About Peking University Education Review

Peking University Education Review

Peking University Education Review is a Chinese-language quarterly journal of education published in Beijing by the Graduate School of Education of Peking University. Its Chinese title is 北京大学教育评论. It is a national Chinese core journal and a CSSCI source journal, and Peking University's own school describes it as a peer-reviewed quarterly that has been considered one of the leading education journals in China. It carries research on higher education, education policy, the economics of education, and the history and philosophy of education.

The journal's authority is the authority of its home. Peking University's Graduate School of Education is one of China's principal centres of education research — a school that hosts a Ministry of Education key research base in the economics of education, the UNESCO Chair in Higher Education for the Asia-Pacific region and the secretariat of the China Cai Yuanpei Research Association — and its journal is the school's voice in the national conversation about Chinese education.

The publishing school

The Graduate School of Education (GSE) was established in 2000, by merging Peking University's Institute of Higher Education and Institute of Economics of Education with the university's audio-visual education centre. Education at Peking University has a long lineage behind that merger: a teacher-training sector was set up in 1902 in the Imperial University of Peking, the university's predecessor; an education department followed in the 1920s; and from 1980 the discipline was rebuilt through the Research Division (later Institute) of Higher Education founded that year, the Institute of Economics of Education founded in 1999, and finally the graduate school.

GSE today contains four departments — Education and Human Development; Educational Economics and Administration; Educational Technology; and Educational Leadership and Policy — together with the Institute of Higher Education and the Institute of Economics of Education, the latter a Key Research Base for Humanities and Social Science approved by the Ministry of Education, and a set of research centres covering basic education and teacher education, doctoral education, international higher education, digital learning and related fields. The school states plainly that it hosts the journal Peking University Education Review, one of national Chinese core journals and CSSCI source journals.

A leading education journal

The school's English description of the journal is direct: the Graduate School of Education sponsors a peer-reviewed quarterly journal entitled Peking University Education Review, which has been considered as one of the leading education journals in China. Two designations support that assessment in the Chinese system: it is a national Chinese core journal in the Peking University core lists — a distinction with a certain circular elegance, since the core-journal guide is itself a Peking University product — and a source journal of the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI), Nanjing University's selective index of leading social-science periodicals.

Peer review, which the school explicitly attributes to the journal, is the third support. As studies of Chinese national journals note, peer review has become central to scholarly publishing in China and elite journals' standards are increasingly scrutinised; a journal that advertises peer review, holds CSSCI and core status, and is produced by a school whose research focuses on the important practical and basic theoretical problems of education presents itself — credibly — at the top of its field.

Scope: higher education and the study of education

The journal carries research on higher education, education policy, education economics and the history and philosophy of education — the four territories that correspond to its school's structure and history. Higher education is the founding territory: Peking University's education research was rebuilt after 1980 around the study of higher education itself, and the journal remains a principal venue for research on Chinese universities — their governance, finance, expansion and place in the world, including comparative work such as Ruth Hayhoe's studies of Chinese universities published in dialogue with the journal's community.

Education policy and the economics of education form the second territory, reflecting the Institute of Economics of Education's status as a ministry key research base and the school's strength in education finance and planning — fields in which its scholars led national projects from the 1980s onward, including foundational studies of the appropriate proportion of education funding in national income and of the economic returns to educational investment. The history and philosophy of education — the third territory — draws on Peking University's longer humanistic tradition, from Cai Yuanpei's presidency of the university onward; the school hosts the secretariat of the research association devoted to him.

Quarterly rhythm and scholarly form

The journal is published quarterly — four issues a year. For a journal of education research, the quarterly rhythm suits long-form scholarly work: theoretical essays, historical studies, policy analyses and empirical research reported at full length. Education is a field in which the Chinese journal literature mixes normative argument with empirical study, and a leading quarterly from Peking University sets the terms of that mixture for the national field.

Its quarterly cadence also distinguishes it from the bimonthly education journals of other universities. Fewer, weightier issues from the country's most prestigious university is a deliberate posture: the Review speaks four times a year, and expects to be heard.

Research culture of the school

The journal should be read alongside its school's research programme. Since 2000, GSE's research has extended from its two founding tracks — Chinese and comparative higher education, and the economics of education and educational finance — to theories and principles of education, research methodology, educational administration and policy, student development, information technology in education, basic education, teacher education, and education and human resources in business organisations. Faculty have carried hundreds of funded research projects, including national social science and natural science foundation projects and national education planning projects.

A school journal in such an institution is both outlet and instrument: it publishes the school's own research community and the national field together, and its editorial choices — which problems, which methods, which scholars — help define what education research at Peking University means. The journal's presence in the school's own self-description, alongside its UNESCO chair and its ministry research base, shows the institution counts the journal among its principal assets.

Authors and readership

Authors in the journal are education scholars from Peking University and from universities across China, with the international comparative community appearing in its pages and citations. Its readership is the Chinese education-research profession: professors and doctoral students in education, researchers in the national institutes of education sciences, and policymakers who follow scholarly work on education.

Education journals in China serve a field with unusual policy proximity — education is a ministry-directed system, and research on its finance, governance and history feeds directly into planning. A leading journal from Peking University therefore has readers in government as well as in universities, and its articles on higher education and education economics are part of the evidence base of Chinese education policy debate.

Identification

The journal is identified by its Chinese title 北京大学教育评论, its publisher the Graduate School of Education of Peking University, its Beijing base, its quarterly frequency and its core and CSSCI status. It should be distinguished from Peking University's other journals — including its comprehensive social sciences journal and its education-adjacent titles — and from the similarly named education reviews of other universities: this is the education faculty's own journal, edited and published by the Graduate School of Education.

Place in Chinese education scholarship

Chinese education research has several leading journals — the national institute's titles, and the reviews of the great normal universities and of Peking and Tsinghua. Peking University Education Review stands in that company with a distinctive profile: a quarterly, peer-reviewed, CSSCI and core-listed journal whose strengths follow one school's — higher education, education policy and economics, and the history and philosophy of education, pursued at China's most prestigious university.

Founded as the journal of a graduate school created in 2000 from institutes reaching back to 1980 and a discipline reaching back to 1902, it carries more history than its young parent school suggests. That layered inheritance — Imperial University teacher training, Cai Yuanpei's university, the rebuilt higher-education research of the reform era — is what the Review publishes from, and it is why its four issues a year are read as among the leading statements of Chinese education scholarship.