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WOMEN AND TECHNOLOGY IN TEACHING 137
the teacher herself, embedding her and her professional status in more broadly understood
social experiences of modernisation. Much has to change and to continue to change for the
multi-modal teacher to become a recognised figure on the modern landscape of Chinese
society. Just as filmic versions of the teacher become ‘professionalised’ in films for
children and families, so the teacher in the classroom needs to have her negotiations with
modernisation recognised in a world beyond the primary school gates.
Notes
1 This handy and nicely discriminated definition comes from the promotional materials for the
journal of the same title, Visual Communications, <http://www.sagepub.co.uk/ frame.html?
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/details/j0359.html> (accessed 14 Sept. 2002).
2 This idea has been somewhat lampooned by the Zhang Yimou film Not One Less (Yige ye bu
shao, 1999), where a very young and distinctly amateur teacher searches for a lost pupil so
as not to forfeit her wages.
3 ‘Hot-linked’ refers to the ability to move through digitally created, stored and accessed
planes of information and resources.
4Extracted from The People’s Daily, 4 April, 2001, by China Education News Archive, 19
Sept. 2002.
5 Teachers are actually termed jiaoshi in schools, although laoshi is used to denote the special
inherent merits of the postholder. They are subdivided into senior teachers (gaoji jiaoshi) and
first grade teachers (yiji jiaoshi). There are also awards for skilful teachers awarded at
municipal and provincial levels.
6 Notwithstanding the well-taken claim that a double burden of work and house chores have
been the strongest outcome for women in CCP China, a condition that worsens as short-
term strategies of modernisation ‘rationalise’ labour and send women back to the kitchen.
7 China Statistical Yearbook 1998; Unesco World Education Report, 1998.
8 From the 1980s to 1999 there have been six major education laws promulgated: Regulations
on degrees (1980), Compulsory Education Law (1986), Teacher’s Law (1993), Education
Law (1995), Vocational Educational law (1996) and Higher Education Law (1998). The
teacher’s law with its requirements for continuous monitoring and in-service training is the
key to the professionalisation drive.
9 In 1998, there were 229 Normal training schools (shihda) 875 secondary training schools—
both of which prepare teachers for zhongxue and gaoxue (and graduate about 300,000
students). There were also 190 educational institutes and over 2,000 in-service teacher
training schools. Teachers for kindergarten and primary schools have only graduated from
junior high schools.
10 Fan Wengang.
11 For ‘foreign language’ in these proposals, read ‘English’.
12 Three years or four years.
13 Wang Liuyi—Wang 6/1 has a name that records his birthday on Children’s Day, 1 June.
His work in children’s media seems therefore entirely appropriate!
14 I was gratified to see a class on the Shanghai Animation Studio film Three Monks, Sange heshang
demonstrated at the conference—as it is a film we have used in focus group work among
Chinese Australians in Western Australia (Donald 2001).