The University of Reading’s Institute of Education (IoE) gives great importance to international academic exchanges, and it has hosted academic visitors from different countries, including China. Dr. Jun Li (Associate Professor at the Nanjing University of Finance and Economics) is one of them.
On Thursday 13 February 2020, Jun gave a presentation, titled ‘Public arts education and Chinese aesthetic education spirit’, as part of the IoE’s Spring 2020 lunchtime research seminar series. In brief, through the investigation of various groups of people in China, Jun found that the public had high demand for arts education, but the aesthetic quality of young people and adults urgently needs to be improved. She introduced the policies and some good examples of Chinese public arts education and pointed that China still needs to learn from the excellent experience of other countries and introduce the excellent Chinese arts to the world. Jun expects to provide the Chinese government with policy suggestions on the implementation of public arts education and aesthetic education through the investigation of British public arts education policies and measures. Through the ongoing interviews, Jun Li has collected the local government’s policies on funding for public artistic activities and the good practices of some public welfare organizations. She will continue to investigate how the schools, communities and social organizations in the UK provide public arts education and promote aesthetic literacy.
Jun has been an academic visitor with us since October 2019 and will continue to do so till October this year. Her academic mentor here is Dr. Geoff Taggart. If you see Jun around on our campus, please do say hi to her and make her feel welcome!