Autobiography and Teacher Development in China

"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