Editorial: Institutional complexity and educational transformation: China’s experience in enhancing educational quality

Purpose By exploring China’s experience in enhancing educational quality from early childhood education to higher education, this editorial of the special issue aims to highlight how different goals are negotiated in policies and practices. Design/methodology/approach The four articles in this special issue, respectively, present educational transformation at early childhood education, basic education and higher education levels through qualitative method. Findings The four articles showed that while each educational level has experienced its dilemmas, they showed a shared tension in China’s policies promoting educational transformation and local implementation. This special issue offers these grounded cases as a catalyst for further dialogue and contributes to inspiring more nuanced, context-sensitive research to contribute to this critical conversation, ultimately leading to the development of more adaptive educational policies for the future. Originality/value This special issue offers originality by bringing together scholarly work on educational quality and educational equity and by exploring how China’s preschool, basic education and higher education are being reformed to address these issues. The special issue contributes to a systematic examination of the policies, strategies and tensions in enhancing educational quality and equity from the perspectives of Chinese and international scholars.