Innovations in Teachers’ Professional Learning Networks in China: Efforts Toward Educational Equality

Professional practice in schools and colleges is widely acknowledged to be a collaborative activity among teachers, schools, researchers, university faculty, and administrators. In recent years, cross-school collaboration has come to be viewed as necessary for furthering school improvement and reform and has received attention in many global education systems.

Focusing on cross-school networks in China, Ye offers insight into what enables professional learning networks (PLNs) to support professional learning within and across these networks. Innovations in Teachers’ Professional Learning Networks in China examines external factors related to the education system such as migration, local economy, geography, rural-urban education gaps, alongside internal education factors like PLN members’ mutual understandings, resource exchanges and network flexibility.

Chapters offers unique insights into the forms learning networks for professionals in education have taken in recent history, particularly in an Eastern context, and how this relates to contemporary global conceptualisations of PLNs.

Wangbei Ye is a Professor of Moral-Political Education at East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. She is a K-12 teacher educator in moral-political education. Her teaching and research focus on China’s moral-political education curriculum and instruction, and moral-political education teacher education (Grades 1-12). In the past seven years, she has been deeply involved in teacher professional learning networks, teaching research groups at school levels and city levels in Jiangsu, Henan, and Shanghai; education group schools in 13 provinces in China, and district-led school districts.