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The purpose of this paper is to describe the trends in residential solid waste collection (RSWC) services in rural China over the past decade and analyze the determinants of these services using nationally representative data.

The authors draw on panel data from three rounds of village-level surveys of 101 villages. The three surveys were conducted in 2005, 2008, and 2012 in five provinces. The authors used fixed-effected regression approach to analyze the determinants of these services.

The results show that in the aftermath of increased investment and policy attention at the national level, the proportion of villages providing RSWC services in rural China increased significantly from 1998 to 2011. However, half of all villages in rural China still did not provide RSWC services as of 2011. Based on econometrics analysis, the authors show that villages that are richer, more populous, and villages with more small hamlets are more likely to provide RSWC services.

The analyses are based on primary survey data and the first to quantify trends in waste management services in the beginning of the twentieth century. The authors believe that the results will have significant policy implications for China in its continuing quest for better waste management policy.

Although access to safe drinking water is one of the most important health-related infrastructure programs in the world, drinking water remains a large problem in China today, especially in rural areas. Despite increased government investment in water resource protection and management, there is still an absence of academic studies that are able to document what path the investment has taken and whether it has had any tangible impact. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of drinking water investment on drinking water in China.

The authors make use of nationally representative data from 2005 and 2012 to measure the impact of drinking water investment among 2,028 rural households in 101 villages across five provinces. Both ordinary least squares regression and probit regression are used to analyze the correlates and the impact of drinking water investment.

The authors demonstrate that water quality was likely a significant problem in 2004 but that China’s investment into drinking water appears to have resulted in initial improvements during the study period. The authors show that the most significant change came about in terms of hardware: villages that received more drinking water investment now have more piped tap water and more access to water treatment infrastructure (disinfecting and filtering facilities). High rates of rural resident satisfaction with drinking water suggest the effects of drinking water investment are being felt at the village level.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study on drinking water investment over time in rural China using nationally representative data.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of adult children migration on the health status of elderly parents. Increased labor migration in developing countries that lack adequate social security systems and institutionalized care for the elderly is a phenomenon that is important to understand. When their adult children go away to work, it is not clear what effect there will be on “left-behind” elderly parents.

This study employs nearly nationally representative data from five provinces, 25 counties, 101 villages and 2,000 households, collected from two waves of data in 2007 and 2011. This sample comprises a subset of households which include both elderly individuals (above 60 years old) and their grown (working-aged) children in order to estimate the impact of adult child migration on the health of elderly parents in rural China.

This study finds that adult child migration has a significant positive impact on the health of elderly family members.

These findings are consistent with the explanation that migration raises family resources, which in turn may contribute to better health outcomes for elderly household members.

This is the first paper to attempt to identify the relationship between household migration and the health of elderly parents within the Chinese context.

The purpose of this paper is to describe trends in irrigation investment in China’s rural villages in the 2000s, identify the types of villages in which investment occurred and examine whether this investment had an impact on agricultural land.

This study makes use of longitudinal survey data from a nearly nationally representative sample of 101 villages spread across five provinces. The outcome variables are cultivated area, sown area and effectively irrigated area, and ordinary least squares regression and fixed effects models are used for the analysis.

In spite of sustained investments into irrigation from 1998 to 2011, there has been almost no impact on agricultural land. Cultivated area and sown area have fallen across all five sample provinces while effectively irrigated area remains largely unchanged. The authors also show that there is no relationship between investment into irrigation and agricultural land. Irrigation facilities also have the lowest rate of rural resident satisfaction of any of the major public services provided.

More research is needed to understand the impact of irrigation investment on crop yields and water savings.

Policymakers may need to rethink the current pattern of investment into irrigation.

This is the first study to quantitatively model the impact of investment into irrigation at the village level all over China.

In this paper, the author extends the current research on standardized performance assessments in preservice education by moving with novice teachers from their student teaching experiences into their first years as fully certified classroom teachers. Here, the author draws on scholarship that conceptualizes literacies as performative (Alexander, 2005; Youdell, 2010) to examine how engaging in a standardized performance assessment process shaped the teaching identities that participants carried into their first years of teaching in the field.

Through a qualitative case study, the author investigates the experiences of a group of six novice elementary educators in their first years in the classroom after completing the standardized performance assessment Educative Performance Assessment as a major component of their certification program. Data, which included focus group and individual interviews and artifacts (instructional handouts, teaching videos, lesson plans, written reflective commentaries), were analyzed through a performance lens.

Findings highlight how engaging with a standardized performance assessment shaped the meanings that participants made of their teaching practices, including lesson planning and implementation for and with students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

This paper offers insights that can support teacher educators working toward preparing teachers for work with diverse students in public school classrooms that might produce more equitable policies, practices and transformative reforms, particularly for historically marginalized groups.

The purpose of this paper is to offer the latest empirical findings of the difficulties and challenges in teaching New Senior Secondary (NSS) Liberal Studies in Hong Kong from the perspective of pre-service teachers.

This qualitative study is based on Danielewicz’s critical pedagogy framework for identity development. A sample of four pre-service teachers were recruited from the last cohort of final-year bachelor of education students at the University of Hong Kong. They were invited to engage in dialogues of enquiry, through which they recount their teaching encounters during their teaching practices. Emphasis would be put on two relevant pedagogical principles, including deliberation and reflexivity, which are of particular relevance to the case of Liberal Studies.

Challenges revealed the dispositions of conformist learning among the students, manifested in forms of misquoted information and the populist sentiments mirrored from mainstream media, which cost teachers extra efforts to facilitate inquiry-based learning. Adopting deliberation and reflexivity as pedagogical principles, student–teachers responded with attempts to reconnect daily life experiences to teaching, bringing back the social context of knowledge and seeking synergy between traditional and liberatory teaching methods.

This study is drawn from a relatively small sample of pre-service teachers and may run the risk of over-generalization. Moreover, this study tends to neglect other factors such as classroom dynamics, school culture, colleagues’ rapport and students’ responses.

Given the novelty of Liberal Studies as a compulsory subject under the NSS curriculum and its specificity in Hong Kong education system, the amount of literature devoted to this area has been inadequate; among the available studies, the majority tend either to focus on the macro level, addressing the broader narratives of education policies and curriculum studies (e.g. Fung and Yip, 2010; Cheung and Leung, 1998) or to discuss the topic with exclusive reference to political transition and post-colonialism in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g. Morris and Chan, 1997). Studies on the micro level have generally paid little attention to the dynamics of Liberal Studies teaching, focusing instead on its relationships with other aspects such as private tutoring (Chan and Bray, 2014) and cultural representations of religion in Liberal Studies textbooks (Jackson and Han, 2016); pedagogical studies on the subject remain a minority.

How can researchers develop methods that are both child-centered and grounded in the “epistemology of racial emancipation” given the unique challenges associated with conducting research with young people and white people? The purpose of this chapter is to examine the use of an innovative child-centered visual research method within the context of a larger ethnography focused on how white children come to form ideas about race in America. As part of a broader ethnographic study, white children between the ages of 10 and 13 were presented with photographs of celebrities. Children were asked questions about how to racially classify these popular culture icons, an activity that led to further discussion about race and racism in America. Drawing upon photographs of popular cultural icons and celebrities is one strategy for approaching uncomfortable topics with children in way that is less intimidating and that also brings new data to the study. Children made this aspect of the interview their own, bringing their unique perspectives to bear. This chapter discusses at length unique methodological issues, strategies, and innovations involved in research with white children about race. This chapter makes original contributions to the field of developing innovative, child-centered methods for conducting research with children and youth as well as existing scholarship on whiteness, privilege, and the social reproduction of racial ideology/racism.

With the rise of social networking and the immediacy of electronic communication, the potential for harassment, threats, cyberbullying, perceived defamation, and general incivility is greater than ever before. First Amendment issues create legal, philosophical and practical problems for administrators. In this chapter, the authors examine the intersection of First Amendment protections and student Internet conduct and provide practical information that student conduct administrators can readily apply in their daily work. Included are First Amendment definitions and concepts, an overview of policy considerations to protect the rights of both the individuals involved and the institution, a discussion of the distinctions between public and private institutions, investigation strategies, and a case study to walk readers through an examination of the issues and decision-making best practices for student conduct administrators.

Quality, accessible and appropriate housing is key to older people’s ability to live independently. The purpose of this paper is to understand older people’s housing aspirations and whether these are currently being met. Evidence suggests one in five households occupied by older people in England does not meet the standard of a decent home. The Building Research Establishment has calculated that poor housing costs the English National Health Service £1,4bn annually (Roys et al., 2016).

This paper reports on the findings of a participatory theatre approach to engaging with those not often heard from – notably, those ageing without children and older people with primary responsibility for ageing relatives – about planning for housing decisions in later life. The project was led by an older people’s forum, Elders Council, with Skimstone Arts organisation and Northumbria University, in the north east of England.

Findings suggest there is an urgent need to listen to and engage with people about their later life housing aspirations. There is also a need to use this evidence to inform housing, health and social care policy makers, practitioners, service commissioners and providers and product and service designers, to encourage older people to become informed and plan ahead.

Use of a participatory theatre approach facilitated people to explore their own decision making and identify the types of information and support they need to make critical decisions about their housing in later life. Such insights can generate evidence for future housing, social care and health needs. Findings endorse the recent Communities and Local Government (2018) Select Committee Inquiry and report on Housing for Older People and the need for a national strategy for older people’s housing.

Although this call is evidenced through an English national case study, from within the context of global population ageing, it has international relevance.