Perceptions of innovative pedagogies in contemporary China : Example of Chinese private schools ; Les perceptions des pédagogies innovatrices en Chine contemporaine : Exemple des écoles privées chinoises

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Abstract

This thesis aims to understand the challenges of innovative pedagogies through the perceptions of the different actors of the latter in the contemporary Chinese context. By retracing the history of the movement of new education both in the West and in China at the turn of the twentieth century and by grasping the main ideas shared by different currents of new pedagogies, we question the current situation of innovative pedagogies offered by Chinese private schools. After twenty years of banishment due to its incompatibility with communist ideology, the private school has been requested since the 1980s by the government in order to fill funding gaps in the public school system and to bring diversity and dynamic to the education system and alternative education to Chinese families (Ye et al., 2002). If families from the middle classes, which are booming at the moment, were the public of private schools, in what social context, for what reasons, and according to what issues are new pedagogies sought and valued in contemporary China? In order to answer this question, we are organizing surveys on Chinese private schools and on teachers and parents who are also part of this new school model. In this research, we try to discover the pedagogical proposals of private schools by an analysis of their website and to collect the perceptions of teachers and families on pedagogical innovations proposed by the school by organizing semi-structured interviews. Through this study, which stems from critical sociology, we noticed that the relatively independent position of the Chinese private school, which makes it possible to escape in part from the State prerogatives in educational matters and authorizes pedagogical innovations that it implicitly or explicitly proposes could offer the Chinese middle classes a school product more in line with their values, habits, and aspirations (Bourdieu, 1979; Perrenoud, 1985). A new social transformation is passing through the Chinese middle classes and through private schools. ; Cette thèse ...