic capital attainment and embodied cultural cultivation to thrive in a globalised world. They expressed confidence that international schooling experiences prepared students for mobility to Western higher education and cultivated globally-oriented identities while not undermining their Chinese roots. They imagined their futures in terms of considerable flexibility, with a rising China viewed as an attractive and feasible option for career development.

This research provides an enriched understanding of a new generation of globally mobile Chinese students. The participants held distinctively different outlooks, aspirations and attitudes than depicted in the flexible citizenship framework, which emphasised a one-dimensional and instrumentalist portrayal of Chinese international students. This study discusses cross-generational changes in the desire for overseas education and a global-national outlook among young people in the context of significant social transformations in urban China.

The originality of this study is in expanding the flexible citizenship framework with reference to the emergent identities and pathways of students in the international schooling sector in China.

Developing a sense of belonging among immigrant youth in multicultural contexts has attracted significant attention from scholars during the last few decades. Studies have already underscored how various educational factors hinder or facilitate students’ sense of belonging to the school or the larger society. Although most students in Hong Kong schools are ethnic Chinese, a significant number of non-Chinese children make students diversity an essential aspect of schooling. The study investigated how schools can develop a sense of belonging among ethnic minority youth in Hong Kong.

As the education system in Hong Kong lacks a multicultural education policy, how can schools help develop a sense of belonging to the school and the larger society among young ethnic minority people? To answer this question, this paper consolidates the two sets of data originally gathered for two research projects. The data was collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with nine secondary school teachers (Chinese and non-Chinese) and 15 students (non-Chinese) and analysed thematically.

The thematic analysis of the qualitative data identified several challenges and opportunities for developing ethnic minority students’ sense of belonging in Hong Kong.

Researchers in comparative education can further explore how multicultural education and inclusive education approach together can help ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all and cater to students' diverse learning needs across the education systems.

Given that the aims of multicultural education and inclusive education resonate with each other, schools can focus on the Whole School Approach to developing a sense of belonging among ethnic minority youth in Hong Kong. However, policymakers and practitioners may need to adopt a multifaceted perspective on inclusive education that strives to ensure equitable quality education for all.

The study contributes to the existing body of scholarship on multicultural education and inclusive education. The study findings underscore the importance of an interdisciplinary research framework in education and advocate an integrative approach to supporting students with diverse learning needs in multicultural contexts.

Education plays an important role in improving Chinese rural laborers’ non-farm incomes. However, in Chinese western rural area, the level of return to education is very low due to the underdeveloped economy and the condition of the education system. For improving the schooling returns level, Chinese central government is paying great attention to the condition of education in the rural western area. To date, no research has examined what educational style is more favorable for improving western rural laborers’ non-farm incomes. To answer this question, the purpose of this paper is to compare the treatment effect of high school education and secondary vocational education on their non-farm incomes. That will provide significant evidence for the government to carry out educational policy.

Base on the Mincer model, several methods is used to estimate the average return to a year education on western rural labors’ non-farm income, including OLS, IV and Heckman tow-steps method, to accounting for the ability endogenous and self-selection bias. And the propensity score matching method is used in estimate the treatment effects of high school education and secondary vocational education.

The results from Mincer model showed that the schooling returns in Chinese western rural area were estimated to range from 2.7 to 3.9 percent, that were lower than the average levels in Chinese whole rural area that are estimated in the other recent studies. By using propensity score matching to roll out the heterogeneous bias, show that the treatment effect from high school education was higher than that from secondary vocational education, indicating that the secondary vocational education is better.

Studies concerning the causal relationship between schooling (high school education and secondary vocational education) and non-farm earnings in the western region of China remain very limited, even empty. This paper will make an update contribution to the literature in the area of education earnings in China.

In this chapter, we utilize qualitative and quantitative data from a yearlong study in four urban Chinese middle schools to investigate the learning environments for girls at these schools; the behavior and performance of girls and boys in these environments; and what factors impact that behavior and performance. This study particularly focuses on socialization through moral education and the examination system as two sources of authority motivating students’ behavior and performance in school. In the analysis, girls attending three co-educational schools are compared with girls attending one single-sex school, and outcomes for girls are also considered alongside those of boys in the co-educational institutions. Findings indicate that although moral education is particularly emphasized by teachers at the all-girls school, female misbehavior and engagement with teachers is no different for girls attending the single-sex school compared to girls in co-educational schools. Furthermore, differences in outcomes between females and males across schools transcend school-level differences for misbehavior and engagement. However, at the same time, girls at all co-educational schools report higher Chinese and English grades compared to their math and science grades, whereas all-girls school students report no such differences in grades. In regression analysis, socialization variables appear to explain more about students’ misbehavior, whereas the desire to progress to higher levels of schooling explains more about grades and engagement with teachers. That said, socialization variables including moral attitude and attachment to teachers matter more for girls’ math and science grades and their engagement with teachers as compared to boys. This research provides a rare comparative look at education for urban Chinese students and offers new insights about what matters most for girls’ behavior and performance in school.

We investigate how communities in China use schools to create and reproduce the values, knowledge, and social expectations that engender social capital. We focus on private and girls’ education, and report on the experiences of four schools between 1995 and 2005. We argue that, beyond schools’ contribution to the skills acquired by individual students, whether they promote the formation of social capital within communities should be a part of our assessment of their effectiveness. Schools as centers of activism can provide communities a forum for formulating their social demands and identities. In this context, social capital formation provides a useful heuristic for reclaiming the language of social justice and considering the human ends of education.

This paper is a historical review of the development of private primary and secondary education in Hong Kong from 1841-2012. The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolving relationship between the state and private schools in Hong Kong.

This paper utilizes sources from published official documents, public data available on government websites, archival documents and newspapers. The authors also carried out a few individual interviews with legislators, government officials and principals who were familiar with the history of private education in Hong Kong.

The colonial Hong Kong Government adopted laissez-faire policy in greater part of its rule until 1970s. The year 1978 marked the period of “state control” until the 1990s when privatization and deregulation emerged as a world trend in the governance of education. The role of government changed to that of “supervision” instead of “control.” Further, it is shown that the change of sovereignty did not avert the trend of decentralization, deregulation and privatization in education which is entrenched in the management of public affairs in human societies.

The findings provides an illuminating look into the development of a society and how it grapples with the fundamental questions of the degree of social control and proper use of political power in a colonial setting.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a preliminary model of instructional leadership in the Chinese educational context and explore the ways in which Chinese school principals locate their instructional-leadership practices in response to traditional expectations and the requirements of recent reforms.

In-depth interviews were conducted with 22 selected primary school principals in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. A qualitative analysis was conducted to categorize the major leadership practices enacted by these principals.

An initial model of instructional leadership in China with six major dimensions is constructed. The paper also illustrates and elaborates on three dimensions with the greatest context-specific meanings for Chinese principals.

The paper explores the ways in which Chinese principals enact their instructional leadership in a context in which “the west wind meets the east wind”; that is, when they are required to accommodate both imported reform initiatives and traditional expectations. The paper contributes to the sparse existing research on principals’ instructional leadership in non-western cultural and social contexts.

Identifies several features in East Asian schools which coincide with commonly recognized characteristics of effective schools in the Western literature: community support, teacher professionalism, attention to quality and high expectations. Attributes this to the East Asian culture and discusses three major dimensions of the East Asian culture: the individual‐community dimension, the effort‐ability dichotomy and the holistic‐analytic tendency in analyses. Traces the origin of such cultural dimensions in the ancient literature and explores the implications of such cultural dimensions in school management. Briefly highlights two major challenges to the adoption of an effective schooling system in East Asia.