Sustainability, Efficiency & Quality: Analysis of Institutional Pathway and Modality of Chinese ECE Development in the Passed 40 Years

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday I)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: ECE systems-level policy analysis

Proposal

Objectives/Purposes
Enabling every child to have access to equal and quality education is the ultimate pursuit of all nations, as being clarified in SDG 4, the Framework for Action for Education by 2030 by UNESCO, as well as being declared by Chinese President Xi Jinping on the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2017. One specific objective of SDG 4 is that, by 2030, all girls and boys will be ensured to have access to quality early childhood development care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education. Being the foundation of holistic education system and human development, the quality of early childhood education (ECE) greatly impacts the sustainable development of the overall education system and human life. To promote sustainable, accessible, quality and equitable early care and education therefore becomes the priority goal and trend of ECE system in China and the world. However, each nation has its special path to track on and each is challenged with different obstacles on different phases meanwhile different cultures may share certain general laws and features in the same field (Hayhoe & Pan, 2002). In the 40th year since China’s opening-up and reform policy enacted in 1978, this study attempts to narrate the institutional changes and characterized pathway of early childhood education development in the passed 40 years in China, and to extract the Chinese modality of ECE development towards the goal of quality, equity, and sustainability.

Perspectives/Theoretical Framework
Since the Opening Up policy in 1978, the ECE sector in modern China has experienced critical institutional changes and transitions from welfare oriented ECE to socialization of ECE, which led to its current system characterized by government leadership with social forces support toward the goal of constructing ECE sector as a quality public service system in the future (Pang, 2009). Especially in the passed 7 years since 2010 when a series of government policies prioritizing ECE development, Chinese ECE witnessed astonishing fast-speed development with three-year gross enrollment rate in preschools reaching at 77.4% in 2016, a 26.5% leap over that in 2009, overpass the total of growth in the first 30 years. What changes have been made to Chinese ECE institutions in the passed 40 years? What were the causes to induce the changes? In such short period, how did Chinese ECE achieve the astonishing accomplishment? What are the institutional motivators behind the speed? Who are the agents that get involved in the process and how they worked with the governments to achieve equilibrium? To address all these questions, this study is to be grounded on game theory (Miller, 2006) and institutional change theory (Jiang, 2014; Li, 2011; North, 2007), to adopt Dr. Lin Rongri’s quantified model of power relationship (2007), to dig into inducement of the 40 years of institutional evolution history, to find out interactive role plays and power relationship of all stakeholders involved in the transitions, and finally to construct the Chinese modality framework of ECE development, aiming at providing a comprehensive and in-depth narrative about Chinese ECE development for the readers to better understand and draw implications.

Methods and Data Source
This study first adopted history analysis framework to narrate the Chinese ECE system change history on three phases, from 1949 (establishment of P.R. China) to 1978 (enactment of opening up and reform policy), from 1978 to 2009 (the 30-year development of ECE system), and from 2010 to 2018 (critical fast-speed development phase), in order to draw an overall picture of ECE institutional change history and draw some laws and special features. Second, based on the institutional change theory analysis framework, and with a collected pool of policy document texts and statistics from the National Education Statistic Bureau, this study also adopted text analysis method and the quantified model of power relationship to synthesizes all related policy texts, analyze national statistics of ECE development in the past 40 years, and quantify the power weight of critical stakeholders involved in the ECE system change as well as their power relationships through a self-developed coding system.

Results and significance
Rudimentary findings show that the ECE system can be divided into three critical historical phases toward its ultimate goal of achieving a sustainable, equitable and quality ECE public system: social welfare oriented ECE institution from 1949 to 1978, socialization of ECE institution from 1978 to 2009, and the central government led ECE public service institution since 2010. On each phases, the study conceptualized a power game model between critical stakeholders including the central and local governments, the market, the ECE supply institutes, and the families in need of ECE service for their children. Through qualified weight of each critical power and construction of mathematical modeling of the power relationship between different players, this study attempted to measure the power relationship and interpret how the changing power relationship propel changes of ECE institution on different contexts and phases. It is obvious to witness the growth of power weight of government and the power attrition mode during the institutional changes along history in the passed 40 years.

Hopefully, through the theoretical framework of power game and institutional change as well as the quantified modeling of power relationships, this study may provide a clear and in-depth narrative of Chinese story of ECE institutional changes in the passed 40 years since its opening up and reform policy. And hopefully, this study can make original theoretical contributions to the existing studies on ECE institutions, as well as useful practical implications to the cultures with similar ECE context and on similar development phases toward the common goal of sustainable ECE system improvement.

Authors

• Yumei Han, Southwest University

• Wenfan Yan, University of Massachusetts Boston

• Ling Li, Southwest University