The Normal University as a Distinctive Chinese Model in the 21st Century
- Ruth Hayhoe, University of Toronto, Canada
- Hantian Wu, Zhejiang University, China
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As China has developed into a global power in recent decades, many have asked whether it will bring a distinctive university model into the international higher education arena. In this presentation we will suggest that the normal university might be viewed as a unique institution, quite different from the global research university. Beginning from the late 19th century it integrated progressive ideas from post revolution France into a Confucian epistemological frame which gave highest status to education, encouraged knowledge in action for the public good and fully embraced the participation of women.
Ruth Hayhoe will provide a brief historical overview of the development of normal universities in China and East Asia, while Hantian Wu will elaborate on several examples of leading normal universities in China’s current higher education system. These have spawned forms of curricular innovation that nurture a knowledge society, where professional specialists in all areas can benefit from a profound exposure to the field of education. Normal universities also have reason to be less constrained by the pressures coming from the imposition of patterns of the global research university under global ranking systems, given their roots in an entirely different cultural and historical tradition.
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Ruth Hayhoe is a professor at the University of Toronto. She served as Cultural Secretary in the Canadian Embassy in Beijing (1989-1991), and Director of the Hong Kong Institute of Education, now the Education University of Hong Kong (1997-2002). Recent books include China Through the Lens of Comparative Education (2015), Canadian Universities in China’s Transformation (2016) and Religion and Education (2018).
Hantian Wu is a research professor at Zhejiang University in China. His doctoral degree is from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, and master’s degree from Teachers College, Columbia University. His research on international higher education has appeared in Compare, Higher Education & the Journal of Studies in International Education, also in a new book entitled China’s Outward-Oriented Higher Education: A New Typology and Reflections from International Students (Springer, 2021).
