Abstract: During the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), clan organizations made great efforts to promote education by establishing, managing and improving various forms of clan educational institutions such as family schools, charity schools, academies and colleges. As forms of clan educational benefits, these institutions became an important part of the clan welfare system in the two dynasties playing a significant role in the society of that period. From the perspective of functionalism, this paper first explores the economic, political, organizational, ideological and cultural conditions for the formation of clan education in this era, before proceeding to analyze the composition of clan education then from six elements: 1) educational venues and material conditions; 2) sources of private tutors and their recruitment and management; 3) educational objects and hierarchical teaching; 4) educational concepts and teaching contents; 5) teaching methods and assessment standards; and 6) educational time and management systems. Through this analysis, it is found that clan education in the Ming and Qing dynasties had functions in five aspects: 1) promoting social mobility of the clan members; 2) facilitating the transformation and development of clans and the inheritance of family learning; 3) enhancing social education and maintaining social order; 4) contributing to the generation of characteristic commercial culture and the accumulation of economic human capital; and 5) promoting the inheritance of social academic culture. All these findings are helpful to inspire the improvement of the pluralistic structure of China's contemporary social welfare system and the construction of a family-school-society collaborative education model with Chinese characteristics.

Key words: Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), clan education, clan-based welfare, generative logic, functionalism