MACMILLAN Autobiography and Teacher Development in China: Subjectivity and Culture in Curriculum Reform (Curriculum Studies Worldwide)

This is the first investigation of the roles of autobiography in teacher education to be informed by concepts and examples from China, Europe, and North and South America. Unique and timely, this volume addresses multiple movements of teacher education reform worldwide. Review "At a moment when the "flat world," the utopian promise of technology, and the demands for numerical accountability structure the conversation on education and teaching, the appearance of a book on contemporary curriculum reform in China is particularly important. In Autobiography and Teacher Development in China, Zhang Hua and William F. Pinar offer a series of essays that present and analyze the complex aspects of China's curriculum reform efforts, many of which resemble the neoliberal reform efforts now hegemonic in the US and Europe and spreading across the globe. But the authors disrupt any easy equation of Chinese curricular efforts with those reforms, and in doing so, reveal how a vision of the good teacher shifts and changes depending on national, cultural, local, and community contexts and individuals' situations. The issues raised and addressed in the essays - the effect of technology on the teacher-student relationship, the specificity of what it means to teach and be a teacher and the importance of autobiographical work in teacher education and teaching - appear in the context of China's teacher development efforts. They speak, however, to teachers everywhere who face the pressures of neoliberal education reforms and who look for language and visions that can serve as an alternative to those reforms." - Peter M. Taubman, Department of Secondary Education, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA About the Author Zhong Qiquan, East China Normal University, China Daniel Tröhler, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg Ou Yung-Sheng, Taiwan Shoufu Normal University, Taiwan Janet L. Miller, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, Ottawa University, Canada Zhang, Wenjun, Zhejiang University, China Peng Zheng-mei, East China Normal University, China Chen Yuting, Institute of Educational Science, Tianjin, China Elizabeth Macedo, University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Chen Xiangming, Beijing University, China Qian Xu-yang, Hangzhou Normal University, China Rong Tingwei, Hangzhou Normal University, China