Ritual study is a lively international interdisciplinary academic field that originated from anthropological field research and that is of high interest for educational research. In recent times, educational researchers in various countries have studied rituals in education, emphasizing the socializing power of ritual performances for students (e.g. Butterworth 2008; Thapan 2006; Kellermann 2008; Warnick, 2011; Wulf et al 2001; 2004; 2007; 2011; Maloney, 2000). From this perspective, it has been emphasized that ritual practice follows implicit logics, and that participants develop implicit knowledge of ritual practice.

   Although accounts of rituals in education have been given from various countries, so far only a few studies investigated rituals in educational contexts in China (Zhang 2010). Since China is becoming increasingly essential in international relations with the EU, it is of vital significance to understand Chinese politics and culture. Against this background, the paper will give an account of ritual education in China.

   First, we will present the methodology of our research, which consists of three main parts: first, an analysis of official policies; second, a participant observation of a ritual in a primary school in China; third, an analysis of interview material with ritual participants and other people involved. After introducing our methodology, we will present the findings following these three methodological steps.

    In recent years, a series of educational policies have been published to provide detailed regulations on the contents, functions, and goals of school rituals in China. In consequence, school rituals, as an institutional umbrella at the national level, have been carried out in all general primary and secondary schools. Overall, there are currently three main types of school rituals in China: political rituals, life-crisis rituals, and festival rituals. Each school ritual explicitly follows specific national educational purposes and goals to facilitate the socialization of students. Thus, a new Chinese term “ritual education”（仪式教育）used in Chinese educational political and academic context will be introduced and explained as a key concept to understand Chinese school ritual and the relationship between ritual and education. In terms of the organization of each school, China currently has a basic hierarchical system in which the official policy is put into practice by schools with the guidance of academic scholars.

Against this background, the paper will present an ethnographic observation in a Chinese primary school, located in Beijing. Drawing from ethnographical fieldwork in one school, the authors describe and analyze a specific festival ritual (Qingming Festival) in detail from an educational point of view. The analysis will focus on the implicit logic of the ritual and on relating this logic to the ‘explicit curriculum’ as it is manifested in the above-mentioned official school policies.

   Finally, main findings from interviews with ritual and educational professional researchers, school headmasters and administrators, teachers and students who participated in the observed festival ritual, will be presented. Here again, a major focus will be on the relation between the ‘official ritual curriculum’ and the implicit logic of the observed ritual. The interviews with the school headmaster, teachers and students will mainly reconstruct the implicit knowledge of ritual participants. Additionally, the interviews with researchers will show how scholars in China mediate between policy and practice.

  The different steps of analysis will demonstrate that there exist inconsistencies and contradictions between the policy and the actual practice. Despite the regulations by official policy, schools still have some autonomy in the organization and implementation, and response to monitoring and evaluation of ritual practice. At the same time, it will become clear that the theoretical guidance from each scholar leads to a school practice with an obvious “theoretical label”.

In our case study of a festival ritual in a Chinese primary school, we combine mainly three different methods of research. First, we analyze official documents that express policies concerning rituals in education. Drawing on Reuter’s (2003) analysis of educational goals from the perspective of law, we develop a hermeneutic approach that interprets official policies against an educationally informed preunderstanding. Second, we use ethnographic observation in the sense of focused ethnography. Generally, the ideal participant observation is that the researcher lives for at least six months to a year in order to learn the language and understand the culture (Fetterman, 2010), but for a researcher who has already been familiar with school culture and school life, it is more appropriate to spend some weeks for focused ethnography (Knoblauch, 2005) to collect a large amount of data intensively. For the description and analysis of rituals, in Grimes' viewpoint, we should not just analyze the values and beliefs within the rituals, but should first give a comprehensive description (Grimes, 2013:20). Therefore, ethnographic material from an elementary school in Beijing will be used to describe a festival ritual (Qingming Festival ritual) in detail. Based on Turner's view, it is important to observe not only what the ritual says, but also what the ritual does and how it is done. (Turner, 1967:51). This study will follow the general time order of organizing rituals in Chinese school rituals, which will be divided into “ritual preparation phase” (ritual design and ritual organization), “ritual performance phase”, and “ritual completion phase” (ritual reflection and ritual evaluation). The rituals will be described and explained drawing on field notes as well as videos. Third, in conducting and analyzing interviews, our research follows the documentary method developed by Ralf Bohnsack (2018; 2014). This method is especially suited for getting access to the implicit knowledge of the interviewees and can therefore help us analyze the implicit level of ritual. During the analysis, a Chinese term “Qian Yi Mo Hua”(潜移默化)will be presented to explain the influencing process of ritual towards education on the implicit level. At the same time, one of the cores of the documentary method is comparative analysis (Nohl,2017) which helps to conduct a comparative study among different interviewees. Besides, we also present the different views among students, teachers and headmasters to present the inner comparison.

Overall, the paper makes two major contributions to the study of ritual in education: In terms of content, it gives an account of ritual education in China by way of a case study. In doing so, the paper contributes to the study of Chinese primary education, which has acquired only little attention in educational research so far. By looking at the practice of a festival ritual, the paper elaborates the double question of how traditional folk culture is passed on from the older generation to the younger one, while at the same time school culture is scientized and, on this basis, changed. Since Chinese school rituals are highly collective and normative as a whole, data from one school can be cautiously generalized to describe the school ritual model in China. In terms of methodology, the paper claims that in ritual studies it is not only important to thoroughly analyze the implicit logic of rituals, but that it is equally important to look at the official policies regarding ritual, and to relate the ‘official’ and the ‘hidden’ curriculum to one another. Since this ‘official’ aspect of education is often mentioned but only little studied in educational anthropology, the paper offers a new way of analyzing ethnographic data in school.

Bohnsack, Ralf (2014): Rekonstruktive Sozialforschung. Einführung in qualitative Methoden. 9. Aufl., Opladen & Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich. Bohnsack, Ralf (2018) Dokumentarische Methode. In: Bohnsack, Ralf/Geimer, Alexander/Meuser, Michael (2018) Hauptbegriffe Qualitativer Sozialforschung. 4., vollst. überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage, Opladen und Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich, S. 52-58. Butterworth, D.J. (2008). Lessons of the ancestors: ritual, education and the ecology of mind in an Indonesian community. Fetterman, D. M. (2009). Ethnography: Step-by-step.3rd edition. Los Angeles: SAGE Grimes, R. L. (2013). Beginnings in ritual studies. Washington, D.C: University Press of America. Kellermann, I. (2008). Vom Kind zum Schulkind: Die rituelle Gestaltung der Schulanfangsphase. Eine ethnographische Studie. Opladen; Farmington Hills: Verlag Barbara Budrich Knoblauch, H. (2005). Focused Ethnography [30 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 6(3), Art. 44, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0503440. Nohl, Arnd-Michael (2017): Interview und dokumentarische Methode. Anleitungen für die Forschungspraxis. 5., akutualisierte und erweiterte Auflage. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Reuter, Lutz Rainer (2003) Erziehungs- und Bildungsziele aus rechtlicher Sicht. In: Füssel, Hans-Peter; Roeder, Peter M. (Hrsg.): Recht – Erziehung – Staat. Zur Genese einer Problemkonstellation und zur Programmatik ihrer zukünftigen Entwicklung. Weinheim: Beltz, S. 28-48 (Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, Beiheft; 47). Thapan, M. (2006). School Culture Rituals and Ceremonies. In: Life at school: An ethnographic study. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Turner, V. (1967). The forest of symbols : aspects of Ndembu ritual. Cornell Univ. Press. Warnick, B. R. (2011). Ritual, Imitation and Education in R.S. Peters. Reading R.S. Peters Today: Analysis, Ethics, and the Aims of Education, 43(1997), 54–71. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444346497.ch4 Wulf, Ch. et al. (2001): Das Soziale als Ritual: Zur performativen Bildung von Gemeinschaften. Opladen: Leske und Budrich. Wulf, Ch. et al. (2004): Bildung im Ritual: Schule, Familie, Jugend, Medien. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft. Wulf, Ch. et al. (2007): Lernkulturen im Umbruch: Rituelle Praktiken in Schule, Medien, Familie und Jugend. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft. Wulf, Ch. et al. (2010): Ritual and Identity. London: Tufnell Press. Zhang.Z (2010 ) Chinese Initiation Rituals：From Guan Li to Eighteen-year-old Oath Ceremony. Münster: Waxmann https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/12143