China’s New Teacher Education Policy: A Critical Analysis

• In Event: Cultivating dynamic educators: case studies in teacher behavior change in Africa and Asia

Proposal

Purpose
The State Council of China released in January 2018 its first teacher education policy in its history, “Recommendations for an Overall Reform on Teaching Force Construction in the New Era.” The document, consisting of six parts about teaching force construction, may significantly sway China’s teacher education practice in the forthcoming decade. This study offers a critical analysis of the document and discusses its implications and issues.
Theoretical Framework and Methods
This study focuses on four interlocked aspects of the document: (1) the social status of teachers, (2) teacher education institutions, (3) teacher education curriculum, (4) preservice teachers (PSTs) recruitment and employment. To conduct the analysis, a three-step-method is adopted: First, all information about the four aspects is gleaned from the document. Second, the gleaned information is further organized into meaningful chunks. Third, the information chunks are analyzed regarding their theoretical and practical implications about teacher education.
Findings
The Social Status of Teachers
Recognizing teachers as the primary source of education and a cornerstone of China’s prosperity, the document points out that the teaching profession is less attractive, and teachers’ social status has yet to be improved. It demands the governments at all levels cognize the significance of the reform on teaching force construction and calls for reform in several ways.
First, the government should improve the payment system that assures teachers’ income equivalent to that of local government officials. For teachers working in undeveloped areas, the governments should offer them compensations, bonus, housing security, etc. Furthermore, the propaganda agencies should improve teachers’ positive image by creating popular movies and literatures, telling stories, and rewarding exemplar teachers. Thus, a culture of respecting teachers can be cultivated.
While the document addressed the financial and cultural initiatives, more critical roadblocks preventing the implementation of those initiatives were ignored. First, it did not specify who pays for those initiatives. Given that many local governments in undeveloped areas are struggling with budget, they are hard to implement those initiatives. Second, the document did not clarify how to make sure teachers receive those incentives. Actually, China’s central government funding is frequently abused by local governments. Although the traditional culture highly respects teachers (Fwu & Wang, 2002), teachers’ authentic social status has been so low to the point that most female PSTs even do not consider teachers as their future spouses (Su, Hawkins, Huang, & Zhao, 2001).
Teacher Education Institutions
The document proposes a three-component system of teacher education institutions: Local governments, universities, and schools work together to prepare PSTs. Normal universities should exclusively focus on preparing PSTs while elite research universities are encouraged to establish colleges and programs of teacher education. In addition, favorable policies are proposed to offer teacher educators with professional development and promotion.
The local governments’ orchestration can be central to the distribution of resources about teacher education and the collaboration between universities and schools. Nevertheless, two issues deserve attention. First, encouraging elite universities to participate in teacher education may create a competing situation between elite universities and normal universities for the already limited financial and human resources of teacher education. Second, emphasizing schools as an important player of teacher education can bridge the gap between PSTs’ theory study and teaching practice (Zeichner, 2010). However, the document did not specify what responsibility these schools have and what financial incentives and human resources are available to encourage and support them to act on their responsibilities.
Teacher Education Curriculum
The document calls for practice-oriented teacher education curricula by specifying PSTs’ field experience should be no less than half a year. Meanwhile, it emphasizes teacher education curricula should strengthen the traditional teaching skills, such as pen and chalk writing arts, Chinese calligraphy, and Mandarin speaking.
The emphasis on field experience is reasonable given that knowledge and teaching skills can only be developed as PSTs participate in teaching observation, analysis, discussion, and summarization (Ball, Sleep, Boerst, & Bass, 2009). Its requirement for the minimum period of field experience is basically consistent with the world trend of reform of teacher education (Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2012). Although necessary, time itself does not guarantee PSTs’ learning to teach effectively (Lunenberg, 1999). The effects of field experience also depend on: 1) the quality of the instruction that PSTs observe (Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009), 2) theory-based deep reflections (Tillema, 2000), and 3) active interactions between PSTs, mentors, and teacher educators (Feiman-Nemser, 2001).
By requiring PSTs master the traditional arts and speak Mandarin, the document intends to glorify the Chinese history and strengthen students’ sense of unity. However, it is arguable regarding the weight that they entail in curricula. Also, it is arguable if all teachers regardless of their subjects should master those skills. After all, in an era characteristic of information and communication revolution, learning to use ICT seems to be more important.
Preservice Teacher Recruitments and Employment
To attract young talents to teacher education, the document proposes several incentives: (1) provide free tuition, (2) reduce graduates’ mandatory teaching period from 10 years to 6 for receiving free tuition, and (3) grant teacher education programs the priority in admitting top college applicants from the yearly national college entrance examination.
Incentives, like free tuition, can attract students enter teacher education and oblige them teach for a certain period of time (D. Wang & Gao, 2013). Such initiatives prove to be successful in countries like Finland and Singapore whose teaching quality is highly rated (Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2012). However, it is questionable if incentives can increase PSTs’ long-term teaching commitment. For example, Su et al. (2001) reported that many Chinese PSTs did not have strong teaching commitment. They entered teacher education programs because they needed free tuition to pursue a college degree.
Furthermore, the document proposes how to manage new teachers after they are employed, but does not proposes any suggestions as for how to help them transit into teaching successfully. As suggested in the literature, induction is critically important. It can exert salient impact on new teachers’ teaching philosophy and performance (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011; J. Wang, Odell, & Schwille, 2008).

Authors

• Guoxiang Wang, Texas Tech University

• Jian Wang, Texas Tech University