Seminar

CERC will jointly host a webinar with CHERA by Hugo Horta, Associate Professor and Director of the Consortium for Higher Education Research in Asia (CHERA) at the Faculty of Education of the University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with Mr. Li Huan, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. The talk is based on the authors’ recent article “Nothing but publishing: the overriding goal of PhD students in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau”. This webinar will take place on February 16, 2023, 5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. HKT and will be moderated by Nutsa Kobakhidze, Assistant Professor and Director of the Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC). You are welcome to register via the link https://bit.ly/3HWAp7p.

Below is the abstract and poster for your information.

Abstract

Publication pressure is perceived to be filtering down into doctoral education worldwide. We explore the causes and effects of the perceived centrality of publishing among doctoral students. We find that the credentialisation of publications in the increasingly competitive and publication-dominant academic labour market results in publishing-centred doctoral journeys. We emphasise the need for a more comprehensive evaluation of candidates’ abilities and honours in academic recruitment and call for policies to curtail the overemphasis on research output in academic evaluations.

Poster

CERC will hold the next webinar on November 24 (Thu), 2022, 04:00-05:30 pm. HKT. Maia Chankseliani, Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education and Fellow at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, will present the seminar on her new book entitled “What Happened to the Soviet University?”

What Happened to the Soviet University?

A Book Presentation

By Maia Chankseliani

Chair: Nutsa Kobakhidze

Abstract  

This talk explores how one of the largest geopolitical changes of the twentieth century triggered and inspired the reconfiguration of the Soviet university. These universities have survived chaotic processes of post-Soviet transformation and have self-stabilised with time. Most of them remain flagship institutions with large numbers of students and relatively high research productivity. Yet, as the talk illustrates, the majority of these universities operate in a top-down, one-man management environment with limited institutional autonomy and academic freedom.

Maia Chankseliani is an Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education and Fellow at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford.

Nutsa Kobakhidze is the director of the Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC) & Assistant Professor in Comparative and International Education at the University of Hong Kong  

Date: Thursday, 24^th November 2022  

Time: 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm HKT   

Venue: Online via Zoom

Register: https://bit.ly/3tiViS7

You can also see the poster below for more information:

A webinar was held by CERC on 28 October, 2022 entitled “Imagining and configuring social-emotional learning alternatively: What Confucianism and Daoism might inspire us to do?” This seminar was presented by Yun You, Associate Professor of Education at East China Normal University, and chaired by Yanping Fang, Associate Professor of Nanyang Technological University’s National Institute of Education.

Below is the abstract and poster for your information.

Abstract

Taking the recently-popularising social-emotional learning as an illustrative example, this talk attempts to move beyond the ‘universal applicability’ of Western theories to non-Western societies, while not falling into the stereotypical ‘East-West’ dichotomy. As an alternative, classic Confucianism and Daoism, echoing many other indigenous worldviews, may inspire us to reconceptualise emotional learning with the focus on ‘interrelatedness-cum-uniqueness’ (‘关联-独特性’) in achieving social-ecological harmonisation and wellbeing. The discussion builds on the speaker’s related publication in the Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Poster

The seminar was joined by CERC members, scholars and research students based in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Singapore and Japan.

Professor Steve R. Entrich from the University of Potsdam, Germany gave a talk at the Shadow Education SIG on December 3, 2021. Professor Entrich’s talk was based on his recent paper with Professor Soo-yong Byun from Pennsylvania State University “Supplementary Education at College and Its Consequences for Individuals’ Labor Market Outcomes in the United States”.

The SIG seminar was chaired by Dr Nutsa Kobakhidze from HKU and attended by members of the SIG from Hong Kong SAR, Mainland China, Germany, Georgia and Japan.

CERC’s book entitled Shadow Education in Africa, published first in English in January 2021 and then in French, has now been published in Portuguese.

Its author, Mark Bray, launched the book on 19 November 2021 at a conference hosted by the University of Aveiro in Portugal. The conference focused on the management of education in times of uncertainty. Within this context, Professor Bray first gave a keynote address on shadow education worldwide, before turning specifically to Africa to launch the book.

The event was chaired by the hosted by Alexandre Ventura who is himself a noted researcher on shadow education in Portugal and Brazil and who has excellent connections with Lusophone African countries including Angola and Mozambique. As a former Deputy Minister of Education in Portugal, Professor Ventura is helping to call the book to the attention of policy makers as well as researchers.

The next language in which the book will be published is Arabic. That will complete the set of four main official languages spoken on the African continent.

The next SIG seminar will take place on December 3, 2021 at 4:00 pm HKT. The presenter will be Professor Steve R. Entrich from the University of Potsdam, Germany. Professor Entrich will talk about his recent published paper “Supplementary Education at College and Its Consequences for Individuals’ Labor Market Outcomes in the United States”. If you are interested in attending the seminar via Zoom, you can write an email to the SIG organiser Dr Nutsa Kobakhidze at nutsak@hku.hk.

Miss Gwen Zeng from the Education University of Hong Kong presented at the Shadow Education SIG on November 19. Gwen is a PhD student researching shadow education in China under the supervision of Dr. Kevin Yung. Her thesis is entitled as “Tutoring or not tutoring: Understanding parents’ agency in children’s early English learning in China”. More than 25 members of the shadow education SIG attended the presentation from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Germany and the United Kingdom.

On July 12, Shadow Education SIG members gathered on Zoom to listen to a presentation by Miss Shalini Bhorkar on Private Tutoring and Mainstream Education Linkages in India: A Political Economy Approach. 

Currently, Shalini is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Education, UCL. She is also an HKU graduate from the Comparative and Global Studies in Education and Development (CGSED) MEd program.

Attendees included the SIG members from Hong Kong, Mainland China, the UK, Uzbekistan and Japan.