Governing Through Mobility: Administrative Rationalities and Urban–Rural Hierarchies in China’s Teacher Rotation Policy

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  In Roundtable Session: Terms of Service: Teacher Policy, Contracts, and Governance

Abstract

This study investigates the administrative logic behind China’s teacher rotation policy, which mandates urban-to-rural teacher mobility under the county-managed school hiring system. Drawing on policy document analysis and interviews with teachers, teacher educators, and policy researchers, the study examines how the county-managed school hiring system and title-linked incentives transform mobility into a state-managed governance technology. Framed as educational equity, this "expansionist mobility" in fact reproduces urban-rural hierarchies through a one-way flow of teachers and the symbolic colonization of rural education. The paper also examines how frontline teachers tactically negotiate and resist this system, developing strategies of compliance, avoidance, and reframing. The findings challenge dominant policy discourses and offer critical implications for rethinking equity, accountability, and agency in teacher mobility policy.

Author

• Keyuan Shi, East China Normal University