Contact: Barbara Schulte

We investigate how educational aid has been transformed over the last decade against the background of global shifts in international politics and aid, and which role information and communication technologies for education and development (ICT4E/D) play in these processes. We have been critically assessing the assumption that ICT4E can, by default, level out social and regional inequalities; based on fieldwork findings, the increased use of ICT4E has been found to constrain the agency of teachers and learners, and has even contributed to a deprofessionalization of teachers.

A further research focus is China’s educational engagement in Africa and its implications for China's soft power initiatives: while growing attention has been paid to economic and political cooperation between China and the African continent, China’s educational aid projects in many African countries – particularly in the field of ICT4E, and with massive investment in ICT infrastructure, hardware, and software – have hitherto not been sufficiently explored.

Ongoing projects:
Fieldwork cooperation (Schulte) with Southwest University, China, on ethnic minority education in Southwest China.

Selected publications:
Schulte, B. (2014). Die Grenzen im Inneren: Die pädagogischen Missionen chinesischer Rückkehrer im Hinterland zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts [Inner Frontiers: Pedagogic Missions of Chinese Returnees in the Backcountry at the Beginning of the 20th Century]. In Marcelo Caruso, Thomas Koinzer, Christine Mayer, & Karin Priem (Eds.), Zirkulation und Transformation. Pädagogische Grenzüberschreitungen in historischer Perspektive [Circulation and Transformation: Pedagogic Border-Crossings in Historical Perspective] (pp. 211–230). Böhlau.

Schulte, B. (2015). (Dis)Empowering Technologies: ICT for Education (ICT4E) in China, Past and Present. Chinese Journal of Communication, 8(1), 59–77.

Schulte, B. (2017, March 24). Chinese educational aid to Africa: Greedy dragon or welcome alternative? 45th Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA): Learning and education - material conditions and consequences, Copenhagen.

Schulte, B. (2018). Digital technologies for education in China: National ambitions meet local realities. In M. Stepan & J. Duckett (Eds.), Serve the people. Innovation and IT in China’s development agenda (pp. 31–38). Mercator Institute for China Studies.

Schulte, B. (2019). Teacher agency and the digital: Empowerment or control? On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 2(5), 1–7. doi.org/10.17899/on_ed. 2019.5.2

Svensson, M., & Schulte, B. (Eds.). (2021). Visions of the Internet in China (Vol. 50). Special issue in Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 50 (April).

Wei Bu, Elisa Oreglia, Jack Qiu, Schulte, B., Cara Wallis, Jing Wang, & Baohua Zhou. (2015). Studying the Sent-Down Internet: Roundtable on Research Methods. Chinese Journal of Communication, 8(1), 7–17.