CERCular: No.2 of 1997

Dr. Zhang Weiyuan, post-doctoral fellow at CERC, has completed a manuscript, entitled Young People and Careers: A Comparative Study of School Careers Guidance in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Edinburgh . This is the first work to examine existing careers guidance theories and practice in secondary schools in Hong Kong, employing a comparative study with Shanghai and Edinburgh. It will be a valuable reference book for the courses in Careers Guidance and Counselling. It will also make a wide academic contribution in the areas of comparative education and guidance and counselling. The Comparative Education Research Centre will publish the book.

Dr. Gui Qin, the second post-doctoral fellow in the Comparative Education Research Centre assumed her duties in June 1997, on a two-year appointment. On the basis of her previous comparative research on educational objectives in Japan and China, she will extend her research to Hong Kong in the context of the local cultural background and process of modernization. Her research work is in collaboration with Prof. Cheng Kai Ming. She will also give lectures on comparative education.

Dr. Gui gained her bachelor's degree in 1984 at Harbin Normal University, where her major study was English language and literature. Then she was offered a position as an assistant lecturer in English at Hunan Normal College. In 1985 she was awarded a three-year M.Ed. scholarship in comparative education. She received a master's degree in Education at Northeast Normal University in 1988. From June 1988 to August 1990, she was a lecturer in comparative education in the Education Department of Harbin Normal University. In the fall of 1990 she was awarded a Ph.D. scholarship from the Institute of Foreign Education Research at Beijing Normal University under the supervision of Professor Gu Mingyuan, Chairman of the Comparative Education Society of China. In June 1994 she was awarded her doctoral degree.

Dr. Gui's research interests are in comparative studies of theory and practice in the education of the talented and the development of human resources. She has completed several research projects, including "A Comparison of Entrance Examinations in Japan and China," and "Career Guidance and Placement in Colleges and Universities in Developed Countries." She has published two books and many articles in the field of Comparative Education in mainland China. One of her books, entitled From Confucianism to Modernism: a Comparative Study of Educational Objectives in China and Japan, was published in 1996. At present she is in charge of two Ninth-Five-Year-Plan educational research projects: "A Comparative Study on the View of Talent's Quality in East and West," and "Comparative Research on the Relationship between Entrance Examination System and Personnel System: Case Studies in Beijing, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai".