Educational Improvement in Rural Governance：A Comparative Study of Two China Cases

• In Event: Policy, Governance of Education Systems

Proposal

The issue of rural governance in China has always been a focus of government attention. Using education improvement science to promote rural governance has become a popular approach. As a vast country, there are also significant economic and cultural differences among different regions in China, which are more evident in rural areas. Therefore, this study chose Shanghai and Xinyang for comparison. Shanghai is a city with developed coastal economy, while Xinyang is an agricultural city in central China. I hope to find the education improvement password for China's rapid improvement of rural development level through comparison.
This research is largely based on the theory of multiple governance and education improvement science. The most prominent character of education governance is the democratic management in which multiple subjects participate(Chu & Jia, 2014). There is a need to develop appropriate ways to analyse issues about complexity in the governance process and about accountability. The preoccupation with policy “stages” need to be replaced with a more complex model of the way in which policy decisions are inter-related or “nested”. It is argued that a 'multiple governance framework', influenced by Elinor Ostrom's 'institutional analysis and development' framework, offers a way to do this(Hill & Hupe, 2006). Participating in the process of rural governance through the introduction of educational improvement can greatly enhance the quality of higher education and democratize rural governance. It challenges the classroom, organization and governance of higher education, and builds an improvement map of education improvement science(Bryk A.S., 2015). However, in the improvement practice, it is impossible to touch all the contents of the improvement map at once（Little D., 2015）.
In order to obtain first-hand information, I chose SHD Village, Songjiang District, Shanghai and XJ Village, Xinyang, Henan Province as examples. I entered their Beautiful Rural Project (proposed by the Chinese government aimed at improving the rural environment and enhancing the level of rural economy) which was led by higher education institutions to do field research as an intern teacher for months. With the status of inter-teacher, I am easier to get the trust of teachers, students, villagers and government officers, so as to understand their real ideas of all parties in cooperation. And compared with full-time teachers, I am more able to examine their behavior of them from the standpoint and attitude of a "bystander". In addition to writing field notes, I collected a large number of calendars, student work, student handbooks, textbooks, annual reports, local policy manuals, the newspaper of the village, and so on. I will put these texts in Nvivo 12.0 for analysis, interpreted the analysis results under the guidance of theory, and derived conclusions. I will comprehensively consider the opinions of all parties to minimize my personal bias.
The power of all parties including government, university or college, village fulfills the responsibilities of public governance in accordance with their respective roles. Although in most cases, these parties in the cooperation are equal in status, there are some problems, such as cultural conflict and discourse conflict. Within the scope of regulation, the power of government, college and enterprise perform their duties of public governance in accordance with their respective roles. These stakeholders formed a professional improvement community. Despite various conflicts of interest, it has achieved win-win results in many aspects and achieved certain course improvements.
The two cases have developed two completely different governance paths. In SHD Village, led by SHD Village Government and supported by Shanghai Government and SJ District Government, the Tourism College of W University and S Vocational College jointly built a Beautiful Rural Project with eco-tourism as the theme. The community directly avoided the process of repeated negotiations, investigated and fully explored the tourism resources of SHD Village, and integrated the exploitable tourism resources. On the basis of understanding the tourism literacy of residents in this town, a series of courses to enhance their tourism literacy have been developed, including explaining skills improvement courses, developing strategy courses, and civilized tourism courses. As a result, they established a university students volunteer team and a curriculum development team. With the support of teams, the community has trained a group of villagers. They are experts in rural tourism interpretation and formed a "rural tourism interpretation team", which has stimulated the enthusiasm for rural tourism.
On the contrary, in XJ Village, this is a bottom-up improvement. In this village, the Beautiful Rural Project is managed by the Architecture Department of H College. This college is not located in XY, where the village is located. Therefore, from the perspective of governance, village and city governments do not have direct management power over colleges. During the process of improvement, H College has played a variety of roles. On the one hand, as a college team, it plays the role of teachers or experts. Students learned from teachers to know how to become an architect. On the other hand, in order to provide financial support, the teachers also made the project a part of their entrepreneurship, which needs to get some compensation from the government and society to maintain its operation. In addition, unlike other G-U cooperation models, due to a non-interest relationship with the government, it also undertakes the important task of helping the government to solve the problem of rural poverty.
These two methods are not only the result of local economy and culture but also affect the construction effect of Beautiful Rural Areas. Although both have certain effects, it is clear that neither is perfect. For SHD Village, they got high governance efficiency and achieved various expected goals in short time. But the community did not truly regard students and villagers as the subjects of governance decision-making. They are just the bearers of educational improvement and governance outcomes. For XJ Village, they took into account the interests of multiple stakeholders as much as possible, and students have also improved their abilities through practical learning. But the communication cost is very high, and it also brings dual pressures of management and economy to X College.

Author

• Yiming Qin, Shanghai Open University, SHCB