You Yun

Research interests and areas:

• Reflecting on education policy borrowingand knowledge production in the context of globalization, particularly drawing on the decolonial perspective

• Destructing the Western dominant construction, representation and referencing of East Asian education, and moving further, elaborating Chinese educational ideas and thoughts from sui generis onto-epistemo-cosmologicallenses

• Reimagining and reconfiguring education to reinforce interrelatedness and interdependency within and beyond human society by deeply engaging trans-indigenous cultures and philosophies

• Understanding Chinese education discourses and reforms in the historical, economic, socio-political and culturalinterplays, with an especial focus on social and gender inequalities

Educational experience

2011-2015 PhD. Institute of Education (IOE), University College London

2010-2011 MA. Institute of Education (IOE), University College London

2008-2010 MA. College of Education, Capital Normal University

2003-2007 BA. College of Education, Capital Normal University

Professional affiliations and activities

2022-present Editorial board member, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education

2021 George Bereday Award committee member, Comparative and International Education Society (CIES)

Courses

Academic English (graduate students, compulsory)

Moral education: Theory and Method (undergraduate students, compulsory)

Cross-cultural education studies (graduate students, optional)

Daodejing reading (graduate students, optional)

Education ideas and policies across cultures (undergraduate students, optional)

Publications

Books and Special Issues

·    You, Y. (2026). (Un)learning from the other: Chinese education in and beyond the shadow of PISA success. Routledge.

·    You, Y. with Wang, T., and Yu, M. (equal contribution). (2026). Transcending Western-centrism and nationalism: China and Beyond. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education.

·     You, Y. with Silova, I., and Rappleye, J. (equal contribution). (2020). Beyond the western horizon in educational research: Toward a deeper dialogue about our interdependent futures. ECNU Review of Education.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

·     You, Y. (2026). Section introduction: Geopolitics of knowledge and onto-epistemic decoloniality. In D. B. Edwards, A. Webb, M. N. Asadullah and H. B. Kenayathulla (eds.), The Global Governance of Education and Sustainable Development (pp. 353-364). Palgrave Macmillan Cham.

·     Silova, I., You, Y., and Auld, E. (2026). (Re)enchanting with Asia as Method: Rituals of refusal in the Schoolhouse of Modernity. Asia Pacific Education Review. http://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-026-10138-6.

·     You, Y. (2026). Measuring social and emotional development with a ‘Western ruler’: problematising the ‘cross-cultural comparability’ of the Study on Social and Emotional Skills. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 56(2), 256–273.

·     You, Y. with Wang, T., and Yu, M. (equal contribution). (2026).Transcending Western-Centrism and Nationalism: China and Beyond (editorial).Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 56(2), 169–179.

·     You, Y. with Lou, J., Teng, J., Wang, T., Xiang, X., and Yu, M. (equal contribution). (2026). Selves as methods: Transnational scholars' journey toward pluriversality through collaborative autoethnography. International Journal of Social Research Methodology. DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2025.2537395.

·     You, Y., and Choi, T. H. (2025). The halted neoliberalising of public schools: Policy trajectories of two ‘failed’ privatisation reforms in South Korea and China.Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 55(3), 313–331.

·     You, Y., and Yang, X. (2025). Modernizing education with Chinese characteristics? The Chinese academic discourse on education modernization (1985–2021). Asian Pacific Education Review, 27, 89–101.

·    You, Y. (2025). Cultivating educational modernisation in Chinese cultural tradition [in Chinese]. Journal of Guangxi Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 61(2), 61–64.

·   You, Y. (2024). A critical gaze on 'learning from China' in education: A self-reflective approach. In G. Halász and J. Setényi (eds.), Learning from Asia in education: How the West can learn from the East in education in the 21st Century (pp. 87–108). MCC Press.

·   You, Y., and Yu, M. (2023). Constructing common worlds pedagogies in the crisis of Anthropocene:Commentary on Learn to Become with the World: Education for Future Survival by UNESCO [in Chinese]. Journal of East China Normal University (Education Science), 12, 46–57.

·   You, Y., and Liang, Y. (2023). Reflecting on the cross-cultural comparability of international education assessments: The case of OECD Study on Social and Emotional Skills [in Chinese]. Research in Education Development, 15–16, 100–110.

·   You, Y. (2023). Learn to become a unique interrelated person: An alternative of social-emotional learning drawing on Confucianism and Daoism. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 55(4), 519–530. (interview with FreshEd: https://freshedpodcast.com/you/).

·   You, Y., and Nussey, C. (2023). The resurgence of ‘ignorance is women’s virtue’: Leftover women and the construct of an ‘ideal’ level of female education in China. Gender and Education, 34(8), 1058–1073.

·   You, Y. (2022). Scrutinizing social emotional learning from Chinese perspectives [in Chinese]. Journal of Northwest Normal University (Social Science), 59(2), 38–47.

·   You, Y., and Yu, M. (2021). “Decentralizing and diversifying”: Contemplating the value orientation of PISA [in Chinese]. Research in Education Development, 22, 7–16.

·   Yang, X., and You, Y. (2021). Education modernization from the Chinese perspectives [in Chinese]. Educational Research, 3, 135–148.

·   You, Y. (2021). Common worlds pedagogies: Learning to become with the world [in Chinese].Shanghai Education, 6, 5–9.

·   You, Y. (2021). Run by others: School autonomy in Shanghai’s entrustment management reform. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 41(3), 594–608.

·   You, Y. (2020). Learning experience: An alternative understanding inspired by thinking through Confucius. ECNU Review of Education, 3(1), 66–87.

·   You, Y. with Silova, I., and Rappleye, J. (equal contribution). (2020). Beyond the western horizon in educational research: Toward a deeper dialogue about our interdependent futures (editorial). ECNU Review of Education, 3(1), 3–19.

·   You, Y. (2020). A ‘New Orientalism’: The English representation of East Asian education. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 50(5), 742–763.

·   You,Y. (2020). Book review: Education and society in Post-Mao China (Routledge, 2017). China Review International, 24(4), 339–343.

·   You, Y. (2019). The ‘round trip’ of learner-centred education: A ‘best practice’ derived from China’s New Curriculum Reform? Comparative Education, 55(1), 97–115.

·   Auld, E., and You, Y. (2019). Brave new world(s): Intelligent governance, smart schools, and AIEd. In T. Jules and F. Salajan (eds.), The educational intelligent economy: Big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and the internet of things in education (pp. 233–249). Emerald Publishing.

·   You, Y. (2017). Comparing school accountability in England and its East Asian sources of ‘borrowing’. Comparative Education, 53(2), 224–244.  

·   You, Y., and Morris, P. (2016). Imagining school autonomy in high-performing education systems: East Asia as a source of policy referencing in England. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education,46(6), 882–905.  

·   You, Y. (2011). Teacher education in British comprehensive universities [in Chinese]. In S. Chen and Q. Zhou (eds.), International Comparison of Teacher Education in Comprehensive Universities: Case Study. Chongqing: Southwest University Publishing.

·   You, Y., and Tan, B. (2009). It looks beautiful—A reflection on childhood education through unconventional children’s little red flower complex [in Chinese]. Journal of Educational Studies, 5(1), 25–32.

Research projects

2022 Research on the basic education system with Chinese characteristics for high-quality development, funded by Ministry of Education (Co-I, finished).

2020-2025 The reconfiguration of international large-scale assessments drawing on Chinese values, funded by National Office for Education Sciences Planning (PI, finished)

2019-2022 The reconstruction of Chinese pedagogical thinking, funded by Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (PI, finished)

2018-2022 Future schools in the process of modernization, funded by Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (Co-I, finished)

2017-2019 School autonomy and accountability in school collaborations. Funded by China Post-doctoral Research Funding (PI, finished)

Scholarship and awards

2024-2025 Visiting scholar, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University

2024 Visiting scholar, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds

2023 Visiting scholar, Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University

2018 Visiting scholar, The Joseph Lau Luen Hung Charitable Trust Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change, The Education University of Hong Kong

2015 Student Prize, for the paper presented at the 2014 British Association of International and Comparative Education (BAICE) annual conference.

2012 Institute of Education (IOE), University College London – Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong exchange programme scholarship

2011-2015 Centenary Scholarship for PhD, awarded by Institute of Education (IOE), University College London

2010-2011 Centenary Scholarship for Masters, awarded by Institute of Education (IOE), University College London