Study On The Learning City Construction: Exploration Of Theoretical Origins And Practical Directions

From the educational perspective, this thesis focuses on the Learning City Construction by emphasizing on the exploration of Theoretical Origins and Practical Directions. The exploration is mainly relaved on literature research, theoretical research, case study and comparative research, discussing the domestic and foreign study on the theory and practice of learning cities construction; the goal of this thesis is to present the core theoretical framework with guiding significance and basic practice trend with reference significance, combining with universal core experience based on real practices in Shanghai, which should be able to apply to construction of learning cities in China, especially Shanghai.Exclusive the introduction part, this thesis is consisted by three parts with eight chapters in total.Part One, Theories, is based on the Hutchins and Longworth’s personal experiences and theoretical practices in 1960s and 1990s, which digs and explores theoretical origin and theoretical basis of learning cities construction around fellow aspects:generation of theory, theory connotation, and theory implementation.Chapter One, the origin of theory:Hutchins’s theories. As to the generation of theory, the main incentives are the society promotion and increment of citizens’leisure time; beyond the main incentives, there are several important theoretical basis----educational perennnialism, liberal education theory, and lifelong education theory. Considering human developments, education progress, and society promotion. Hutchins expects the education to be re-formed as it is meant to be----everyone can receive liberal education, and education is able to promote itself independently in real. He advocates wisdom of subject, student center, full participation, and prefers a combination of ancient Greece society and teaching model in Denmark as his model.Chapter Two, the basis of theory:Longworth’s theories. This chapter presents a 30-year development of educational society after Hutchins’publication on his theory; it focuses on the transformation of learning cities based on learning society. A further study on Longworth’s theory has been applied. As to the generation of theory, the main incentives are the demand of city renewal and publics’need on further education; the theoretical basis are consisted by lifelong learning theory, learning society theory and human capital theory. In explaining the connotation, Longworth believes that the construction of learning cities means training change into lifelong learning, everyone’s lifelong all-around development and social sustainable development. Longworth has proposed four execution perspectives for his theory:focus of people’s learning needs, base of core competence, combination of all resources, and execution of all necessary measures.Part Two, Practice, is based on reference from native and international sources with proper local exploration and research on real practices in Shanghai, which presents and analyzes the basic practice trend of domestic and foreign learning cities construction.Chapter Three, practice retrospect in global:literature review based on global perspective. This chapter analyzes the educational overall practice of thinking through examples from UNESCO, OECD, and EU. On the other hand, the presentation of learning cities construction in UK, German, and Korea have illustrated a very practical path; the experiences are worthy to study for.Chapter Four, practice retrospect in China:literature review based on local perspective.This chapter presents the current status of learning cities construction in China; four cities are selected and discussed in this section:Beijing, Shenzhen, Xi’an, and Ningbo.Chapter Five, practice retrospect in Shanghai:based on local exploration and research on real practices in Shanghai. This chapter discusses the analysis of interviews from scholar and practitioner of learning cities construction in Shanghai. The analysis is expanded from the perspective of wider benefits, major building blocks and fundamental conditions.Part Three, Synthesis discussion, has pointed out core theoretical framework with guiding significance for learning cities construction based on Part one. Basic practice trend with reference significance for learning cities construction in China is summarized from Part two. The combination of previous two parts will be the final consultants and discussions for current construction status in China, especially in Shanghai.Chapter Six, summary and conclusion of core theoretical framework. Based on the result and discussions in Part One, this chapter discusses the understanding in core theoretical framework from the perspective of theoretical understand, which covers the basic definition, key features, relations and influences of several key concepts. The perspective of practical understand will also be presented in this chapter, which covers preconditions, key purposes, basic requirements, and necessary measures for learning cities construction.Chapter Seven, investigation and analysis of basic practice trend. Based on the result and discussions in Part Two, the discussion begins with the summary of global practice from the examples of international organizations, countries and their cities, which from perspective wider benefits, major building blocks and fundamental conditions. On the basis, this chapter contrasts, analyzes and thinks about the anastomosis and difference between real practice in Shanghai and basic practice trend.Chapter Eight, introspection and future discussion based on summary of core theoretical framework and basic practice trend. This chapter discusses three major questions:the definition, the purpose, and the building solution of learning cities construction. It analyzes the core theoretical framework and basic practice trend as well as an introspection of current problems in constructions and potential solutions. It has discussed the future innovation focus of learning cities construction in China.