A Study On The Educational Function Of The Confucius Institute

Since the world’s first Confucius Institute established in Seoul (November21,2004), The Confucius Institute has been through ten years of history. By the end of2013, the world has established440Confucius institutes and646Confucius classrooms, located in120countries (regions). With the expansion of the scale of the Confucius Institute, its impact on the world is also growing.The Confucius Institute is an important carrier to promote Chinese teaching and cultural communication,enhance China’s international image. The Confucius Institute as a comprehensive education and cultural exchange platform, has become an important window of the world to know China’s political, economic and cultural.Confucius Institute has rapid development in a short period of time, in addition to the rising demand of Chinese, also due to its accurate and reasonable mechanisms, conform to the requirements of the international environment and the contemporary education development. On the one hand, globalization makes educational and cultural exchanges among different countries become increasingly frequent. A variety of new educational subjects and communication forms emerging in the world, so that people facing increasingly diverse educational and cultural environment. On the other hand, as China’s national strength growing, international status improving, the demand of understanding China from the world is rising. China needs to present itself to the world in the right way to improve the international discourse.Confucius Institute as a new form of cross-border educational cooperation in the context of globalization, is the product of the times development and social needs.The Confucius Institute initiative to go out to make the world better understanding of China, engaged in language teaching and cultural communication by means of educational cooperation, not only promoting educational and cultural exchanges, increasing the diversity of cultural and education, but also affecting the educational system at home and abroad, promoting the national education reform.Unlike most language teaching institutions, the teaching activities of Confucius Institute shoulder the responsibility of cultural transmission. Unlike other cultural promotion agencies, while promoting cultural exchange, the Confucius Institute effectively promoting the reform and development of national education, enhancing the level of openness and international level of education.Although many Chinese universities are engaged in the international exchange of education, but most are conducted in the local level to attract foreign educational intervention,but the Confucius Institute is in an "go out" approach to actively participate in educational competition and cooperation at the international level. Such cross-border cooperation is different from multinationals, it will affect people’s ideas and thought patterns, with distinct educational characteristics. Therefore, the study on the educational function of the Confucius Institute has great theoretical and practical significance.It is not only the theoretical demands of education reform, but also the need of promoting Chinese education and cultural oppenness, eliminating world cultural barriers, and achieving common development of the world education.We study from the perspective of educational communication and ecological education, use the resources and network-based theory to analysis the educational function of Confucius Institute. In this paper,we Summarizing the Education status of the Confucius Institute, analysising the connotation of the educational function of the Confucius Institute, exploring the main constraints of achieving the educational function of the Confucius Institute, explaining the route to achieve the educational function of the Confucius Institute, and making recommendations to optimize the educational function. This paper aims to promote the improvement of the educational function of the Confucius Institute, to further promote the healthy and sustainable development of the Confucius Institute.This article attempts to answer the following questions:what is the particularity of Confucius Institute as an educational subject in the context of globalization? How does the educational function of Confucius Institute impact the entire society? What are the impact mechanism and implementation mechanism of the educational function of Confucius Institute? How to improve the educational function of the Confucius Institute? Around these issues, the paper is divided into seven chapters, each chapter details are as follows:Chapter1, Introduction. This chapter mainly introduces the origin of questions,the significance of research, the theoretical basis and research review and framework of this thesis.Chapter2, The Education Status of Confucius Institute. This chapter frist analyzes the inevitability and specificity of Confucius Institute as an educational body,and then analyzes several main types of the Confucius Institute currently exist. Different type of Confucius Institute has different educational philosophy and working mechanism, they use multi-media resources, through language teaching, cultural exchanges, Chinese and cultural studies, community service and other ways to work. Finally, this chapter summarizes the characteristics of the Confucius Institute education, which are transnational and cross-concept, multi-subject and multi-level cooperation, integration of diverse local needs and educational forms, double embeddedness of social environment and educational system.Chapter3, The Connotation of Confucius Institute Educational Function. The education status of the Confucius Institute determines the educational function of the Confucius Institute.This chapter first define the educational function of the Confucius Institute, and then analyze the radiation levels of the educational function of the Confucius Institute.Based on the above, This chapter analyzes the exemplification of the Confucius Institute educational function from different aspects, which are language skills upgrading and demand meeting,cultural heritage and intercultural dialogue, international understanding and international cooperation, incubation of new educational subject and social class, education opening and educational cooperation institutional change and ecological balance.Chapter4, The Basis for Achieving the Educational Function of the Confucius Institute. This chapter considers the philosophy factors, the Confucius Institute factors, the cooperation factors and the regional factors are fundamental elements to achieve the educational function of the Confucius Institute. On this basis, further analyzes the constraints to achieve the educational function of the Confucius Institute in terms of the positioning of functional orientation, the improving of educational practice, the interacting with partners and the gaming of the local governments.Chapter5, The Route of Achieving the Educational Function of the Confucius Institute. Based on the use of resources and network theory, this chapter focuses on the construction, operation and influence of the Confucius Institute Education network. In the context of globalization, it is necessary to create a global network of educational resources to maximize the value of education.The construction of the Confucius Institute education network is a major route to achieve the educational function of the Confucius Institute.This chapter analyzes different levels and relationships of the Confucius Institute education network, explores the characteristics and effects of interactions between different actors under a variety of different cooperative state. This chapter presents that the linkage mode of transmission is the operation mode of the Confucius Institute education network, then further discussed the maintenance of the education network under circumstances of less network connection and poor network inovation. Finally, this chapter analyzes the impact of the Confucius Institute education network in terms of competitive advantage and the propagation effects.Chapter6,The Optimization of Confucius Institute Educational Function. This chapter focuses on how to enhance the educational value of the Confucius Institute, give suggestions from the government, the Confucius Institute Headquarters, the Confucius Institute itself, explores the sustainable language and culture communications strategy. The government departments should provide legal protection for the healthy functioning of the Confucius Institute, create a relaxed international environment; the Confucius Institute Headquarters should provide organizational support and institutional basis to improve the governance of the Confucius Institute; the Confucius Institute itself needs to be improved from the content, form and environment of the education,in order to better adapt to and meet the different learning needs.The education communicators should develop and enhance their quality and ability to realize the effective communication and exchanges.Chapter7, Review and Conclusion. This chapter makes a summary of the principle view,conclusion and innovation of this thesis and proposes the future research area.