Leading Educational Change: A Study of the Impact of Transnational University on China's Higher Education Reform

Abstract

This study investigates the external impacts derived from the development of Transnational Higher Education (TNHE) in China and how the impacts have driven individual practitioners and Chinese higher education institutions to promote China’s Higher Education (HE) reform through the lens of individual learning and organizational learning. This study interviewed nine research participants from Chinese universities by employing a qualitative case-study focusing on the experiences of a Sino-foreign cooperative university in China. It examined various institutional documents to uncover the impacts and how they have been exerted. The findings indicate that TNHE can contribute to the transformational changes of the HE sector through exerting influences on individual cognition, which further triggers individual behavioural changes, and the aggregated individual change agent’s initiatives lead to organizational cultural shift as an institutional response to social calls for changes. This process of impacts is an interactive, dynamic and continuous organizational learning process, which relies on both Chinese participants and TNHE universities to take intentional initiatives.