Education College

Introduction to the School of Education

The School of Education of CUN is an important research center for ethnic education in China. It is a new-style teaching and research institution which integrates education and art, teaching and research, bearing the important mission to educate professionals in ethnic education for the country. It is also one of the key units that the “211 Project” of CUN aims to construct. In 1991, the Higher Education Research Office, the Education Teaching Section, and the Studies of Ethnic Education magazine of CUN combined to form the ethnic education research institute, and after several years of fast development has expanded into the Department of Education in September, 2000, which also carried the feature of a research institute. In March 2003, the Art Research Institute was incorporated into this department and the Art Education Centre was established. At the end of 2003 the School of Educational was founded. At present, this school has several subsections such as the Education Teaching Section, the Institute of Ethnic Education, the Art Education Centre, and the Art Institute, etc.. The School owns a competent and prestigious staff. There are 27 teachers and administrative employees, most of whom are Ph.D. holders and have the experience of engaging in advanced studies abroad. The School of Educational enjoys great fame in the academic circle for its abundant research achievements in ethnic education and art, and is widely acclaimed for the excellent professional personnel in ethnic minority education it has produced.

The School has built a multiple level and high standard system to educate talents in education, which includes undergraduate education, graduate and doctoral education. Now there is an undergraduate program of education, four graduate programs including education principle, comparative education, Chinese ethnic minority education, Chinese ethnic minority art, and one doctoral program of Chinese ethnic minority education. As the only doctoral program in this field in China, the doctoral program of Chinese ethnic minority education has exerted great influence both home and abroad. Our solid academic foundation and a high-standard teaching and research team are the fundamental guarantee of advanced personnel training and scientific research of art and education.

Till March 2007, the School of Education has recruited students of education for 11 years, Master candidates for 10 years, and Ph.D. candidates for 11 years. It also recruited the first class of Arts Education undergraduates (adult education) in China, and held further education classes as well as informal graduate classes of ethnic education and art education for ethnic regions for a number of times. The School of Education has educated a large number of high-level talents for China’s education and art. Its graduates are working in all walks of life and engaged in teaching, education management, psychological counseling, long-range planning and development of education, mass media, and human resources management, and in result enjoy a good social reputation in the national education system. The School of Education makes full use of its function of imparting the knowledge of education, providing professional services for teachers’ training, and improving students’ artistic quality.

The Institute of Ethnic Education in the School of Education is the earliest and the most fruitful in the field of ethnic education research in China, with its teaching and research remaining in the leading level. It has become an important base for China’s ethnic education studies, and has already achieved certain noticeable academic position and fame both home and abroad. Since the establishment of the institute, it has successively undertaken many important research projects assigned by the State Education Commission, the State Nationalities Affairs Commission, and the Ministry of Education for the “eighth five-year”, “ninth five-year”, and “tenth five-year” plans, as well as those of the “211 Project” and “985 Project”; it has published a series of works in ethnic education, such as A Survey of Chinese Minority Education, Bilingual Education for Chinese Minorities: An Introduction, General Ethnic Education, The Educational History of Chinese Minorities, Educational Ethnics and serial teaching materials such as “Anthropology of Education” and “Ethnic Education”; moreover, it has initially constructed the theoretical framework of ethnic education, and achieved fruitful results in the fields of basic theoretical research on ethnic education, bilingual education studies, ethnic education policy studies, minority advanced education studies, minority fundamental education studies, foreign studies of ethnic education, minority girls’ studies, minority education case studies, studies of educational anthropology, ethnic cultural heritage and education. In recent years, the projects it undertook included the “tenth five-year” National Education Science Planning project “A Study of China’s Western Development and Minority Education Reform”, “ A Survey of Chinese Folk Arts Education”, the “tenth five-year” National Ministries of Education and Science Project “Experimental Study of English Curriculum of Primary Schools in Ethnic Areas”, “A Comparative Study of Ethnic Education Legislation in the United States, Russia, and Canada”, “Environmental Education Study in Ethnic Areas”, the “tenth five-year” Beijing Quality Textbooks Project “General Chinese Ethnic Art Education”, the “tenth five-year” Beijing Youth Educational Science Project “The Investigation and Experimental Research on English teaching for adults in Beijing”; the “tenth five-year” CUN Project “A Study of Chinese Minority Education Policy”, “International Comparative Study of Minority Education Legislation”, CUN “tenth five-year” Project as well as “211 Project” “Educational Anthropology of Different Forms of Traditional Cultural Heritage of Chinese Minorities” and “Educational Ethnics Series”.

Art Institute in the School of Education, originally known as the “Institute of Minority Literature and Arts of CUN”, was founded in 1980. It was initiated by Comrade Zhou Yang, and formally approved by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission. It is China’s first comprehensive research institute specialized in the study of minority literature and art. In September 2000, it was renamed as the Institute of Arts of CUN. Over the past 20 years, researchers in the Art Institute have ventured to the mountains and hills, highland and lakes of minority regions, collecting materials for the editing, and writing of dozens of works such as History of the Discovery of Chinese Rock Paintings, Musical Instruments of Minorities, Towards the Primitive Art World, Ancient Chinese Minority Fine Art, Three Epic of Chinese Minority: An Discussion, On relation of Gesar and Jiang Greig, Chinese Folk Literature, Minority Poetry Rhyming, A Study of Mongolia Classical Literature, Yao’s Ethnic Literary History, Companionn and Companionn Music, Daur Custom, and another 1,000 theses and articles. In the “eighth five-year” period, the Institute wrote and published some key research achievements of CUN: Chinese Minority Art History, History of Chinese Minority Dance, Chinese Minority Music History and Cultural History of the Minorities in Northern China, Tibetan Music Studies. The Art Institute has made eye-catching achievements in discovering, sorting, inheriting, and spreading minority arts. It is now in charge of the National “tenth five-year” Philosophy and Social Science Project “Investigation on Qinghai and Gansu Mongolian Music Culture”, Ministry of Education’s Humanities And Social Science Research Project “Heritage and Integration of Qinghai and Gansu Mongolian (West Mongolian) Music Culture”, CUN’s Youth Research Project “Discovery and Sorting of Traditional Minority Aesthetic Resources”.

The School of Education of CUN has drawn up a new development plan. The School’s basic orientation is: with serving mainly minority areas as a direction, with teaching and research as two branches, with nurturing creative and high-quality talents as the core, with the study of education as the foundation, with ethnic education as our characteristics, on the basis of the stable scale of enrollment for the undergraduate program of education, the school will gradually shift its focus to the development of post-graduate education, and in 5-10 years manages to build a first-class, distinctive and new Institute of Education. As for scientific research, the school’s emphasis will be on the major theoretical and practical issues of higher education, basic education and ethnic education in ethnic areas; minority cultural heritage and education; the inheritance, development and modernization of folk art, striving to become the domestically leading organization of national education research and higher education professionals’ training, which has an international perspective and remains in the forefront of the ethnic education and ethnic art research.

The entire staff of the School will combine their efforts, work hard and strive to contribute more to the prosperity of the national ethnic education science and art education, and to the realization of CUN’s goal of setting up a “comprehensive, research-based, world-class university of nationalities”.