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This chapter focuses on pedagogies of working with diversity centers on West-East reciprocal learning through a Reciprocal Learning Program in preservice teacher education between a Canadian university and a Chinese university. By presenting our initial analysis of fieldwork with our Teacher Education Reciprocal Learning Program participants through excerpts from newsletters, surveys, and interviews, we explore how participants from both China and Canada made sense of their learning from the other cultural and educational system through the Reciprocal Learning Program within broad educational, social, and cultural contexts. We argue that both global and multicultural dimensions are cultivated in reciprocal learning that infused the lived experiences of both Canadian and Chinese preservice teacher candidates. We discuss the pedagogic implications for working with diversity and believe that reciprocal learning can take place while working with people from different cultures with an attitude of mutual respect and appreciation and an appetite for learning in our increasingly interconnected world.

This paper was written in response to the tendency for the international education literature to position the international teacher in essentialist and western-centric terms. The international school landscape has changed significantly in the last 20 years, leading to the rise of type C non-traditional international schools, which requires a reconceptualisation of the international teacher. The purpose of this paper is to explore how a Chinese English teacher (Daisy) in an internationalised school in Shanghai constructed her identity as an international teacher.

This paper drew upon concepts from the teacher identity literature in order to construct a comparative conceptual framework comprised of personal, professional and cross-cultural domains of experience. Commensurate with this framework, in-depth phenomenological interviewing and member-checking were utilised in order to gain access to the participant’s lived experiences. Member-checking and data analysis became a dialogic and recursive process in which rapport was continually maintained and strengthened through the sharing of raw and analysed data, with additional comments and suggestions being fed back into an emerging interpretation in order to generate more data and enhance validity.

The findings highlighted how Daisy was active in not only constructing her identity as an international educator but also mobilising this identity to challenge the western-centric nature of international education. The findings also revealed moments of discursive dissonance. Daisy simultaneously constructed an identity as an “internationalising” teacher, but was also constructed as an international teacher through a discourse that presented international education as constructivist, and therefore western-centric, in nature. Implications and recommendations are made for practice and research based on these findings.

This paper offers an alternative perspective on the international teacher experience, which continues to be western-centric in focus, by exploring the development of an international teacher identity from a Chinese perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how well Chinese teacher education positions itself in preparing qualified teachers for its vast k‐12 education system, especially in the transition from examination‐oriented to that of future‐oriented education.

This paper looks at literature discussing background, strengths and weakness of current Chinese teacher training programs. It also employs the Delphi‐based scenario research method to explore plausible futures of curriculum design for teacher education.

The paper finds that, in order to ensure its astonishing economic development and present itself as a constructive force to the world betterment, it is crucial for China to carry on its ongoing educational reform, especially in the area of curriculum for its teacher training programs. It also concludes that the disciplinary curriculum currently employed in Chinese teacher education should be shifted to the trans‐disciplinary curriculum to produce future‐oriented and internationally‐prepared graduates the country demands in its effort to play an important role on the international stage.

This research, while meriting the structured instruction displayed by the Chinese education system, argues that the system should strive to provide students with such skills as creativity, flexibility, initiative, leadership, all necessary in the globally connected future world. The second part of this paper will focus on four scenarios as a result of his recent research among Chinese educators and administrators.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how well Chinese teacher education positions itself in preparing qualified teachers for its vast K‐12 education system, especially in the transition from examination‐oriented to future‐oriented examination.

The paper looks at literatures discussing background, strengths and weaknesses of current Chinese teacher‐training programs. It also employs a Delphi‐based scenario research method to explore plausible futures of curriculum design for teacher education.

In order to ensure its astonishing economic development and present itself as a constructive force for world betterment, it is crucial for China to carry on its ongoing educational reform, especially in the area of curriculum for its teacher‐training programs.

The disciplinary curriculum currently employed in Chinese teacher education should be shifted to a trans‐disciplinary curriculum to produce future‐oriented, internationally‐prepared, and ICT‐savvy graduates with the high moral standards the country demands in its effort to play an important role on the international stage.

The research, while meriting the structured instruction displayed by the Chinese education system, argues that the system should strive to provide students with such skills as creativity, flexibility, initiative, leadership, all necessary in the globally connected future world. The second part of the paper will focus on four scenarios as a result of recent research among Chinese educators and administrators.

Special education in China has lagged behind regular education for many years, however, the past few decades, the government has made considerable efforts to develop and improve the special education system. While the citizens of China have had a generic moral interest in disability since ancient times, the development of special education schools did not occur until American and European missionaries started schools for the visually and hearing impaired in the 19th century. The next major influence in the development of the special education system occurred with China’s Cultural Revolution in 1978. Interestingly, there is not any exclusive legislation on special education but in the 1980s, the government started Learning in Regular Classrooms (LRC), which is China’s version of inclusion. LRC has progressed rapidly the past two decades; however, the quality of instruction is low due to a lack of specialists, a shortage of personnel, inadequate funding, and limited technology as well as other barriers that are delineated in the chapter. The chapter emphasizes the government’s recent efforts in in-service teacher training, the preparation of preservice teachers, working with families, developing community rehabilitation training programs, and implementing evidence-based practices. Special education in China today is at a good place but it has quite a way from the ideal situation.

Teacher education programmes are critical in developing pre-service teachers’ competencies during the apprenticeship phase (Lim et al., 2010), whereas there is evidence indicating that teacher education programmes depend on curriculum leadership (Robinson et al., 2008). The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which curriculum leaders enact their curriculum leadership to enhance teacher education programmes in a context of a normal university in Mainland China.

In this paper, three groups of curriculum leaders, from university, faculty and classroom level, respectively, are interviewed.

This study highlights the significance of curriculum leadership in teacher education programmes enhancement in China, particularly the significant impacts from curriculum leaders’ involvement on the programme processes of planning, implementation and evaluation.

Implications for research include a conceptualization of curriculum leadership in teacher education and pre-service teachers’ training in China, and a theoretical integration of curriculum leadership and the enhancement of teacher education programmes.

Implications for practice regard to restructuring curriculum leadership system and informing curriculum leadership practices, not only in Asian countries, but might be able to shed light on the curriculum leadership development in a range of educational contexts either similar to or different from that of Mainland China. This study thus would contribute to several areas of research.

This paper aims to first, examine teachers' conception of e‐learning and second, is to reveal how e‐learning is applied in teaching and learning in the field of Chinese higher education.

Various issues are reviewed in the instruction part, i.e. e‐learning applications in China, research and practices of e‐learning. The methodology applied in this study is phenomenography. Twenty‐four Chinese participants were interviewed in‐depth based on a protocol developed in the planning stage. The interviews are analysed from a grounded theory perspective and a set of conceptual categories are proposed.

Five categories, i.e. the centrality of the lecture, online cooperation learning, network learning, student learning, and infrastructure and access are identified in terms of the phenomenographic study. The findings demonstrate that the traditional teaching methods that dominate in China are unlikely to present conditions for mainstreaming e‐learning in the near future.

Traditional Chinese teaching culture still dominates in higher education, and teachers' conceptions do influence their teaching behaviours. Therefore, a training programme could be developed based on the categories of teachers' conceptions of e‐learning.

This study helps us to understand how Chinese teachers understand e‐learning and how they utilise e‐learning in their teaching and learning.

Evaluating preservice teachers’ performance is essential for quality teacher education programs. Since the 1980s, China has explored a new, more appropriate and effective evaluation system in teacher education. Traditional assessment systems have shortcomings, such as being one-shot, single measures, with more emphasis on quantitative than qualitative assessments. These limitations affect students’ learning motivation and progress, and subsequently the quality of teachers and teacher education. Under China’s New Curriculum Reform, preservice teacher evaluation is being adapted accordingly. Thus, more effective and easy-to-implement evaluation methods will be examined. Portfolios are a relatively new assessment tool, originating in the West. An increasing number of teacher education programs in China has adopted portfolio assessment, but efforts are needed to improve its implementation. Standards, for example, are necessary to measure its effectiveness. This chapter reviews the teacher knowledge literature and how it relates to portfolio building, describes and explains the use of portfolios in teacher education, and then shows a typical portfolio template and its content to illustrate its use in China. Finally, the issues and challenges encountered while using portfolio assessment are discussed. Any lessons for international teacher education programs experiencing similar assessment issues with their evaluation systems are shared.

The function of early childhood education (ECE) has shifted from mothering to nurturing child development in Hong Kong. Teaching in kindergartens seems to be more attractive to men nowadays. The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues of male participation in ECE through a case study of a local kindergarten.

A case study methodology was used in the research design and the data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The interviewees all came from a single, case study school, and included the kindergarten principal, head teacher, teachers, both Chinese and foreign nationals, and parents.

The findings of the study indicated that most of the school staff support hiring male teachers in kindergartens and perceive that male teachers play an important role in educating young children. On the other hand, the views of parents who participated in the study were divided. This reflects gender bias on the part of parents.

Minimal research on male participation in kindergartens has been conducted in Hong Kong. The findings of the study shed some light on the issues of male participation in ECE in a Chinese context. It is argued that overcoming the low participation of male teachers in ECE will require changes in deeply rooted institutional and management practices. From a wider perspective, providing better career prospects and improving the professional status of kindergarten teachers will attract more men to teach in kindergartens.

To explore how student teachers (re)construct their professional identities, this chapter contextualizes two student teachers’ practicum experiences in China. The overarching question is how the student teachers (re)construct their professional identities in the practicums, especially where their teacher knowledge and subject matter knowledge meet. By analyzing a flexible matrix of paired stories, the research highlights the collective influences of the multiple instructional contexts: nation-wide Free Teacher Education program policy, recent national curriculum reform in China, and the characteristics of the placement schools. The chapter finds that the student teachers’ professional identities are dynamic and evolving on the professional knowledge landscape. The (re)construction of professional identities involves developing practical knowledge and metaphors by negotiating the tensions the student teachers encountered in the practicums. Meanwhile, the student teachers experienced reflective turns (Schön, 1991) in the practicums, which caused the tension between teacher knowledge and subject matter knowledge and contributed to the formation of their professional identities.