Browsing by Subject "Mainland China"

Globalization and education are two key aspects of our time. Education has the power to transform our future, and increasingly it takes place in intercultural contexts. To fulfil the transformative potential of education in intercultural contexts, more cross-cultural understanding on differing approaches to learning is, arguably, required. The aim of this thesis was to increase our understanding of conceptions of learning in two vastly different contexts – in mainland China and in Finland. This aim was approached by analysing learning advice provided in journalistic online media. It was argued in this thesis that these media representations provide one potential window into the socially constructed, shared conceptions of learning in these contexts. This thesis, firstly, sought to discover ‘what is going on’ in each set of material individually – or, in other words, how ‘ideal studying’ is constructed through the advice of the material – and, secondly, compared these constructions with each other. The analysis of the media representations was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, a material-driven qualitative content analysis was conducted to build a conceptualization of ‘ideal studying’ from each set of material individually. This phase of the analysis took advantage of several analytic tools from the Grounded Theory “toolbox”. In the second phase, a comparative analysis was conducted to identify and make sense of the similarities and differences in the representations of ‘ideal studying’ in the mainland Chinese and Finnish articles. By using the material-driven analysis, a conceptualization of ‘ideal studying’ was constructed separately based on the material from the mainland Chinese and the Finnish journalistic media contexts. The mainland Chinese conceptualization was constructed around the two main categories of following rigorous preparation process for exam performance and shielding from stress. Whereas the two central categories in the Finnish conceptualization were getting oneself to do the studying and parenting (verb: to parent someone or something) focus for efficient knowledge acquisition. One of the most interesting findings of the comparative analysis – that has according to the knowledge of the author of this thesis not been discussed in previous research – was the nearly extreme focus in the Finnish material on optimizing the conditions around the studying for the purpose of making the study time as efficient as possible – and possibly as minimal as possible. The findings of this thesis are discussed in relation to existing models on the variety of learning conceptions as well as learning strategies related to the framework of self-regulated learning. Practical implications for education exports in the context of Finland to mainland China are derived. The findings are a result of the individual interpretation of the author of this thesis and her best efforts to conduct the study following methodological and ethical guidance from previous literature. The challenges of cross-cultural comparison, the emphasized role of researcher interpretation as well as the author’s personal background and inexperience are discussed in relation to research quality and ethics. The thesis process was conducted between June 2019 and May 2020.