Access to higher education in China has opened up significantly in the move towards a mass higher education system. However, aggregate growth does not necessarily imply fair or reasonable distribution of opportunity. In fact, the expansion of higher education has a rather more complex influence on opportunity when admissions statistics are viewed by geographical region, rural and urban environment, social class, type of school, gender, and ethnicity. Since 1999, gaps in access opportunities have generally diminished, especially in terms of the urban-rural dimension. Efforts to increase university admission rates for women and minorities have resulted in significant progress. However, the gap in university admission between different social classes has been closing more slowly. Children from more advantaged backgrounds have more chances to study at key universities, and differences in access between provinces are still considerable. Social class polarization in secondary school is still a serious issue. Such problems at high school level directly lead to the accumulation and continuation of a gap in opportunities to access higher education. While agreeing that the aggregate growth of higher education provision in China is a positive development, we also strive to improve equality of opportunity.
Attending to practice has become a significant topic in science education today. As scientific argumentation is a typical form of scientific practice as well as an important educational practice, more and more attention has been paid to it by science education researchers. Evaluating students' competence in scientific argumentation is one of the most important research topics, but in China, science researchers seldom concentrate on it because the diverse educational values of scientific argumentation need to be further understood. The present study sought to examine the performance of Chinese students participating in written scientific argumentation in the context of chemistry. After clarifying the conception of scientific argumentation in science education, and comparing the evaluation criteria in domestic and international science education research, written scientific argumentation tasks in the context of chemistry were designed and criteria for their evaluation were constructed and improved. In total five tasks were designed for evaluation. All of the five tasks were aimed at evaluating students' competence of selecting (or putting forward) claims, evidence and warrants, in addition, two tasks investigated the competence of refuting arguments. The general criteria for evaluation was constructed according to the four dimensions of scientific argumentation, they were the structure components, the content quality, the logic of justification and language. For each task, content criteria and performance criteria for evaluation were constructed. After analysis and improvement of the criteria based on two pilot tests and the Rasch model, it was obvious that the criteria met the standards, effectively and credibly, for this study on the assessment of students' competence in written scientific argumentation. The number of students who participated in the formal test was 578 (304 males and 274 females). Through this kind of evaluation, this study found that the students' competence in written scientific argumentation was generally weak, and was influenced by some factors. Specifically, firstly, the students could put forward claims and evidence more easily than warrants and rebuttals. Secondly, the specific tasks had an influence on the performance of the students in written scientific argumentation. In regard to other factors, gender did not influence the students' competence in written scientific argumentation, but the grade level and school level were key factors. The students' competence in written scientific argumentation at grade level four and three other school grade levels were significantly different. Finally, some changes to the Chinese chemistry curriculum were proposed based on the results of this study.
Designing and reforming the subjects on the College Entrance Examination, based on the new curriculum, are the focal point and also the most difficult aspect of entrance exam reform. The entrance exam subject programs instituted in more than ten "subject reform" regions in China, including the provinces of Shandong, Ningxia, Guangdong, Hainan, and Jiangsu, each possess unique characteristics. Each has also given rise to a number of issues that urgently require resolution. In examining the present trend toward the entrance exam subject reforms characteristic of a developed country, the value orientation and the new pursuit of China's programs to design subjects for the entrance exam should be to reinforce opportunities to choose subjects, advocate both unification and diversification, maintain a certain level of subject coverage, emphasize overall quality appraisal, implement categorized and ranked tests, and pursue fairness and accuracy.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.