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This chapter provides a synthesis of the research project which investigated whether or not the most recent mathematics curriculum reform has reached the classroom and influenced classroom practice and student learning in the mainland China. Three types of evidence for change as a result of the curriculum reform were examined. These included the beliefs and perceptions of teachers about learning and teaching mathematics, the cognitive features of learning tasks and of classroom interaction that were implemented in classroom, and student learning outcomes. Two groups of elementary math teachers and their students participated in the study. One group had participated in the reform implementation in classroom for several years, and the other group had used the conventional curriculum when the project was conducted in 2005. About 150 videotaped class sessions were analyzed from 58 classrooms of the two groups. Survey methods were used to probe the changes in the beliefs and perceptions of teachers about teaching and learning mathematics. The student learning outcomes were assessed for three times with multiple measures of mathematics achievement. Findings of the project provide the converging evidence that the curriculum reform has resulted in some of the expected changes. Reform teachers were more likely to hold a dynamic view of mathematics and to indicate the importance to provide students the learning opportunity to hypothesize, to proof, and to communicate in learning mathematics. The reform classrooms used more learning tasks with higher cognitive demands. The teachers in the reform classrooms asked more questions that required students to describe procedures leading to their answers and the students in the reform classrooms raised more questions in learning mathematics. Students of the reform classrooms showed to have achieved a relatively more balanced development in different cognitive areas of mathematics achievement.

Chentong Chen is an undergraduate at Nanjing Normal University studying law and English. She has research interests in education policy, education assessment and evaluation, and child development. She is currently working on two research projects: policy issues related to the college entrance exam in China, and theories and practice of preschool assessment in the U.S.

Tingting Qi's chapter titled, “Moving toward Decentralization? Changing Education Governance in China After 1985,” provides the historical and policy context for the volume. This chapter integrates the post-1978 Chinese educational reforms into the socioeconomic context of China. The special contribution of this chapter is that it explores the complexity of educational decentralization in China through an in-depth analysis of changes in education finance, administration, and curriculum. Qi reviews prior studies, government documents, laws, and regulations related to Chinese education reform since 1978 within the context of education decentralization in China. Qi also demonstrates that China's educational policy reforms are moving China toward “centralized decentralization” because decentralization is driven by a common, centralized national goal of economic modernization. The chapter presents evidence that “centralized decentralization” is a strategic maneuver that maintains centralized control while providing the reform legitimacy of decentralization. By focusing on decentralization as the core of Chinese educational policy reforms, this chapter situates the following chapters within the social, cultural, and political context of post-1978 China.

As China's educational policy and reforms continue to evolve and adjust to shifting social, economic, and political conditions, this chapter provides a template for conceptually framing education research on and in China. To do so this chapter first identifies focus areas in comparative education research related to China, which reflect researcher perspective, perceived advantage, and demonstrated resistance to these educational policy reforms. The authors develop a conceptual framework for comparatively understanding education research on and in China, which focuses on the intersection of comparative education themes, institutional change agents or methods, and Chinese educational reform topics. This conceptual framework specifically accounts for overlap, complexity, and the evolving nature of educational policy reform in China. This chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of comparative education researchers, national policymakers, and consumers of the research using new data and methods as they become available to continue to revise understandings of Chinese educational policy and reform.

The aim of this study is to examine the significant factors to improve the green nuclear energy investments in the emerging economies. For this purpose, balanced scorecard-based criteria are weighted with DEMATEL methodology. The findings demonstrate that technological improvement and financial issues are the most important issues for the improvement of the green nuclear energy investments in these countries. Nuclear energy working with thorium can also be obtained with proton accelerator technology that is currently quite expensive. Because of this problem, the investors are not willing to make investments for green nuclear energy projects. Hence, emerging countries should make the necessary technological investments to have proton accelerator technologies. With the help of this condition, it will be possible to reduce the cost of green nuclear energy projects which attracts the attention of the investors. This situation has a powerful contribution for the sustainable economic development of these countries.

Forces of globalization have driven international convergence in corporate governance and accounting considerably over the past few decades. Nevertheless, despite the global trend, convergence of corporate governance and financial reporting remains a subject of debate. This research monograph critically examines whether China’s convergence with Anglo-American corporate governance principles and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is likely to produce the expected outcomes of improving the transparency and comparability of accounting information in Chinese firms. In this chapter, we discuss the motivation for and the significance of the study; describe the issues associated with the adoption of internationally acceptable standards and principles in China; explain the theoretical framework used to inform the study and research methodology; and present the aim and objectives of the monograph.

Extant research presents firms’ purpose as a consensual and positive attribute. This paper introduces an alternative perspective, which sees firms’ purposefulness as defined in relation to specific audiences. A firm’s purposefulness to a focal audience can be either positive or negative. Audiences find firms with which they share a common prioritization of issues more purposeful in absolute terms. Audiences find firms with which they share a common understanding of issues positively purposeful. Conversely, audiences find firms with an opposite understanding of issues negatively purposeful. Audiences harness specific resources to support firms they find positively purposeful and to oppose firms they find negatively purposeful. This paper introduces topic modeling and word embeddings as two techniques to operationalize this audience-based approach to purposefulness.

In a past era, alchemists believed they could magically transmute lead into valuable gold. Science has progressed a substantial distance since then and for decades nuclear and particle physicists could change various materials into gold. When considering technology, leaders are faced with a comparable challenge: How does one leverage technology to create unique organizational value? To manage emerging technologies effectively to create organizational value, managers will need to lead the producers and practitioners of technology effectively. In the age of global interdependence, organizations must abandon old outdated perspectives.

Technology is a force which drives itself. Organizations must adopt to emerging technology or risk being obsolete. Leveraging technology to create value involves more then circumferentially managing technology. To create value, leaders must encourage staff to transmute technology. The principles and practices of quantum leadership provide for this possibility. This chapter will irradiate why simply managing technology does not offer organizations the maximum value from technology. The reader will be introduced to the four core features of quantum leadership: duality, superposition, entanglement, and observation. With this groundwork, the principles and practices of this leadership perspective will be discussed in context of transmuting technology into unique organizational value. Which lens one uses to see which possibility becomes reality are exclusively in the eyes of the viewer. Using information systems technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and 5G technology as the exemplars, readers can decide whether to accept, reject, or suspend judgement on using quantum leadership as the perspective to transmute technology into valuable organizational gold.