Dr. Ying Zhou obtained her PhD at the University of Groningen and is trained in both Educational Studies and China Studies. She is currently an assistant professor at the Institute of Education, Xiamen University. Her research interests include progressivism and education in East Asia, the history of educational psychology and measurement, and the history of disciplines and knowledge. More broadly, her work engages with educational history, philosophy of education, citizenship studies, and intellectual history. Her current research investigates how “new” and “scientific” educational ideas, methods, and practices from abroad were transferred and recontextualized in modern China from a transnational perspective, revealing their entanglement with scientific development, the pursuit of progress, and the nation-state-building.
Research focus
History of knowledge and discipline; progressivism and education
Monography
Education and Democracy in China: To Confine the Surging Tide from the Outside World, 1901-1937. Leiden: Brill, 2024
Selected journal articles
A fragmentation of Dewey: Dewey in the political and educational reforms of China, 1910s-1920s, Comparative Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2024.2366759
“进化”的伦理学：求“新”时代的道德教育（1904-1923），《北京大学教育评论》，2025年第1期。
Was educational reform in China’s New Policies “genuine reform”? The critical role of political ideology (1901-1904), Paedagogica Historica, https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2020.1864426
‘Top-down policy, bottom-up countermeasures’: Game playing between Chinese private universities and the party-state, 1927-37, Historical Research, https://academic.oup.com/histres/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/hisres/htaf019/8285993?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
The Dalton Plan in modern China: rising in spirit yet failing to become a system, Paedagogica Historica, https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2025.2459174
道尔顿制的“中国之旅”：柏克赫斯特1925年在华活动年表，《华东师范大学学报（教育科学版）》，2020年第12期。
The adaptation of Kandel’s ideas in Chinese comparative education, 1920s-1930s, Asia Pacific Education Review, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-024-09992-z