“The Statue of Venus with a Broken Arm Shows Us the Beauty of Incompleteness”: University Student Diversity and Experience in Chinese Well-Being and Mental Health Education Textbooks

Abstract

Research on introductory psychology textbooks used in higher education abounds around the world. Although most studies focus on textbooks designed for students majoring in psychology, this paper looks into textbooks used for a compulsory undergraduate course on mental health and well-being in mainland China. Like in many other countries, Chinese students face mental and well-being issues and this course aims to support all undergraduate students in dealing with their own psychology rather than specialising in the subject. Based on an in-depth discourse analysis of two widely used textbooks published in Chinese for this course, the authors examine how the textbooks construct the university experiences of Chinese students. At the same time, the paper also delves into the ways different kinds of Chinese students are portrayed and the types of changes that they are said to experience at university. The foci of invisibility and selectivity from the field of textbook analysis help highlight generalising, stereotyping, and recourse to biases in the textbooks. Recommendations as to how such textbooks could be used to boost university students’ mental health and well-being, while taking into account their diversity, are proposed at the end of the paper.

1. Introduction

Transitioning to and studying at university might be a very different experience around the globe. As such, the experiences of Chinese students on the 3000 university campuses in the country might appear very specific to the context of China. Undergraduate Chinese students (the focus of this paper) usually live on gated campuses, sharing a dormitory with students from different parts of the country. After experiencing highly competitive basic and post-compulsory education, students apply to enter universities. Since the early 2000s, when students’ well-being and mental health started to be discussed in Chinese policy-making, colleges and universities have been mandated to cater for the mental health education of all students [1]. Approximately 20% of college students show different degrees of psychological disorders in China [2]. The seriousness of mental health problems amongst Chinese students is addressed through compulsory college mental health courses [2].

The quote forming the title of this paper, “The statue of Venus with a broken arm shows us the beauty of incompleteness” [3] (p. 42), is taken from a textbook on mental health and well-being used in China, which reveals some of the complex, difficult, and unstable experiences of university students around the country. Today, every first-year undergraduate student has to take a compulsory course on mental health in China. According to the 2011 Basic Requirements for the Teaching of Mental Health Education for Students in Colleges and Universities, mental health education courses aim at providing students with knowledge about mental health and well-being, paying attention to the psychological experiences of students and strengthening their “behavioural training”. Intended learning outcomes include (amongst others) self-understanding, better communication skills, and good mental health awareness. He et al. [4] note that such courses constantly need to be improved and developed.

A compulsory course on mental health is thus taught to all university students in China, with textbooks and materials designed by teachers serving as the main basis for teaching it. Several textbooks published by different accredited publishing companies are used by teachers. In this article, we focus on the two popular textbooks, widely used nationally, to explore how the students’ experiences at Chinese universities are depicted, and what this tells us about the “Chinese university student” as represented in mental health and well-being textbooks. Since the textbooks focus on issues faced by students during their time at university, we explore the kinds of problems presented in the textbooks, how they are constructed by the authors, what is said about the students who experience them, and the kinds of solutions that the textbooks might propose. Since the textbooks are fully in line with the aforementioned learning plans from 2011, they all deal with the same topics albeit in a different order and by means of different activities such as brainstorming and case studies.

Following Gurung and Hackathorn’s call for more research on introductory psychology in higher education [5], we ask the following research questions:

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How do the textbooks construct the university experiences of Chinese students? Since the textbooks aim to support students in dealing with the complexities of studying on a campus, following official guidelines and ideological positions, what experiences are thought to be “deviant” and/or “problematic”—and thus what experiences are deemed “normal” in the textbooks?

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At the same time, how do the textbook authors depict Chinese students? What kinds of students are portrayed in the textbooks, bearing in mind that the textbooks are targeted specifically at Chinese university students? Whose voices are heard in these descriptions? And how much diversity is included in the ways students are constructed?

We propose to use the topics of mental health and well-being to explore the representations of students’ experiences and their diversity since discourses of mental health and well-being can tell us about what is considered ideologically acceptable or not, and what the norm in mental health should be in institutions such as universities [6].

2. Literature Review

2.1. Previous Research on Students’ Mental Health in the Chinese Context

For Liu et al. (2019), as an essential component of mental health, emotional well-being incorporates happiness, interests in life, satisfaction, and quality of life, as well as the ability to recognize, express, and regulate one’s emotions. Liu et al. [7] also note that negative emotions often manifest as depression, anxiety, irritability, or excitement (amongst others). Since this paper is interested in the construction of students’ university experiences and student diversity in China, the topics of well-being and mental health appear to be well fitted to examine these elements.

According to Shan et al. [8], roughly one-fifth of Chinese university students struggle with different levels of mental problems, with a considerable number of students experiencing anxiety, depression, and stress, especially in their first and second years of undergraduate studies, which correspond to the level covered by the textbooks under review. Lei et al. [9] analysed a total of 39 studies (1997–2015), including 32,694 university students, and showed that the overall prevalence of depression among Chinese university students was 23.8%. Different reasons have been identified such as adjustment disorders (i.e., being separated from parents and friends and having to deal with totally new environments such as big cities vs. villages) as well as risks of higher stress in the second year of university studies due to specialized courses being introduced at this level [9].

What is more, Changjun and Liping [10] maintain that Chinese college students are burdened with high academic stress and growing competition in the job market after they graduate. The chronic exposure to stress that many experience could negatively influence their mental health and well-being. Resilience, personality, and social support seem to positively or negatively influence students’ mental health too [11]. Situations of emergency such as the 2020–2022 COVID-19 epidemic have also been proved to have a strong psychological impact on university students in China [12], such as increased anxiety, fear, and worry. As such, according to Cao et al. [12], 24.9% of Chinese university students were afflicted with anxiety because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

One important element needs to be mentioned about students’ mental health in China: the serious issue of suicide. For Lew et al. [13], suicide is the leading cause of death for young adults in the Middle Kingdom. They argue that suicidal behaviours are significantly associated with several risk and protective factors, which highlights the need to provide effective psychological outreach programs and suicide prevention measures and interventions for Chinese university students. Liu et al. [7] have suggested that universities should also provide students with tailored psychological guidance, considering that college students may have differentiated mental health and well-being needs.

To finish this short review, it is important to note that in China, the indigenous concept of psychological suzhi has been used to study students’ mental health in research published in both Chinese and English. Psychological suzhi (in English also: mental quality, psychological quality, amongst others) seems to be a widely applied Chinese construct describing a comprehensive and integrated set of psychological qualities for discussing the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents [14]. Based on the theoretical and empirical findings of psychological suzhi studies, e.g., [15], this concept includes three interrelated dimensions: cognitive, individual, and adaptable qualities (see

Table 1. Definitions and components of psychological suzhi.

	Cognitive Quality	Individual Quality	Adaptability Quality
Definition	Psychological quality that manifests in individuals’ reflections	Idiosyncrasies in the treatment of objects and is reflected in behaviour	An individual’s ability to experience consistency between themselves and their environment by changing themselves or the environment during the process of socialization
Components	Awareness, metacognition, divergent thoughts, associative memory	Emotional characteristics, self-characteristics, self-control, self-regulation, persistence	Societal harmony, stressful adjustment, interpersonal adaptation

). According to Zhang et al. [16], cognitive quality refers to the psychological quality that manifests in individuals’ reflections. It is directly involved in cognitive activities, and primarily concerns components such as awareness, metacognition, divergent thoughts, and associative memory [16]. Individual quality refers to idiosyncrasies in the treatment of objects and is reflected in behaviour. This construct seems to correspond to the Western concept of personality (or personal qualities) and includes emotional characteristics and self-characteristics, as well as various components such as self-control, self-regulation, and persistence [14]. Furthermore, adaptability quality refers to an individual’s ability to experience consistency between themselves and their environment by changing themselves or the environment during the process of socialization. This component includes (amongst others) societal harmony, stressful adjustment, and interpersonal adaptation.

Aspects of psychological suzhi appear to be included in the planning and designing of textbooks such as the ones under review in this paper. For example, as we shall see, elements such as “harmony”, “interpersonal adaptation”, and “self-regulation” are to be found in both the theoretical content of the textbooks and learning activities to support, for instance, students’ adaptability to higher education contexts. Yet there is no clear or transparent indication by the textbook authors (e.g., in the textbook introductions) that these derive directly from psychological suzhi. Instead, political and ideological arguments derived from, e.g., the Communist Party of China are used by the authors, as well as mostly Western references, to justify both the content and expected outcomes of the textbooks. At times, we also note that the textbooks seem to serve the purpose of “self-help guidance”, supporting the students to reflect on themselves, the university context, and broader societal issues, rather than serving as scientific and pedagogical documents [17].

2.2. Analysing the Power of Textbooks

This section problematises and frames the analysis of the two Chinese textbooks under review. Many studies from different parts of the world have examined the role of textbooks in teaching psychological knowledge to university students (e.g., [18] in the USA; [19] in New Zealand). It is important to note that most studies focus on psychology majors—not multidisciplinary students taking a mental health and well-being course as is the case in the Chinese context. Research on psychology textbooks has a long history, with many studies having focused on the accuracy of the utilized knowledge about psychology. For instance, in their 2018 article, Ferguson, Brown, and Torres look into how 24 commonly textbooks for undergraduate students’ introductory psychology class in the USA faithfully make use of knowledge from psychological science. They note problems with such textbooks such as discussing psychological research as more definitive than it actually is, which does little to inform readers of those textbooks of the methodological and theoretical controversies prevalent in the field. What is more, by the very nature of covering the entire field of psychology, introductory textbooks may not always transmit authentic knowledge from psychological science [20]. O’Donohue and Willis [21] (p. 53) even go as far as stating that “It is important to note that textbooks in undergraduate psychology serve not only to instruct, but also to essentially indoctrinate students into a particular way of thinking”.

To our knowledge, no study has been published in the English language on Chinese textbooks about mental health and well-being education for first-year undergraduate students. Some papers have appeared in Chinese but they tend to describe without problematising the content of the textbooks (e.g., [17] where the author makes general comments on mental health education in China on the basis of a recently published textbook).

Omnipresent in education (in Chinese higher education included), textbooks “provide expertise, are timesavers, and provide security for both teachers and students in outlining content, scope and sequence” [22] (p. 12). For some textbook researchers, textbooks can also serve the purpose of “shaping of the future citizenry of a nation or of the global community” [23] (p. 24). Most scholars from the broad field of textbook studies seem to agree that textbooks aim to reflect current societal, economic, and political changes [24].

Looking beyond the surface level, textbooks are far from neutral as they relate to curricula, which are always determined by economic–political forces [25]. As states define curricula and make decisions concerning schooling—in China, for instance, the production of textbooks is monitored by the Central Government—they remain the main actors of education [26]. In addition to political agendas, economic aspects play an important role in textbook production. Although financial profit may not be the first or only reason for publishing a textbook from the authors’ perspective, most of the time, publication processes are restricted by several financial interests. For publishers, a textbook is an investment and the outcome needs to be a product that sells [24].

Many textbook analyses have demonstrated that there is often a risk of producing or reproducing power relations but also stereotypes and prejudices in textbooks and that this needs to be addressed when researching textbooks [27,28]. In our study, the two textbooks deal with students’ mental health and well-being, and since they need to follow economic–political “orders” (e.g., what is considered acceptable behaviour and thought in mainland China), it is to be expected that students’ experiences of Chinese higher education as well as the way their diversity is portrayed could be generalised, stereotyped, and even simplified. This is why, in this paper, we make use of the influence of curricular biases on textbooks as proposed by Sadker and Sadker [29], focusing especially on the first two aspects of these biases:

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Invisibility: who is represented; who is not?,

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stereotyping, imbalance, and selectivity: an issue is interpreted under one lens only,

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unreality: e.g., illusionary depiction of a place,

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fragmentation: inserts separating the discussion from the main narrative in a textbook,

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linguistic bias: political in/correctness,

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and cosmetic bias: illusions of equity in how people are represented.

By focusing on invisibility as well as stereotyping, imbalance, and selectivity, we are interested in how the textbook authors construct certain images of students’ experiences of higher education in China, and what they tell us about how they represent students (and their potential diversity) while dealing with mental health and well-being in this context. As a reminder, in this paper, and unlike most previous studies, we do not focus on the use of specific knowledge about psychology in the textbooks but on representations of the university experience and student diversity.

3. Data Collection and Analysis

It seems impossible to determine precisely how many textbooks like the ones under review are currently in use on the 3000+ Chinese campuses around the country. After consulting with colleagues working in different universities across China and liaising with different publishers and decision-makers by phone, online, and face-to-face meetings, we can safely say that up to 30 textbooks are available on the market (which does not mean that they are all in use). (Anecdotically) many of our colleagues also revealed that they produce their own materials for teaching the introductory and compulsory course about students’ mental health and well-being. In this article, we focus on textbooks that appear to be the most recent, popular, and widely used textbooks amongst those we consulted in different parts of the country. In the first author’s university, the two chosen textbooks are also used by different teachers. It is important to note at this stage that the analysis that we propose, with the aforementioned special foci, does not aim to generalise about what is being taught around mainland China and how, although the content of the two textbooks follows very closely the official guidelines (see

Table 2. The structure of the two textbooks under review.

	YT	PT
Chapter 1	Overview of college students’ mental health	Healthy psychology—happy life
Chapter 2	Self-awareness of college students	Adapting to development and treating setbacks properly
Chapter 3	Analysis of the psychological adaptation of college students	Know yourself and self-growth
Chapter 4	Interpersonal psychology of college students	Stress coping and emotion management
Chapter 5	The learning psychology of college students	Interpersonal relations and communication
Chapter 6	Love and sexual psychology of college students	Cultivation of personality and healthy growth
Chapter 7	Internet psychology of college students	Learn to learn and enjoy creation
Chapter 8	Emotion management of college students	Understanding love, facing it reasonably
Chapter 9	Setback response and willpower development	Career planning and development
Chapter 10	Personality development of college students	Green network, green mood
Chapter 11	Life education and psychological crisis Intervention	Psychological problems preventive treatment
Chapter 12	Career planning and development of college students	N/A

YT contains 12 chapters and PT 11. The order of introduction of the topics varies slightly as can be seen in Table 2.

). It is safe to say, however, that any material used for the course would have to be quite similar content- and ideologically-wise since textbooks need to be approved by the authorities before they get published.

The two textbooks were written in Chinese, published by reputed publishers, and translated into English by the authors for this article:

• Mental Health Course for University students (大学生心理健康) co-written by Qi Wen, Yi Ming, and Wu Di (2018, Jilin Group Publishing) (referred to as YT hereafter—the Yellow Textbook—because of its yellow cover).
• University Students’ Mental Health Education (大学生心理健康教育) written by Chen Xiaomei (2019, Xiamen University Press, PT hereafter, i.e., Purple Textbook).

Importantly, the textbooks follow the aforementioned regulations from the 2011 Mental Health Education for Students in Ordinary Colleges’ and Universities’ Basic Requirements For Course Teaching [30] as well as the 2018 Guidelines for Mental Health Education for College Students issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education [31]. The regulations from 2011 [30] introduce the mental health and well-being course as follows (our translation from Chinese):

“Strengthening and improving the mental health education of college students is an important way to fully implement the curriculum, promote the healthy growth of students, and educate and train senior professionals. (…) All colleges and universities should formulate a scientific and systematic teaching syllabus according to the needs of students’ mental health education and the concrete situation of a specific institution, as well as organize and implement corresponding education and teaching activities in order to ensure that students receive mental health education during their time at university”.

This compulsory course is worth two credits and corresponds to 32–36 teaching hours. The teaching objectives stipulate that the course should integrate knowledge transfer, psychological experience, and behavioural training. It also aims to “enable students to clarify the standards and meanings of mental health, enhance self-consciousness of mental health care and psychological crisis prevention, master and apply mental health knowledge, cultivate self-cognition ability, interpersonal communication ability, self-regulation ability, and effectively improve students’ mental health. The main objective is to promote the all-round development of students” [31]. The teaching content of the course is described as follows:

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Part 1: Understanding the basics of mental health (e.g., abnormal psychological manifestations, functions of psychological counselling)

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Part 2: Understanding self, developing self (e.g., self-awareness)

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Part 3: Improving the ability to self-adjust (e.g., career planning, emotional management, “sexual psychology”).

As mentioned in Section 2.2, one can feel elements of Chinese psychological suzhi in these elements (e.g., self-awareness), although they are not explicitly mentioned [14].

The following teaching methods are put forward in the guidelines: classroom lectures, case analyses, and group discussions. According to the Chinese Ministry of Education [31], “The curriculum should adopt a combination of theory and experimental teaching, teaching methods such as classroom lectures, case analyses, group discussions, psychological tests, group training, situational performance, role playing, experimental activities, etc.”. The guidelines also stipulate that assessment of learning should be based on students’ ability to solve practical problems. Finally, the course is taught by university pastoral care teachers and lecturers, like the first author of this paper, who are certified to deliver courses about mental health and well-being in China.

The two textbooks used for this course represent the backbone of the core of teaching. They scrupulously follow the aforementioned guidelines and cover the same topics, although the types of activities included to support and reinforce learning might diverge slightly in the textbooks. As such, the PT textbook includes the following subsections in each chapter: case studies, brainstorming, extracurricular development, reading, reflecting, and going further. YT makes use of case studies and reading after class in the chapters. Although these activities differ, they share the same objectives: self-reflection and problem-solving. We note that the textbooks also contain many slogan-like formulas in different parts of the textbooks such as “Good people always look for happiness without bounds, while smart people like to plant happiness under their feet” (our translation from Chinese, PT: p. 19). The use of such slogan-like language is also omnipresent on Chinese university campuses and in Chinese society as a whole as a way of motivating and stimulating individuals (see Liu and Ngok’s analysis of 2019 (anti-COVID-19) slogans in China [32]).

Looking at the topics covered by the textbooks, we note similarities with what the literature reviewed in Section 2.1. The following was noted about Chinese students’ mental health and well-being: tendency towards depression and suicide ([9,13]; PT: Chapters 3, 8, 9; YT: Chapters 2, 4, 11); adaptability quality and harmony (see psychological sushi in [14]; PT: chapter 3; YT: chapter 2); and stress and the job market ([10]; PT: chapter 12; YT: chapter 9).

Most chapters in YT follow this structure: 1. Introduction to famous quotes related to the chapter theme, 2. Case study, 3. Objectives of the chapter, 4. Conceptual and theoretical discussions, 5. Self-reflection on the chapter topic, 5. Self-assessment of knowledge and 6. Reading after class. PT has a simpler structure for each chapter with two or three conceptual and theoretical subsections and a section entitled “thinking and practicing” which includes case studies, brainstorming, and reading.

Unlike previous studies on introductory textbooks to psychology, which deal with knowledge about psychological content, our qualitative study focuses on the construction of the students’ university experience as well as on what this tells us about the students themselves (see research questions in the introduction). In order to do so and to limit the amount of data, we solely focus on a common section found in the two textbooks, case studies (from our observation and acquaintance with other textbooks for the same course, the inclusion and use of case studies is general in such teaching material), where different types of stories, characters, situations, and problems are introduced to illustrate the points raised by the textbook authors (e.g., career planning, personality issues, and disorders, psychological issues, internet use, and pressures and problems of interpersonal miscommunication). The case studies represent important (concrete) sources of information about the construction of university life and student diversity.

Our method follows the following pattern. A content analysis allowed us to collect all the case studies from each textbook and to list the types of characters and themes found in each case study. PT contains 14 case studies while YT contains 12 (total for the two textbooks: 26 case studies).

Table 3. List of case studies in the two textbooks.

	YT	PT
Case study 1	Chapter 1: Female student, story of a poor student (excerpt 6 and excerpt 10)	Chapter 1: Male student, bad reactions to his grandmother passing away
Case study 2	Chapter 1: Female student, gap between rural and urban study style and success	Chapter 2: Male student, dealing with an inferiority complex (excerpt 5)
Case study 3	Chapter 2: Female student, disappointed with studies (excerpt 3)	Chapter 2: Male student, from a poor mountain context to the city (excerpt 9)
Case study 4	Chapter 3: Male student, adaptation to university life	Chapter 3: Female student, adapting to independent living
Case study 5	Chapter 5: Male students, problematic interpersonal relationships (excerpt 11)	Chapter 5: Female student, dealing with multiple interpersonal relationships
Case study 6	Chapter 6: Male and female student, falling in love	Chapter 7: Male student, victim of cybercrime (excerpt 12)
Case study 7	Chapter 6: Female students, problems with friendship	Chapter 7: female student, addiction to the Internet
Case study 8	Chapter 7: Male student, internet addiction	Chapter 7: Female student, finding it hard to cope with new learning style
Case study 9	Chapter 7: Female student, impact of gaming on studies	Chapter 8: Female student, problems with finding love
Case study 10	Chapter 7: Male student, suicide after depression (excerpt 2)	Chapter 9: Female student, committed suicide (excerpt 4)
Case study 11	Chapter 9: Female student, suicide after depression (excerpt 7)	Chapter 9: Female student, presentation of her CV
Case study 12	Chapter 10: Male student, change in behaviours at university (excerpt 1)	Chapter 11: Female student, diagnosed as paranoiac
Case study 13	Chapter 12: Male student, doing a job interview
Case study 14	Chapter 12: Male student, problems in applying for jobs

presents the case studies per textbook, indicating the characters and themes. Case studies used for our analysis are highlighted (excerpt number between brackets).

We note that all the case studies followed a similar structure: short introduction to the topic, description of the setting and main characters, story-telling, consequences, and conclusion/”moral-like” discussion. We also noticed that questions were almost systemically set for the readers, with, at times, answers provided by the textbook authors.

In this paper, we also use a specific form of discourse analysis to help us focus on the dimensions of 1. invisibility, 2. stereotyping, imbalance, and selectivity from Sadker and Sadker [29], which will guide us in answering our research questions. The approach is titled enunciative-pragmatics, a theory and method derived from the work of, e.g., Benveniste, Culioli, and Foucault but also Bakhtin’s Dialogism [33,34]. This perspective emphasises the heterogeneity of what people say, i.e., how when producing an utterance, they “stage” various speakers and voices to position themselves [35]. This idea is very much in line with identifying who is represented or not in a textbook or the construction of an idea and/or a character under one lens only [29]. The complex set of nested voices found in any utterance in a textbook are called enunciators while the one who organises these voices (in this case: textbook authors following official guidelines), the locutor [36]. Angermüller [35] (p. 2997) explains: “utterances are viewed as ensembles of nested voices chained together in light of their argumentative value.” In an enunciative analysis, we can ask the question of “who speaks in whose name against whom” [35] (p. 2997), i.e., in whose name and against whom do the textbook authors speak. Examining how the locutor (again: textbook authors) animates the voices, the types of linguistic markers used to do so, can help us identify speakers, sources, and contexts of enunciation as well as the way(s) the locutor positions themselves towards what the voices (the enunciators: e.g., the students and other characters in the case studies) are made to say; in other words, how they construct discursive subjectivity and positioning [37]. These different voices will be scrutinized in the excerpts by identifying linguistic markers [36]:

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modalities indicating the subjectivity of the locutor (use of, e.g., could, might, must… by textbook authors);

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passive voices “camouflaging” heterogeneity (as in: the student was told to stop crying; who is talking behind “was told”?);

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pronouns such as the multi-referential third plural person we, which can be used as an enunciative strategy to position oneself;

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reported discourses that include in/directly the voice of heterogeneity in utterances through quotes (e.g., the student told his mother that…).

The critical component of this form of discourse analysis means that we can examine how the use of these linguistic devices signals the construction of student experiences as well as their diversity and identities in the textbooks [37,38]. A mental health and well-being course textbook is ideal for this type of work since it can reveal what is considered to be a “good”, “normal”, “adequate”, “correct” behaviour and experience of university life, as constructed by textbook authors, and indirectly curricula and decision-makers. Following the aforementioned content analysis of the case studies, in the following analysis, we focus on these discursive aspects, identifying how the students’ experiences and their characteristics were presented and evaluated by the textbook authors. Due to space limitation of this article, enunciative-pragmatics has allowed us to identify excerpts from 10 case studies from the two textbooks out of a total of 26. The remaining case studies were not included because of limited space and of the fact that the discursive construction of both university experiences and students’ diversity and identities was very similar to the ones presented below.

4. Analysis

4.1. Constructing (Study) Life at University

This first analytical section focuses on how life experience at university is constructed in the case studies, looking into how it is generalised and contrasted with students’ previous experiences.

4.1.1. Generalising the Study and Life Experience

When the textbook authors review different issues related to well-being and mental health, they describe what studying and living at a university mean for the students. What they assert appears to be both realistic and somewhat fantasized, see stereotyped. As such, university experience in China is depicted as “free”, “relaxed”, full of “setbacks”, and urging “adolescents” (i.e., students in what follows) to reflect on themselves (compare to, e.g., [7], where the Chinese university experience is evaluated in very different terms; see Section 2.1 of this paper).

In PT, university studies are described as “easy” and thus entitling students to “slack”:

• Excerpt 1 (PT; Case study 12, Chapter 10, p. 203) (A short note on translation of the textbook excerpts, which were translated from Chinese into English by the authors and renegotiated on many occasions. The discourses used in the textbooks appear to be a mix of informal, educational, political, metaphorical, and psychological elements. In translating them, we have tried to stick closely to the tone of the original formulations so as to be as faithful as possible to the intended effect. As a consequence, some of the excerpts might not sound “native-like” or “fluid” in the English language. The effect is intended (see [39]).)

Due to the lack of heavy academic tasks during college, and the relief of being far away from their parents, many college students become addicted to games and even abandon their studies. (…) The learning tasks in middle school are arduous and stressful, while in college, they are relatively relaxed and free. This obvious difference causes many students to easily shift from relaxation to indulgence after entering university, and finally, they might begin to indulge solely in games and skip school. Some students said that they worked so hard to enter the university during the middle school period that, when they came to university, they abandoned themselves because of games.

In order to describe the university experience in Excerpt 1, we first note that the authors use the present tense (“they become”; “they are”), giving their statements a generalising and universal tone. The repetition of adjectives such as many (“many students”) also contribute to constructing university experience as mainly “relaxed” and “free”. The end of excerpt 1 marks a change of voice since the enunciator of “some students” (compare with “many students”), are made to speak in the past tense to confirm the argument that university life is about “games” [37]. The repetition of the word “games” is an indirect reference to video games in the two textbooks. In Chinese, the verb to play and the noun game are used to refer to any activity that does not include any work or study [40].

Interestingly, for the authors of PT, the responsibility for having a negative university experience often seems to be blamed on the students themselves, especially for first-year students:

• Excerpt 2 (PT; Case study 10, Chapter 7, p. 120)

Students who have just entered university are prone to have no goals and a negative mentality. For example, they are not interested in their studies and have strong thoughts about learning; they are free from the relatively strict control of high school, and they are less constrained and self-conscious. Poor control ability, obsession with online games, escaping reality, unreasonably talking about love as soon as entering university (…).

In a similar vein as Excerpt 1, the textbook authors generalise about students’ experiences. But instead of referring to ‘many’ or ‘some’ students, the excerpt introduces students as a whole (‘students’), leaving hardly any space for exceptions. The use of the phrase ‘are prone to’ at the beginning of the excerpt also reveals generalising tendencies in the way the textbook authors construct students’ university life. We also note that the repetition of similar keywords as found in Excerpt 1 (and many others) are present in Excerpt 2: ‘free’, ‘games’, ‘less…’. In research on Chinese higher education, such key terms are rarely found (e.g., [41] who describes this environment as ‘stressful’ and ‘theoretical’).

It is interesting to note that this somewhat simplistic description of university life seems to be put into question marginally in a story about a ‘sad college student’ in another case study in PT:

• Excerpt 3 (PT; Case study 3, Chapter 2, p. 23)

Liu said: “The university of my dreams Life is free and romantic. However, after the beginning of school, I realized that reality is different from dreams. I have to wake up early in the morning and call names for class. I can’t help it. I am often late. Teachers mostly use textbooks, which is very boring”.

Instead of commenting directly on the counter-intuitive perspective on university life (‘stress-free’) or using an unnamed student (see Excerpt 1), the direct voice of a student called Liu (with the repeated use of I in Excerpt 3) is actioned to lament about having to work hard but also to comment negatively on their studies (see the use of the evaluative adjective boring).

YT also contains generalities as to what life at a university is but appears not to emphasise so much on, e.g., indulgence, freedom and laziness. The pressure of studying well is mentioned throughout the textbook, and readers are warned against potential mental issues if students are not careful (YT: p. 216). As seen in PT, as a consequence of this pressure, escaping in virtual and social media life is introduced constantly in YT too. Emotional crises related to love issues are also illustrated in YT (see Excerpt 2 for PT, love crises were also mentioned in passing; see [7] too). For instance, the textbook authors conclude a dramatic narrative about love on campus with the following metaphorical coda: “Some people’s gardens go to extremes and even cause tragedies” (YT, p. 215), hinting at what might be considered as the dangers of love involvement.

Many negative university experiences are labelled as ‘tragedies’ in YT, and linked up to broader social discussions in China, especially about students committing suicide (see [13]):

• Excerpt 4 (YT: Case study 11, Chapter 9, p. 171–172)

People cannot help asking what happened to college students today, why they are so vulnerable, and why they would encounter some seemingly not great setbacks.

In the excerpt, the authors generalise not only students’ experiences (‘they are so vulnerable’; ‘they encounter some seemingly not great setbacks’) but also what the general public in China (‘people’) thinks, accompanied by the exaggerating verbal construction ‘can’t help asking what happened to college students today’. Who these people are could be described by means of the concept of ‘doxa’ from enunciative pragmatics, which refers to shared ideas, common sense, which often appear as ‘uncritical opinions passively absorbed and repeated’ [42] (p. 468). Like PT (see Excerpt 3), YT also makes references to the study pressure experienced by some students during their university time. This seems to contradict again the generalising tone in discourses about ‘freedom’ and ‘happy-go-lucky attitudes’ identified in most of the excerpts in this analytical section.

Finally, the fact that time at university is aimed at reflecting on oneself and on one’s identity is emphasised in both textbooks (see [7]). The authors of YT argue that:

• Excerpt 5 (YT; Case study 2, Chapter 2, p. 26)

In adolescence, especially after entering university, everyone may involuntarily have many questions about themselves, such as “what kind of person am I?”; “Why are people so different from person to person?” and “Why do I seem to be fundamentally different?”; “Why do I always feel confused about the future?”.

Here again, the tone is generalising and universalising (are the authors talking about Chinese students and/or students from around the world here?), with three of the four questions formulated in the first-person pronoun I contributing to this impression. It is interesting to note that the word adolescence is used here to refer to students who are all above 18 years old and to their state of mind and identity-seeking. In different languages and parts of the world, adolescence does not necessarily correspond to the same age group [43]. It should be noted here that, for most Chinese students, going to university represents the first time for them to be away from home, from the care of parents and the somewhat protected environment of a primary/secondary school (see [44] about rural and urban high school students in a south-eastern county of China). Questions about self-identity are of course considered by students before entering university, but being by themselves, encountering people who might be very different (university students come from very different parts of China, and might speak a different dialect and have, e.g., different eating habits), the confrontation with this ‘difference in similarity’ will trigger a lot of self-questioning (see [13,45]).

4.1.2. Stories of Change: Contrasting before and during Undergraduate Studies

As we have seen in some of the previous excerpts, throughout the two textbooks constant comparisons between the time before the first year of university studies and the time prior are operated, with the latter systematically described as ‘arduous’ and ‘stressful’ (see Excerpt 1). The university qualifying test taken at the end of secondary education in China (gaokao in Chinese) is often presented as a difficult, competitive and challenging test [46]. Therefore, in contrast, and according to the textbooks, entering university seems to be described as relaxing, free, and leading to indulging in ‘games’.

In this analytical subsection, we examine some of the stories of change experienced during the transition to higher education, as discussed by the textbook authors. These stories of change relate to the transition from high school to university, e.g., moving from a small rural place to a larger city, having to adapt to different climates when moving from the South of China to the North as well as pedagogical differences (see [44]). One important aspect highlighted by the textbook authors has to do with the lack of attention and control concerning all aspects of life and education at university. This is positioned by the authors as a reason for students having to learn to rely on themselves. Making an ‘imaginary’ student speak, the authors of PT write:

• Excerpt 6 (PT; Case study 1, Chapter 1, p. 1)

“The way of learning in universities is completely different from that in middle schools. It is mainly self-directed learning. Every teacher has to deal with many students. At the end of a course, the teacher may not be able to remember the students’ names. What to do? You can only rely on yourself!”

The excerpt, which is a direct quote from an unnamed student, aims to recommend and justify the students’ need to rely on themselves by discussing self-learning (vs. teacher-centeredness of pre-university studies) since (university) teachers cannot focus on all their students (see [13] who noted a similar issue in their study of students’ anxiety and depression). About learning, we note that differing pedagogical methods between higher education and secondary school are often said to affect some of the students in the textbooks. For instance, in a Brainstorming section in PT (p. 120), the reader is asked the following questions: “Please analyze the differences between high school and university learning methods and learning goals. In view of these differences, how should college students effectively carry out learning activities?”. Making the student comment on the fact that teachers may not know their students’ names in Excerpt 6 seems to highlight the loss of students’ identities (‘no name’) and the ensuing struggle this might trigger. For Lapierre [47] being named is a sign of active consideration and acknowledged presence. PT (p. 2) explains that not being ‘known’ by teachers, could trigger mental health issues and influence students’ well-being.

As hinted at earlier, the textbook authors also mention the different ‘caring’ conditions experienced by students before their undergraduate studies:

• Excerpt 7 (PT: Case study 11, Chapter 9, p. 170)

Before the age of 20, we lived under the expectations of our family and teachers, and we were under a lot of pressure. We kept doing homework, exams, and going to school (…).

Interestingly, this is one of the few excerpts from the case studies that makes use of an inclusive first plural person pronoun (‘we’, [36]), whereby the textbook authors make a general statement in the past tense (‘lived’, ‘were’, ‘kept doing’…) about life before and after, including themselves in the argument. Supervision from parents and teachers, as well as intensive study pressure, are constructed as leaving very little time for anything extra in pre-university life. Indirectly this contributes to contrast this way of life to university life as it was generalised in Section 4.1.1.

In Case study 8, the authors explain how the life of a student is transformed when they enter university:

• Excerpt 8 (PT, Case study 8, Chapter 1, p. 14)

Many of the daily affairs that parents do for them have to be solved by themselves; they have to start a collective life; they don’t know how to communicate with others normally…

Unlike excerpt 7, we have moved from an inclusive ‘we’ (textbook authors and everyone else included), which made generalised comments about family and study life prior to university, to the third plural person pronoun ‘they’ (referring to students in general, exclusive of the authors) to describe new challenges faced on campus. As such, having to live with many other individuals in a dormitory, eating with others, having all sorts of activities together seem to represent big changes and challenges for the students according to the authors, since, in their pre-university years their ‘private’ space was usually mostly limited to and managed by family (see similar issues noted in [48] about rural first-generation college students in China). When the textbook authors comment on these changes, they argue that they can lead to unstable food intake, poor sleep quality and even a lack of interest in learning, should the students not be ready for these new conditions (e.g., PT: p. 14–15).

Finally, it is important to note that the issue of social class is also mentioned on many occasions in the textbooks. Change related to the different social positions on campus and in the students’ hometown is also said to affect students’ well-being and mental health (see Section 4.2).

4.2. Constructing ‘the Chinese University Student’: Students’ Portraits as Archetypes

This second analytical section focuses on how Chinese university students are represented in the two textbooks and how much their diversity is taken into account. Based on Sadker and Sadker’s [29] principle of invisibility in textbook analysis (who is represented, who is not?), we examine the voices included in the case studies: e.g., students (heard and unheard) as well as the presence of archetypical figures. What identity markers and characteristics seem to be prevalent to describe the issues of well-being and mental health caused by university experiences?

The two textbooks include different kinds of characters. In PT, characters from the arts (e.g., the main character of the American film A Beautiful Mind about a ‘genius’ student who experiences paranoia; PT: p. 90) or references to famous people such as the American financier and industrial organiser J. P. Morgan (1837–1913) (PT: p. 96), are used metaphorically to illustrate specific psychological concepts in the Reading sections. Other archetypical, see stereotypical figures, such as students with differing social class backgrounds, students with problematic personalities (e.g., bad-tempered), psychologically weak students (e.g., depressed and anxious), Internet addicts and criminals, are included too. The very same types of characters are also found in YT, with the extra category of the sexual deviant. Based on our textbook analyses, it is impossible to determine if the characters are inventions or from real-life experiences of the textbook authors. In what follows we compare how the textbooks construct the same categories of characters and focus on 1. students with a lower socio-economic background, 2. students with problematic personalities as well as 3. criminals. These three categories are the most prominent in the case studies.

In the textbooks social-class based determination of students relates mostly to students from Chinese rural backgrounds. For example, in YT a first-year student called Han, from a remote mountainous area, whose family is described as poor, struggles with a sense of inferiority compared to other students:

• Excerpt 9 (YT; Case study 3, Chapter 2, p. 25)

He had hoped to start a new study and life, but after entering school for a period of time, he found that he was far from others in many aspects, and he became pessimistic and disappointed. He has an accent and was teased by his classmates when he spoke English; he was not good at communication and was very lonely. Unlike students in the city, (…) the gap between economy and life was even greater. He felt that he would never be able to compare with others. Since then, he has lost his original self-confidence and self-esteem in studying and living, and his sense of inferiority has become stronger and stronger.

The issue of negative emotions, depression, anxiety and adaptability has been amply discussed in the literature on Chinese higher education (e.g., [9,13]—see psychological suzhi studies in Section 2.1). In Excerpt 9, an anonymous student, who is only referred to as ‘he’, illustrates the kinds of issues that students from a poorer countryside background (vs. ‘students in the city’) might experience on a Chinese campus, from bullying (his classmates laughed at his accent in English, a language often considered as a sign of distinction, modernity and economic development in China, see [49]) to developing a sense of inferiority. The textbook authors use this case study to explore the concept of inferiority complex, which they describe as multifaceted (e.g., it can be due to dissatisfaction with one’s physical quality, social conditions or abilities, YT: p. 24). The concept is only illustrated by making references to ‘social conditions’. To overcome this complex, the authors write extensively about the need to learn to evaluate oneself ‘positively’ and ‘objectively’ and to compensate actively, seemingly ignoring the fact that the issue is a structural, economic and group-identity matter [50]. While the ‘blame’ seems to be on the individual student, reflections on and actions related to the aforementioned issues are essential to make potential changes to such difficult situations [51].

In a similar vein, in a story about a poor student named Xiaoyi, PT textbook authors detail the kinds of negative experiences that this second archetypical student is going through at university:

• Excerpt 10 (PT; Case study 1, Chapter 1, p. 15)

After entering university, Xiaoyi could not catch up no matter how hard she worked for her studies. After the end of the first semester, the other five people in her dormitory were awarded scholarships, but Xiaoyi was not. This made Xiaoyi, who had a poor family financial situation, feel discouraged. At the beginning of her sophomore year, Xiaoyi devoted herself to revising. She was preparing for English Band 4 and Computer Band 2 exams [i.e., names of tests in Chinese higher education], but during this period, she was full of demotivation, so she failed both exams. What made her feel even more embarrassed was the fact that her female classmates all compared each other’s hands and wore designer clothes. Only she was still wearing old high school clothes. She was dressed in old and strange clothes. Therefore, Xiaoyi was alone wherever she went, felt sad and even regretted making it to college…

While Excerpt 9 focused on several (mostly) personal factors behind the anonymous student’s bad experience and failure, Excerpt 10 emphasises the connections between well-being/mental health at university and the economic positions of the students: her family has ‘a poor financial situation’; she compares herself to others (‘hands’ (opportunity to afford manicure) and ‘designer clothes’) and thus feels demotivated. Cheng et al. [48] draw very similar conclusions in their study on rural first-generation college students and their parents in Chinese higher education.

The next type of archetypical character used by the authors is represented by students with personality disorders. As said before (see Section 2.1), this has also been the focus of many studies on Chinese education (e.g., [9]). In a story entitled ‘Proud Princess’, YT (p. 45) uses another example based on socio-economic characteristics but this time to show the problems a wealthy student named Chen experiences (NB: her parents are state officials). The way the student treats her classmates, dormitory mates and teachers is described as proving that the student has a ‘conceited mentality’ (YT: p. 45). The authors explain her bad behaviours towards others by referring to improper family education (she was spoiled), too ‘easy’ a life, her views on self and other too one-sided (amongst others). Although references to ‘privileged’ students are rare in the textbooks, the case of Chen seems to be used to counter-balance a little the usual overemphasis on ‘poorer’ students.

In PT another example of a character illustrating personality issues is represented by the story of a ‘boy’ who is ‘bad-tempered’ (no mention if this character is a university student):

• Excerpt 11 (PT; Case study 5, Chapter 5, p. 80)

His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he loses his temper or quarrels with someone, he could nail one to the fence of the yard. On the first day, the boy nailed 37 nails. In the next few days, he learned to control his temper, and the number of nails he used gradually decreased. He found that controlling his temper was actually much easier than nailing a nail. Finally, one day, he did not drive in a single nail. He happily told his father about it. His dad said: “From now on, if you don’t lose your temper for a whole day, you can pull out a nail”. The days passed, and in the end, all the nails were pulled out.

Excerpt 11, which resembles the genre of the Fable, with a happy ending, seems to serve the purpose of providing some solutions to students’ personality problems [7]. The young boy’s voice is unheard in the Excerpt but we note that his father is made to speak directly, giving his voice special importance in the story [36]. Following the Excerpt, the textbook authors tell us that the father congratulated his son but showed him that the nail holes would always stay intact and that hurting others leaves wounds (PT: 80). Then ensues a coda from the textbook authors about the importance of good interpersonal relationships during university studies: “Your friends are your precious property. They always listen to your sorrows at any time, support you when you need them, give you happiness, make you happy, and make you brave. Tell all the people you think are friends how much you love them” (PT: p. 80). This coda, or a kind of ‘short’ moral at the end of a story, is targeted directly at the reader (university students) with the use of the second personal pronoun (you, your…) in order to inspire them towards success in their own mental health and well-being. The content of this Excerpt is very much reminiscent of psychology suzhi, whose focus is societal harmony and adjustment to contexts and others ([14], see Section 2.1).

The final example of archetypical characters is represented by the figure of the criminal with two differing stories.

YT’s story is a about a 20-year-old gay university student called Zhang falling victim to cybercrime during his sentimental involvement with a male netizen. We note that no direct discussion of LGBTQ+ issues were found in the textbooks and that, instead, this case study seems to be used to illustrate further problems related to love and online crimes. When Zhang tried to break up with his online lover, the latter kidnapped him and tried to blackmail his family. He ended up raping and murdering Zhang. The textbook authors use this story to warn the readers about this type of cybercrime. On p. 135 (YT), they conclude: “Using homosexuality as a special way to commit crimes has become an important social issue that threatens the physical and mental health of young people”. When the textbook authors explain why students would want to explore online relationships, they maintain (again) that the students are somewhat too “naïve” and “inexperienced” (see Section 4.1.1). This is how the authors generalise about students (‘they’, ‘their’ in what follows) in Excerpt 12, based on this single case study:

• Excerpt 12 (YT; Case study 6, Chapter 7, p. 135)

Because of their simple experience and inexperience in the world, they tend to have illusions about the future, their ability to see right from wrong is low, and they pursue romantic love excessively, so they are easily confused by the sweet words of some ‘love masters’, and eventually they fall into the net trap.

From an enunciative pragmatic perspective [35], Excerpt 12 is interesting since the reader (most probably first-year Chinese students on the compulsory mental health and well-being course) are spoken to in a mirror form, whereby the textbook authors refer to them as ‘they’, ‘them’—instead of e.g., addressing them directly by means of ‘you’ or an inclusive ‘we’, as was the case in some of the previous excerpts. The effect creates distance between the authors-teachers and the readers-students, while increasing hierarchies between the ones who seem to know what is right versus wrong.

While in Excerpt 12 the student is the victim of crime, in PT another student ‘plays’ the criminal. This concerns 23-year old Wang who, upon his return from studying in Japan, stabbed his mother to death at the airport because she would not commit to giving him extra money. After presenting his story, the authors propose to reflect on the following question: “Why does Wang hate his mother? Please analyze what is the root cause of this tragedy of a son assassinating the mother” (PT: 4). Unlike the previous case study from Excerpt 12 the authors do not offer any analysis and/or interpretation of the case but include an ‘inspirational’ story about a man walking in the forest and coming across a hungry tiger, who chases him to the edge of a cliff. The man then has to make a decision about how to survive. A generic coda/moral to the story reads as follows: “Maintain a good mental state, no matter the situation” (PT: p. 4).

5. Discussion and Conclusions

The aim of this paper was to examine how students’ experiences of higher education are constructed through the eyes of two widely used and popular textbooks introducing undergraduate students’ mental health and well-being in a compulsory course for all students in China. Since up to 30 textbooks and varied materials designed by teachers appear to be used in different parts of mainland China, our results do not aim to generalise for all the teaching materials used for this compulsory course. However, considering the fact that textbooks and materials are controlled by the authorities in China and that guidelines need to be followed strictly, we might assume with caution that some of the results from this study might apply to case studies in other materials. We need to remind our readers here that the course in question is not meant to train psychology majors in China but to support them in their transition to life and study in higher education.

5.1. The Chinese Student Experience as a Monolith?

In general, our analysis showed that the two textbooks systematically contrasted the time before university and during, with attitudes, behaviours, lifestyles and pressure depicted as differing and somehow ‘better’ in students’ pre-university lives (see similar results in [48]). While students faced strong pressure from living with parents and making sure they would score the best marks at the end of secondary education to get into the best universities, their experiences at university seemed to be described in general as free, ‘happy-go-lucky’ and somewhat lazy. Research on Chinese higher education contradicts this impression for both students and their parents, especially when considering the pressure of finding a good job after graduation (e.g., [10,41]).

What is more, in the textbooks, the problems that the students were said to face are many and varied and the focus appears to be mostly on social relations, sentimental and sexual experiences, internet addiction, and broader identity issues (see Table 3). The different living conditions (dormitory life vs. staying at home), constant togetherness with other students and teachers on campus, confrontation with diversity, new learning-teaching experiences were constructed and discussed by the textbook authors as leading to different kinds of well-being and mental health issues. In the authors’ comments, conclusions and narratives, which contained many generalizations and moralistic judgments, we often felt the dominance of specific homogenising views on what should be considered as ‘normal’ in student experiences and identities [6]. Although the case studies contained different types of characters describing their experiences, these often gave the impression that the Chinese student experience was described as a monolith in the textbooks.

Finally, it is noteworthy that, in the two textbooks, the dichotomies of rural (mountainous)-urban and wealthy-poor seemed to dominate but problematised from an individual perspective rather than critiquing the influence of the broader socio-economic structure in China (e.g., [9,50]). On the other hand, gender issues were rarely touched upon, although their influences can be clearly felt in many case studies (see Table 3 where the gender of the characters included in the case studies is indicated; see also the LGBTQ+ issue which is not discussed directly in case study 6 in YT).

5.2. Student Diversity and Identity as Solid and Static

By focusing on issues of well-being and mental health, the textbooks allowed us to identify how the ‘student experience’ was constructed as somewhat normative and stereotypical at times, leading to an understanding of student diversity and identity as something static and solid rather than complex and fluid [52]. The analysis of the case studies, through a specific form of discourse analysis that paid attention to positioning and the use of identity markers to construct realities [35], seemed to demonstrate that the textbooks correspond somehow to the emphasis on cognitive, individual, and adaptable qualities as noted by psychological suzhi studies in China (e.g., [16]). However, no direct references to this important Chinese scientific construct were identified in the textbooks.

What our analysis also highlighted is that the textbook authors seemed to create generalisations and stereotypes about specific types of students and experiences, even if, at times, a small number of case studies seemed to have been included to counter-balance for example the over-emphasis on ‘poor’ students’ problems. The fact that some voices (e.g., students-readers, parents, teachers) were heard more directly through quotes while others were entirely unheard in the two textbooks, also contributed to creating specific images of, e.g., ‘normality’, ‘deviance’, and students’ ‘responsibility’ for their own negative experiences. Following Sadker and Sadker’s insistence on looking into invisibility in textbooks [29] we also noticed that the voices of, e.g., successful ‘transitioners’ to university were not heard in the textbooks (see Table 3, such students could also serve as good case studies in the textbooks). What is more we do not know if the voices of the students that were used in the textbooks are authentic or invented ones, based on the authors’ own subjective understanding of the issues, their long experiences of teaching this course or even the ideological ‘orders’ imposed by official curricula. According to Kerbrat-Orecchioni ([37], amongst others), the inclusion and/or exclusion of individuals’ voices in what is said represent important discursive strategies in the construction of a given topic (here: mental health and well-being). These strategies can serve the purpose of constructing ‘truths’ in a certain way, emphasising and pushing forward the speaker’s viewpoint and manipulating others [37].

As textbooks on mental health and well-being, PT and YT also represent what Lofsdóttir [53] (p. 29) has discussed as “knowledge that is generally not contested but more or less accepted as ‘true’ or at the very least not harshly questioned”. The students often appeared to be categorised into large groups such as ‘college students’, or subgroups related to social class (very wealthy and privileged or poor; gay, etc.). Specific and somewhat stereotypical subjectivities were thus created by the textbook authors, which runs the risk of adding to the simplification of well-being and mental health issues and, more importantly, to “indoctrinate students into a particular way of thinking” [21] (p. 53). As far as Sadker and Sadker’s aspect of selectivity (an issue is interpreted in one way only) is concerned [29], although many ‘orders’ and imposed perspectives were identified through the analysis, we noted efforts to explain, understand and/or leave things open for interpretation for students-readers, especially when direct questions were asked to them by the authors.

5.3. Recommendations for Using the Textbooks under Review

To conclude, one should bear in mind that a textbook is only a teaching resource and that, even if teachers rely on them heavily, what is taught and discussed and how, might differ from the original message in a given textbook. Even if we have identified archetypical and stereotypical figures, stories and specific arguments about e.g., ‘normality’ in the textbooks, it does not necessarily mean that they will be passed blindly onto the students or that the students will find them credible enough.

To make textbooks like PT and YT more impactful, considering the severe mental health issues faced by many Chinese students [7], teachers and textbook authors could train students to read these books critically and reflexively, thus reinforcing and building up their own agency in dealing with matters of well-being and mental health. When consulting e.g., a case study from the textbooks, students could reflect on these questions alone or together with others:

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How are the stories constructed and for what purposes?

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What slogans and ‘taken-for-granted’ explanations seem to accompany the interpretations of the stories? What alternative explanations could be proposed?

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What metaphors are used to describe e.g., reactions to university life and what do they tell us about the authors’ subjective perceptions?

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What concepts and theories from research and everyday life are used to discuss the experiences and characteristics of students? Are they used in a balanced way by the textbook authors, leaving space for disagreement about e.g., the interpretation of a case study?

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Who is (not) represented in the textbooks and for what potential reason(s)? Whose identity is excluded and why? What identity markers are used to tell stories of mental health and well-being (gender, race, social class…)?

Textbooks are always representations on the world [24], and by observing how they re-present (i.e., present and re-embed specific knowledge again, see [54]), one could reflect in even more complex ways on societal, institutional and scientific expectations in terms of (proper) experiences, feelings, emotions, understanding, and ‘normality’, in China and elsewhere. Interviewing students and teachers who have used the textbooks under review in China could also provide more stimulating results concerning “the statue of Venus with a broken arm” (see title of paper), as well as corroboration and/or contradiction of this study.