Search Results (92)

The sustainable development of teaching expertise in research-intensive universities remains a critical global challenge. This study investigates the distinctive characteristics of expert teachers—exemplary faculty in research universities—addressing their developmental trajectories and motivational mechanisms within prevailing incentive systems that prioritize research productivity over pedagogical excellence. Employing grounded theory methodology, we conducted iterative coding of 20,000-word interview transcripts from 13 teaching-awarded professors at Chinese “Double First-Class” universities. Key findings reveal the following: (1) Compared to the original K-12 expert teacher model, university-level teaching experts exhibit distinctive disciplinary mastery—characterized by systematic knowledge structuring and cross-disciplinary integration capabilities. (2) Their developmental trajectory transcends linear expertise acquisition, instead manifesting as a problem-solving continuum across four nonlinear phases: career initiation, dilemma adaptation, theoretical consciousness, and leadership expansion. (3) Sustainable teaching excellence relies fundamentally on teachers’ professional passion, sustained through a virtuous cycle of high-quality instructional engagement and external validation (including positive student feedback, institutional recognition, and peer collaboration). Universities must establish comprehensive support systems—including (a) fostering a supportive and flexible learning atmosphere, (b) reforming evaluation mechanisms, and (c) facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration through teaching development communities—to institutionalize this developmental ecosystem. Full article

Generative AI (GenAI) technologies have been widely adopted by college students since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. While the debate about GenAI’s role in higher education continues, there is a lack of empirical evidence regarding whether and when these technologies can improve the learning experience for college students. This study utilizes data from a survey of 72,615 undergraduate students across 25 universities and colleges in China to explore the relationships between GenAI use and student learning engagement in different learning environments. The findings reveal that over sixty percent of Chinese college students use GenAI technologies in Academic Year 2023–2024, with academic use exceeding daily use. GenAI use in academic tasks is related to more cognitive and emotional engagement, though it may also reduce active learning activities and learning motivation. Furthermore, this study highlights that the role of GenAI varies across learning environments. The positive associations of GenAI and student engagement are most prominent for students in “high-challenge and high-support” learning contexts, while GenAI use is mostly negatively associated with student engagement in “low-challenge, high-support” courses. These findings suggest that while GenAI plays a valuable role in the learning process for college students, its effectiveness is fundamentally conditioned by the instructional design of human teachers. Full article

This narrative inquiry explores a vibrant classroom knowledge community in a Chinese normal university. By examining the teacher’s interactions, we analyze the community’s development through three perspectives: (1) the author’s narrative of the course outline, (2) the teacher’s narrative of classroom culture, and (3) students’ narratives of their growth. The author presents a student-centered model and seven steps for enacting the course, outlining the environment for cultivating the knowledge community. The teacher’s narrative reveals clues to his success, emphasizing his use of storytelling to foster the community and share educational ideas. Students’ narratives reflect their growth, validating the classroom as a safe space for development and language learning. The significance of this research is that the classroom knowledge community consisted of the teacher, his undergraduate students, and his post-graduates. The three layers existed because of this unrestrained character, devoid of conflicts of interest, created a safe place for students’ development. This research study adds to the literature on how knowledge communities form in school contexts. It focuses on a particular space and time and involves multiple layers of participants, which is prerequisite to the conceptualization of classroom knowledge community. This research has important implications for college language education. Full article

With the rapid expansion of higher education in China, university teachers are facing increasing workloads and mounting performance pressures, posing significant threats to their occupational health. Consequently, how to enhance job performance while safeguarding faculty well-being has become a critical issue for higher education administrators. This study aims to explore the role of health-promoting leadership (HPL) in addressing the dual challenge of enhancing university teachers’ job performance while maintaining their occupational health. Drawing on the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this study conceptualizes job burnout as both a core indicator of occupational health and a mediating variable, as well as proposing a dual-path model to examine the direct and indirect effects of HPL on teachers’ job performance. A survey of 556 university teachers in Jiangxi Province, China, was conducted; the data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 22.0 and AMOS version 26.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). The findings suggest that HPL is positively associated with job performance, both directly and indirectly through reduced burnout, supporting a dual-pathway mechanism consistent with COR theory. These results contribute to a better understanding of the potential role of HPL in balancing teacher well-being and performance in the context of Chinese higher education. This study also extends the cross-cultural application of COR theory and provides theoretical and practical insights into how HPL may help alleviate teacher burnout and support the development of health-promoting universities. Full article

Globalization enhances communication among people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As cultural artifacts, English language teaching textbooks are crucial media for learners’ intercultural education, especially under the concept of English as a lingua franca. This study investigated the cultural elements in Chinese university English textbooks via the approach of content analysis. Specifically, a set of Chinese English language teaching textbooks was selected as the sample and the audio and video materials were transcribed into texts as the data. The results were displayed by the counts of cultural elements. The data revealed that international cultures and source cultures were highlighted, and the textbooks were not oriented toward native-speakers’ English. Moreover, the distribution of cultural categories across the textbooks remains imbalanced, with cultural products occupying the largest proportion, and cultural perspectives displayed the least. This is mainly attributed to the fact that cultural perspectives are implicit cultures under the surface of the iceberg, and notably, they are sporadically reflected by the cultural products, practices, and persons. The findings provide suggestions that writers include balanced cultural elements in compiling English language teaching textbooks, and teachers scrutinize cultural representation and design intercultural activities. Full article

This systematic literature review studies student entrepreneurial competence and its impact on sustainable development in the context of higher education in China. The objectives of this study are to identify the key factors affecting student entrepreneurial competence, recent research trends, and the role of student entrepreneurial competence in sustainable development. Using the PRISMA model, relevant literature from 2016 to 2025 was screened from databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect, and a total of 11 empirical studies from peer-reviewed journals were analyzed. The results show that entrepreneurial competitions, entrepreneurship education, experiential learning, interdisciplinarity, entrepreneurship policies, teachers, entrepreneurial curricula, the entrepreneurial environment, and morals all influence student entrepreneurial competence. In addition, this study reveals the role of student entrepreneurial competence in promoting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically in promoting innovation, creating employment opportunities, and enhancing college students’ sense of social responsibility. This study systematically identifies the core factors that affect student entrepreneurial competence in Chinese universities and provides practical suggestions for optimizing entrepreneurial education policies, improving student entrepreneurial competence, and promoting sustainable entrepreneurship. This study provides a theoretical basis for policymakers and university administrators and proposes strategies for optimizing entrepreneurial education that can be used as a reference, providing the Chinese experience for other emerging Asian economies to learn from, thereby expanding the global academic discussion on sustainable entrepreneurial education. Full article

Students majoring in physical education are the main source of physical education teachers in Chinese schools, and they are the main body in achieving the function of physical education in schools. The improvement of their altruistic behavior helps enhance the educational literacy of outstanding physical education teachers. This study conducted a questionnaire survey on 310 students majoring in physical education from 5 universities in 5 selected regions using the General Interpersonal Communication Objective Scale, Interpersonal Reactivity Index-C, the “responsibility” subscale of the Big Five Inventory Questionnaire, and the Altruistic Behavior of College Students questionnaire. We performed correlation analysis, mediation effect analysis, and moderation effect analysis on the data using SPSS 24.0 and MPLUS 7.4. Empathy partially mediates 30% of the total effect between interpersonal relationships and altruistic behavior; social responsibility has a moderating effect on empathy and altruistic behavior, with higher levels of responsibility having a greater moderating effect. Interpersonal relationships, empathy, and a sense of responsibility affect the current, recent, and long-term states of altruistic behavior, respectively. To improve students’ altruistic behavior throughout the entire process, schools should develop training systems specifically for interpersonal relationships, empathy, and social responsibility. Full article

In the new normal, online education has become a norm and is considered equally important as traditional face-to-face education. Although online teaching has improved accessibility, reduced management costs, and expanded educational opportunities, there are also some issues, such as whether technology and internet access are widespread and whether the quality of online education is better or worse compared to previous modes. With the rapid development of online education, it is crucial to investigate the key factors influencing university teachers’ continuous usage of online teaching platforms and their working mechanisms, which is of great significance for improving the level of educational informatization and promoting educational modernization. This study mainly explores the continuous usage intention of online teaching platforms by Chinese university teachers under the new normal and its influencing factors, aiming to provide theoretical support and practical insights for improving educational informatization, promoting educational modernization, and designing and optimizing online teaching platforms. This study builds a new theoretical framework based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), UTAUT model, and the theory of planned behavior (TPB). From April to November 2024, 343 questionnaires were collected from Chinese university teachers. Combining structural equation modeling (SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the key factors influencing teachers’ continuous usage of online platforms and their configuration relationships are systematically discussed. Not only are the key factors verified, but the configuration relationships are also revealed, providing deeper insights for universities to design, promote, and optimize online teaching platforms and offering theoretical support and practical guidance for promoting sustainable educational development. Full article

With the constant evolution of information and communication technology (ICT), smart classrooms have profoundly influenced Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) by presenting advanced ICT that markedly improved the effectiveness and quality of teaching and learning. Teacher communication technology teaching and immediacy behaviors are crucial for leading and reforming the teaching and learning process in smart classrooms. Meanwhile, teacher–student rapport and student engagement are also key factors that influence ESD. This study aims to investigate the correlation among teacher ICT teaching, teacher immediacy behaviors, teacher–student rapport and student engagement in smart classroom teaching. We surveyed 1032 Chinese university students using the questionnaire method and analyzed the data using structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings revealed that teacher ICT teaching and immediacy behaviors exerted a noteworthy positive impact on student engagement and teacher–student rapport. Meanwhile, teacher ICT teaching markedly positively correlated with verbal immediacy but markedly negatively correlated with nonverbal immediacy. These findings have practical implications for ESD: in smart classrooms, teacher ICT teaching and their immediacy behaviors serve as vital factors in augmenting teaching quality, encouraging student engagement and fostering harmonious teacher–student rapport. Thus, teachers must harness their ICT teaching skills, flexibly assimilate instant behaviors into the teaching process and interact with students in a richer and more diversified manner to effectively augment teaching quality and promote the overall and sustainable growth of students. Furthermore, this study can inform the expansion of smart classrooms, which in the future should not only offer teachers a convenient teaching and learning environment but also evade ICT that limits teacher nonverbal immediacy behaviors. Full article

This paper investigates the motivations and satisfaction levels of international students studying in China, using a marketing approach. Through a literature review, it examines education service quality, marketing tools, and the importance of international students. The main goal is to identify the main incentives for students coming to China and to assess the gaps between their expectations and satisfaction with various aspects of the marketing mix during their studies. To achieve this goal, a quantitative survey was conducted, which reveals that the most valued incentives are related to the campus environment, professional teachers, student life, and cultural diversity. In terms of student satisfaction, the results highlight that the least satisfactory factors include aspects related to the promotion of international studies and the partnerships between universities. These areas require more attention from Chinese university management for future improvement. The paper concludes with theoretical implications and managerial recommendations for universities, national policymakers, and Chinese authorities in the context of China’s national education development strategy, entitled “Opinions on Accelerating and Expanding the Opening Up of Education to the World in the New Era”. Full article

This study investigates the obstacles encountered by female graduates in China’s higher education system when considering entrepreneurship by employing the Theory of Planned Behaviour as an analytical framework. Although entrepreneurship is widely acknowledged as crucial for economic and personal growth, gender inequalities remain, with women being severely underrepresented. The primary objective of this study is to gain insight into the underlying reasons behind the reluctance of female university students, specifically in China, to pursue entrepreneurial ventures. In this study, we conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with female university students from different majors to identify the key barriers that discourage them from starting their businesses. The factors discovered are instrumental and affective attitudes towards entrepreneurship, subjective norms (family, friends, teachers, and others), and perceived behavioural control (encompassing past experiences, second-hand information, and anticipated obstacles). The results showed that a conservative familial atmosphere, risk-averse cultural norms, and limited access to helpful resources and experiences in universities are major obstacles. This study enriches the present knowledge by providing a detailed explanation of the gender-specific obstacles in entrepreneurship in the Chinese context. It proposes that interventions at the educational and governmental levels are imperative to promote female entrepreneurship. Full article

With the popularity of mobile networks and intelligent terminals, online fragmented learning, as a new learning method, has become the mainstream way for college students to acquire knowledge and study independently. However, college students are prone to “accept-interruption” in online fragmented learning; thus, it is difficult for them to master a complete knowledge system and form a rigorous logic system, which is essential to ensure the effect of online fragmented learning. Therefore, this study investigates the antecedents of college students’ continuance behaviors in online fragmented learning (CBOFL). Based on the expectation confirmation model (ECM), a theoretical model is developed to examine the factors influencing college students’ CBOFL. Taking a total of 429 undergraduate students who have studied contest courses on the Chinese university massive open online courses (MOOCs) for research subjects, the mechanism underlying the determinants of college students’ CBOFL is analyzed, and six hypotheses are tested by a structural equation modeling (SEM) technique with AMOS. The results indicate that confirmation positively impacts intrinsic learning motivation and satisfaction; intrinsic learning motivation, satisfaction, and teachers’ influence all significantly positively affect college students’ CBOFL. Additionally, the predicting powers of different factors on college students’ CBOFL vary broadly; therein, satisfaction has the most significant effect. This study makes theoretical contributions to the quantitative research on college students’ CBOFL and literature on the ECM. Still, it also has important practical significance in guiding college students’ CBOFL and facilitating the sustainability of online fragmented learning. Full article

Evaluation methods based on data-driven techniques and artificial intelligence for the sustainable enrollment plan configurations of Chinese universities have become a research hotspot in the field of higher education teaching reform. Enrollment, education, and employment constitute the three key pillars of talent cultivation in universities. However, due to an unclear understanding of their interconnection, universities have yet to establish robust quantitative relationship models, hindering the formation of an evaluation mechanism for sustainable enrollment plan configurations. This study begins by constructing a relevant indicator system and utilizing real enrollment data from a specific university. Through statistical methods such as correlation analysis, it systematically sorts out key variables and identifies seven effective indicators, including average admission score and first-time graduation rate. Subsequently, by using the increase or decrease in enrollment quotas for each major as the experimental target, evaluation models for sustainable enrollment plan configurations aimed at enhancing the advanced education rate are constructed using naïve Bayes networks and tree-augmented Bayesian networks; these are compared with three other classic machine learning methods. The accuracy of these models is evaluated through confusion matrices and receiver operating characteristic curves. Additionally, the Birnbaum importance analysis method is utilized to prioritize remaining variables, ultimately identifying the optimal combination strategy of indicators conducive to the sustainable development of the advanced education rate. The results indicate that the average admission score, transfer rate, and student/teacher ratio are the top 3 prognostic factors affecting the advanced education rate, with the TAN model achieving an accuracy of 96.49%, thus demonstrating good reliability. Full article

Assessment for learning (AFL) has been associated with curriculum and teaching reform for the past three decades. However, studies on undergraduate students’ perceptions of their mathematics teachers’ AFL practices are still very limited in the Chinese higher education context. This quantitative study investigated three independent variables—teacher formal feedback and support, interactive dialog and peer collaboration, and learning-oriented assessment—that influence undergraduate students’ ability to take responsibility for their learning through the mediation of the factor of active engagement with subject matter in first-year mathematics courses. One hundred and sixty-eight students from a Chinese “double-first-class” university were recruited to provide valid questionnaire data using the convenience sampling method. Partial least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The results showed that interactive dialog and peer collaboration, as well as learning-oriented assessment, have a direct effect on students’ active engagement with the subject matter and an indirect effect on undergraduate students taking responsibility for their learning in first-year mathematics courses. In addition, learning-oriented assessment was the biggest factor influencing undergraduate students’ ability to take responsibility for their learning in first-year mathematics courses. This study contributes by developing a conceptual model and providing new insights into Chinese higher education sectors on factors that can improve undergraduate students’ ability to take responsibility for their learning. Full article

Extant research on students’ feedback conceptions has reported effects on performance, but the relationship of feedback conceptions to important motivational factors is not empirically evidenced. This study fills this gap by providing empirical data about students’ conceptions of feedback in relation to their motivational beliefs and achievement goals. Measurement and structural modelling analyses were based on undergraduate student data from New Zealand domestic (n = 832) and Chinese (People’s Republic of China, PRC) international students (n = 504) in New Zealand universities. Based on cross-ethnic invariant measurement models of conceptions of feedback, motivational beliefs, and achievement goals, a structural equation model uncovered links between feedback conceptions, motivational beliefs, and achievement goals. Specifically, feedback conceptions believing in actively using feedback and the value of teacher comments significantly promoted self-efficacy and task value beliefs, as well as mastery and performance-approach goals. In contrast, maladaptive feedback perceptions (i.e., feedback is ignored or used for judging performance against external standards or relative to others) had a minimal-to-negative impact on motivational beliefs and triggered stronger performance-avoidance goals. This study empirically demonstrates that conceptions of feedback support motivational beliefs and goal approaches consistent with previous claims concerning their self-regulatory role. Full article