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Faculty of Graduate Studies

Yuan Huang

  • BMgmt (Zhuhai College of Jilin University, 2013)

  • MA (University of Macau, 2015)

Notice of the Final Oral Examination for the Degree of Master of Arts

Topic

What Can I Hear from Silence? A Philosophical Exploration of China’s Ideological and Political Education in the Higher Education System

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Date & location

  • Wednesday, April 22, 2026

  • 1:30 P.M.

  • MacLaurin Building

  • Room A326

Reviewers

Supervisory Committee

  • Dr. Lyndze Harvey, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Victoria (Co-Supervisor)

  • Dr. Graham McDonough, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, UVic (Co-Supervisor) 

External Examiner

  • Dr. Feng Xu, Department of Political Science, University of Victoria 

Chair of Oral Examination

  • Dr. Sandra Gibbons, School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education, UVic

     

Abstract

Since 2020, Ideological and Political Education (IPE) has been intensified across Mainland China¹’s higher education system, extending ideological governance and political value alignment across classrooms in all subjects and into teachers’ professional conduct. This thesis examines the meaning of silence in educational contexts, asking how teacher silence functions between compliance and resistance under intensified IPE governance. Drawing on Foucault’s concepts of discipline, governmentality, and subject formation, it analyzes silence as shaped by sovereign power (policies, warnings, sanctions) and productive power (surveillance routines, normalization, and self-regulation). Within this governance environment, monitoring, inspection, and evaluative mechanisms increase professional risk and encourage anticipatory self-regulation. Methodologically, the study combines philosophical inquiry with storytelling and abductive interpretation to analyze narrative scenes alongside policy texts and publicly documented disciplinary cases in this context. It argues that silence is not absence but a practice that appears in disciplinary, strategic, and ethical forms through which educators negotiate value conflict, risk, responsibility, and care. Under intensified IPE governance, silence becomes a key site through which teachers anticipate limits, regulate affect, and exercise professional judgment within politically constrained educational settings. 

 

¹ “Mainland China” is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People’s Republic of China, excluding dependent territories of the PRC, namely Hong Kong and Macau. (Lee, 2002)

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