A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

Shifting discourses of equality and equity of basic education: an analysis of national policy documents in China




AuthorsZhou Xingguo, Rinne Risto, Kallo Johanna

Publication year2018

JournalNordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy

Volume4

Issue3

First page 168

Last page179

eISSN2002-0317

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2018.1554021

Web address https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20020317.2018.1554021

Self-archived copy’s web addresshttps://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/37467784


Abstract
As the world’s second-largest economy, China faces great challenges in educational equality and equity. This article examines the evolution of discourses surrounding educational equality by focusing on how Chinese central governments from the 1980s to the 2010s have formulated this issue. Through key national policy documents and drawing upon Espinoza’s equality–equity model, we analyse the sociopolitical context of changes in China’s educational discourse and come to the conclusions that in the 1980s, shifting the government’s agenda to economic reforms, national poverty subsumed the issue of educational equality. In the 1990s, according to the inherited political rationale, the government treated educational inequality as a ‘necessary process’ of Chinese socialist market economy. Since the 2000s, equality and equity has become an ‘urgent issue’ as the government’s agenda has shifted focus to stabilizing the nation’s economy and society. We propose labelling these three stages of equality–equity discursive departure in the 1980s, continuity and rupture in the 1990s, and prioritization since the 2000s.

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