On 10 August 2023, the Thammasat University Library welcomed students and professors from Xingyi Normal University for Nationalities, China for a library visit.

The group was led by Miss Wang Tianyan, Head of Student Activities Office, Xingyi Normal University for Nationalities.

Xingyi is a city in the southwest of Guizhou Province, China.

Guizhou is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People’s Republic of China. The population of Guizhou stands at 38.5 million, ranking 18th among the provinces in China.

According to its website, Xingyi Normal University for Nationalities was originally founded as Bishan Academy in 1813, over two hundred years ago.

The university consists of 12 colleges: Literature and Media, Foreign Languages, Arts, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Computer Science, Physical Education, Politics and History, Economics and Trade, Public Administration, and Education Science, with two public teaching sections.

At present, the university offers 15 four-year programs and 36 three-year programs, and it has over 8000 full-time students.

In recent years, it began to accept international students.

There is a teaching staff of 566, of which over 157 have doctor and master’s educational background, and over 156 are professors or associate professors.

The university library houses over 620,000 books, 451 different periodicals in Chinese and foreign languages, and 440,000 electronic books.

The university pays special attention to science and technology research. In recent years, 11 textbooks and academic works as well as over 1714 academic papers have been published, of which over 100 academic papers have been published in the core periodicals.

Over the past five years, the university has undertaken over 47 scientific research projects in succession at, or above, the provincial level.

The journal of Xingyi Normal University for Nationalities has been chosen as one of the national academic publications in China.

Since its foundation, the journal has become an arena for teachers to conduct academic exchange.

The Mission State of the University is to adhere to the principle of harmonious development of the scale, structure, quality and benefit.

Oriented to establishing a normal, academic, comprehensive, regional and ethnic school and centered upon the talents demand for the local economic development, the university forms its own talent education modes on the basis of the discipline groups.

With teachers’ education of undergraduate students as the main body and non-teachers’ education and adults’ education as the two wings, the university has formed a multi-pattern school-running of “one body, two wings.”

Visitors from Thailand

In 2017, a delegation from the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce visited Xingyi Normal University for Nationalities.

Cooperation and educational exchange was discussed to improve teaching levels for scientific research.

The TU Library collection owns many books about different aspects of education in China.

A normal school or normal college is an institution created to train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum.

In 1685, St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle founded what is generally considered the first normal school, the École Normale, in Reims, Champagne, France.

The term “normal” in this context refers to the goal of these institutions to instill and reinforce particular norms within students.

“Norms” included historical behavioral norms of the time, as well as norms that reinforced targeted societal values, ideologies and dominant narratives in the form of curriculum.

The first public normal school in the United States was founded in Concord, Vermont by Samuel Read Hall in 1823 to train teachers.

The first modern teacher training school in China was established by educator Sheng Xuanhuai in 1895 as the normal school of the Nanyang Public School (now Shanghai Jiao Tong University) in Shanghai during the Qing dynasty.

Many comprehensive public or state-supported universities – such as the UCLA in the United States and Beijing Normal University in China – were established and operated as normal schools before they expanded their faculties and transformed themselves into research universities.

Some of these universities, particularly in Asia, retain the word “Normal” in their name to highlight their historical purpose.

The term “normal school” originated in the early 16th century from the French école normale.

The French concept of an “école normale” was to provide a model school with model classrooms to teach model teaching practices to its student teachers.

Alternatively, the name derives from the objective of the institution to teach the practice or norms of pedagogy or teaching.

Educating teachers was of great importance in the newly industrialized European economies which needed a reliable, reproducible and uniform work force.

The process of instilling such norms within students depended upon the creation of the first uniform, formalized national educational curriculum.

Thus, normal schools, as the teacher training schools, were tasked with both developing this new curriculum and developing the techniques through which teachers would instill these ideas, behaviors and values in the minds of their students.

In Mainland China, the normal school terminology is still preserved in the official English names of former normal schools established in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The Chinese term normal university refers to a modern comprehensive university established as a normal school in the early twentieth century.

These normal universities are usually controlled by the national or provincial government.

In 1895, Qing banking tycoon and educator Sheng Xuanhuai gained approval from the Guangxu Emperor to establish the Nanyang Public School in Shanghai, China.

This comprehensive institution included the first normal school on the Chinese mainland.

Since 1949, many former normal schools in China have developed into comprehensive research universities.

As of 2012, Beijing Normal University and East China Normal University, both members of the national government’s Project 985 program, have been ranked the top two among the mainland Chinese universities that originated as normal schools.

Other normal universities in China include Tianjin Normal University, Shanghai Normal University, Chongqing Normal University, Nanjing Normal University, Hunan Normal University, Huazhong Normal University, Northeast Normal University, Changchun Normal University, Shaanxi Normal University, Capital Normal University,South China Normal University, Jiangxi Normal University, Anhui Normal University, Liaoning Normal University, Shenyang Normal University, Yunnan Normal University, Xinmin Normal College, Hanshan Normal University, Henan Normal University, Hebei Normal University, and Yili Normal University.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)