Building Educational Improvement Science in the New Era of Post-Covid: Ideas, Practices and Global Implications of the China Case

• In Event: Educational reforms for innovative approaches to strategy and learning

Proposal

Responding to the call for Illuminating the Power of Idea/lism in a critical new era of post-Covid, this paper aims to survey the emerging Educational Improvement Science (EIS) since the 2000s through a critical analysis of related ideas, practices and global implications in the case of China. Such a timely analysis tackles a global and chronic problem that has recurred for decades or even centuries in various educational systems: Why educational reform often fails, or at least not as intended by educational reformers? The paper moves on by answering two major questions: 1) what may be an alternative that results in educational changes in desirable directions, e.g., improvement? and 2) how may the alternative approach recently emerged in China illuminate, sustain and elevate the power of disciplinary and methodological ideas for the new field, shedding new light on educational desirables?
Although British educator Joseph Lancaster published his pioneering volume in 1803, entitled “Improvements in Education” based on his devoted practices in London, and Canadian priest Edwin Jacob highlighted the idea in his speech “Educational Improvement” in 1855 for King’s College of New Brunswick, only recently in the early 2000s has educational improvement become a new field of interdisciplinary inquiry for educational change (Berwick, 2008; Bryk, et al., 2015; Lewis, 2015), modelled from improvement science emerged from the fields of business and public health.
Similarly, the idea of educational improvement was valued even in ancient China, with a still enlightening Confucian belief emerged two thousand years ago: “If improved one day, do so from day to day, and let there be again and again” (The Great Learning), and the idea was revived by Tao Xingzhi, a well-known, critical master-educator in contemporary China. It was only until the late 2010s that it becomes a field for disciplinary studies, creatively learned from the North American experiences and based on the Chinese legacy and context.
EIS’ recent emergence in both American and Chinese contexts is a disciplinary response to the ineffectiveness or futility of educational reform movements in individual countries and globally, as criticized periodically over different times by Goodlad (1975, 1984), Lindblom (1959), Slavin (1989, 1995), Cuban (1990), and more recently by Hargreaves and Shirley (2012), Bryk (2014), Fullan (2016) and Author (2020), respectively. Central to these examinations are “unpreparedness” (Slavin, 1989), “hyperrationality” (Fullan, 2016), and more straightforward, “Western bias” (Goodlad, 1984) in planning, implementation and evaluation, in addition to innate and/or stretched misuses and mis-conceptualizations of educational reform or innovation with little values embedded (Author, et al, 2020; Author, 2021, 2022 [forthcoming]).
With a historical and systemic approach hybridizing cross-disciplinary inquiries from both improvement and educational sciences, this study focuses on core concepts, frameworks and methodologies to conceptualize the field as the studies of educational improvement, which “is often defined as a process as well as an approach of advancement in education at individual, institutional, systematic, national and/or global levels...through which challenges are taken and problems are solved” (Author, 2021, p. 69). The desirables of improvement are thus value-laden and may vary in many things, such as educational vision, mission, values, objectives, equality, quality, quantity, diversity, effectiveness, efficiency, governance, policies, structure, mechanism, financing, planning, strategies, curriculum (programs), performance, accountability, impact, status, stakeholders, networking, uniqueness, to name some.
With this, the paper proposes three principles for EIS’ construction of methodology adapted from improvement science: 1) discipline-guided; 2) systems-thinking; and 3) evidence-based, which ensures improvers that the process of educational improvement is monitorable and improvement objectives are achievable (Langley, et al., 2009). Such a methodology demands two key approaches for the success of improvement, i.e., the building of improvers’ capacities and that of professional improvement communities (PICs). They are reflected from recent literature with two ongoing projects of educational improvement in the Chinese context, i.e., the National Movement of Weaker Schools and the Shanghai Experiment of New Basic Education, both initiated from the 1990s. It is confirmed through the practices of Chinese improvers that the two approaches support the accomplishment of improvement objectives and institutional and systemic advancement in terms of learning, teaching and schooling.
Reflecting on the experiences of educational improvement in China, this study theorizes the emerging EIS by grounding it on two Chinese philosophical concepts, i.e., that imperfection is universally nature and that the only thing unchanging in the world is change (The Book of Change). From here one axiomatic assumption becomes self-evident, i.e., improvability as an inherent and dynamic necessity for education. In other words, the desirables mentioned earlier are by nature directions for educational improvement, which ultimate mission is to build improved freedom, collaboration, and sustainability of learners, educators and other stakeholders for an ecologic community through education.
These directions are crucial now and in the future to classrooms, schools and educational systems for improvement across the globe, given the ongoing pandemic and the new era of post-Covid, and there are great challenges arising from them. The global implications from the China case are significant and multifold. First, EIS is a powerful emerging discipline in education, which mandates educational changes in value-added directions. Second, it serves as a renewed attempt to bring about educational improvement through scientific approaches – or improvementalism (Author, 2022 [forthcoming]), though they are contested and arguable in various systems and their contexts. Finally, the new field promises and empowers educational comparativists with an alternative, more dynamic, and multiperspectival lens to interrogate educational ideals, realities and possibilities when we are re-imagining the power of education beyond the horizon in the new era of post-Covid.

Author

• Jun Li, Western University