Improbable Probabilities is an analysis of opportunity as seen through the journey of renowned scholar Yong Zhao. From an obscure village in a China wracked by the Cultural Revolution to acclaim as one of the most influential international voices in education today, Yong’s journey reveals that disadvantages may become advantages and assuming risks that others avoid can open unforeseen opportunities.
In this instructive title, you will learn about: - Why families are important for children, through Yong’s experiences growing up impoverished in a supportive but illiterate family
- How low or no expectations may benefit some children, as illustrated by an absence of familial expectations that freed Yong to explore and discover a love of language, reading, and writing
- Students’ potential to find and take advantage of opportunities
- How Yong discovered, explored, and pursued opportunities others failed to see in order to become internationally recognized as a researcher, professor, and writer
- Why Yong’s publications and perspective challenge many of the current orthodoxies in education, especially regarding how to improve the learning of students living in low-wealth communities
Contents: Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Boy From Sichuan Province
Chapter 2: The Budding Scholar
Chapter 3: The Traveler
Chapter 4: The Entrepreneur
Chapter 5: The Breadwinner
Chapter 6: The Global Citizen
Chapter 7: The Distinguished Professor
Chapter 8: Themes in Yong’s Thinking and Writing
Epilogue
Endnotes
Index
G. Williamson McDiarmid is the dean and alumni distinguished professor, emeritus, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and distinguished chair of education at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China.
Yong Zhao, PhD, is foundation distinguished professor of education at the University of Kansas, and professor of educational leadership at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Australia. Yong was presidential chair and director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education at the University of Oregon and a professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership. He was previously university distinguished professor in the College of Education at Michigan State University, where he was founding director of the Office of Teaching and Technology and the U.S.-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence, and executive director of the Confucius Institute. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and elected fellow of the International Academy for Education.
Yong is an internationally known scholar, author, and speaker whose works focus on the implications of globalization and technology on education. He has designed schools that cultivate global competence, developed computer games for language learning, and founded research and development institutions to explore innovative education models. The author of more than one hundred articles and thirty books, he was named one of the ten most influential people in educational technology in 2012 by the journal Tech & Learning.
Yong received a bachelor of arts degree in English language education from the Sichuan Foreign Language Institute in Chongqing, China, and a master of arts and doctorate in education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
