Reconciling Top-Down Policy Intent With Internal Accountability in Chinese Schools

• In Event: Enactment of Performance-Based Accountability in Education: Implications for Stakeholders

Abstract

1. Objectives

Principals are important connection points between local school community and the larger educational system; they are positioned to notice, experience, and respond to the dynamics between external and internal accountability. A key challenge faced by many leaders is how to negotiate expectations written into top-down policies, with local requirements to improve learning and teaching in their schools. The main purpose of this presentation is to investigate the role of school principals in managing the intersection of external and internal accountability systems within Chinese schools given that a salient cultural and historical characteristic of China is its top-down and centralized government administration (Bush and Qiang, 2002).

2. Perspectives
The term ‘accountability’ can be divided into two main components – authority and responsibility (Grinshtain and Gibton, 2018). The boundaries of the spheres of authorities often remain ambiguous. Consequently principals adopt different strategies to balance competing accountabilities and reduce the role ambiguity. The strategies can be person, internal or extra-organizational (Addi-Raccah, 2015; Grinshtain and Gibton, 2018).

3. Methods and Data Sources
This study draws data from a large-scale qualitative study involving 101 primary principals from six locations in China. Maximum variation criteria were adopted to select principals. Interviews were the major data collection method and data analysis was informed by Grinshtain and Gibton’s (2018) framework.

4. Findings

In China, local governments’ expectation of the school results and leadership performance tended to be varied and ambiguous. This was partly due to the disconnection between the demands of the curriculum reforms and the practical realities of teaching, learning and leading in the schools (Walker and Qian, 2018). The challenge was to confront and address the disconnection. What principals did was to build and strengthen internal accountability while responding to external demands. They did not simply resort to positional authority to declare and reinforce the importance of meeting accountability targets. They also adopted strategies similar to those reported in the Western literature including creating various incentive mechanisms, using professional development opportunities for internalizing expectations and communicating clear performance expectations. In addition to these strategies, Chinese principals saw themselves as weavers of positive relationships within schools.

5. Significance
The study has revealed that Chinese principals shared some common strategies with their Western counterparts. They also adopted some context-specific strategies. They placed a high priority on building mutually supportive and trusting relationships with teachers and invested time and emotional energy in supporting and motivating teachers. Their paternalistic leadership approach helped to strengthen the internal accountability in the face of external demands. As such, the study advanced theoretical understanding of leadership in the face of multiple accountabilities.

Author

• Haiyan Qian, The Education University of Hong Kong