Author: Meng Fanhua (special researcher of Beijing Supreme Leader New Era Socialism with Chinese characteristics Thought Research Center and secretary of the Party Committee of Capital Normal University)
In 2021, the general offices of the General Office of the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council issued the Opinions on Further Reducing the Students’ Homework Burden and Off-campus Training Burden in Compulsory Education, the core of which is to reduce the students’ homework burden and off-campus training burden in Compulsory Education. Recently, Beijing has vigorously promoted the flow of principals and teachers, which is an important measure to implement the "double reduction" policy.
Rebalancing of Core Resources Based on Good Governance in Education
The basic requirement of social equity is the reasonable and equal distribution of social interests, economic interests and other interests among all members of society. Education equity has the significance of starting point equity and is an important foundation of social equity. Promoting educational equity, guaranteeing citizens’ right to education, realizing the equalization of basic public education services and narrowing the educational gap between urban and rural areas, regions and schools are the basic requirements of educational equity.
Since the beginning of this century, China has successively promulgated a series of policies aimed at the unbalanced development of compulsory education, which directly points to the balanced development of high-quality educational resources oriented to educational equity. Various practical schemes, such as reforming weak schools, integrating urban and rural education, and running schools in groups, have been explored according to local conditions, and great achievements have been made, effectively promoting the high-quality and balanced development of compulsory education.
The governance of compulsory education is a systematic project, and ideas, systems, resources, courses, methods and property are all elements of this system. Good governance means promoting the organic linkage of various elements within the education system and the harmonious development between education and social environment, building a high-quality and efficient public service system, stimulating the endogenous motivation of the education system and realizing sustainable development, which is what we call "good governance". In the compulsory education resource system, all resources are very important, and the short-board resource demand of each school is not the same. The research shows that among all the resources to improve the quality of education and teaching, the principal teacher is the most critical resource. As the first resource of compulsory education, principals and teachers are also the main body of other factors. Grasping this key factor and taking it as a breakthrough will have twice the result with half the effort for optimizing the governance structure and realizing the balanced development of compulsory education with higher quality.
Under the background of "double reduction" policy, in view of the problems that the optimal allocation of principals and teachers in the past was not strong and the role played after the exchange was not prominent, Beijing and other places intensively issued relevant policies to promote the flow of principals and teachers with unprecedented efforts, attach importance to the effective connection with the practice of early education reform, go beyond the previous one-way make-up rotation and the rotation of school district groups in the region, and coordinate the resources of principals and teachers within and across regions, thus promoting the structural renewal of teachers’ disciplines, knowledge structure and teaching experience.
Re-optimization of the management system of principals and teachers based on systematic person orientation
In 2014, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security jointly issued the Opinions on Promoting the Exchange and Rotation of Principals and Teachers in Compulsory Education Schools in Counties (Districts), which proposed the management reform of "County Management and School Employment" for compulsory education teachers. In 2018, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the Opinions on Comprehensively Deepening the Reform of Teachers’ Team Construction in the New Era, which proposed the implementation of compulsory education teachers’ "county management and school employment" and demanded "establishing the special legal status of public primary and secondary school teachers as national public officials". The implementation of these policies is based on the balanced development orientation of publicity and fairness of compulsory education, and the rigid system with clear value orientation restricts the spontaneous one-way flow of principals and teachers to solve the overall optimization problem of the education system.
"County-run school employment" means that principals and teachers of public compulsory education schools are under the unified management of the county government and move to compulsory education schools in the county regularly, which means that principals and teachers have changed from "school people" in a school to "systematic people" in the county compulsory education system and fulfilled the obligations of "special legal status of national public officials". Transcending the identity cognition of "single school people" means breaking the zero-sum thinking of either-or in the process of resource use, making resources flow and giving full play to the efficiency of resource use. The flow of principals and teachers, the most important thing is not the flow itself, but the birth of new growth points through the flow.
The re-optimization of the management system of principals and teachers is a systematic project, which needs the support of corresponding supporting systems. Various places are constantly exploring the design of the professional system of principals and teachers. The policy of super principals introduced in Beijing is a system that is linked with the flow of principals, and there are more professional systems of teachers, such as the teacher qualification certificate system. The establishment of these systems provides a basic system guarantee for the orientation of principals and teachers as "systematic people", puts forward new requirements for the extensive adaptability of professional teachers, and will also force the principals and teachers to further optimize the management system.
Re-adjustment of school culture based on educational sociality
Sociality is the fundamental attribute of education. Education shoulders an independent social function, and as an activity dedicated to transmitting scientific and cultural knowledge and social life experience, its purpose is to socialize people. The school culture is the sum of all kinds of characteristics such as spirit and material, intelligence and emotion in the school. The school culture is constructed by teachers and students, and it is a process of consciously designing, intervening and building all aspects of the school. The construction of school culture stems from the handling of various social relations, including the relationship between man and the natural environment, the relationship between people, the relationship between the past and the present, and the relationship between tangible and intangible. School culture has social attributes.
The purpose of school culture construction is to "humanize", and the key to realize the development of school culture is "human". This "human" change in the flow of principals and teachers will inevitably have an impact on school culture. The headmaster enters a brand-new school to work, and the teacher enters another relatively unfamiliar environment from a familiar environment, which will inevitably bring about the breaking and reconstruction of the relationship. Behind it is the collision of different cultures and values, and diversification, collision and exchange are important educational resources. The mutual recognition of cultures and the reconstruction of relations are themselves the process of educational socialization, which is conducive to promoting the process of students’ socialization.
The school is an independent and open system, and the school culture is also not isolated and closed. It should be studied and built with a broader vision and a more open pattern. The flow of principals and teachers has indeed moved the "cheese" of traditional school culture to a certain extent, and there will inevitably be corresponding cultural conflicts, but the conflicts are not terrible, so it is unnecessary to refuse the flow because of the cultural conflicts caused by the flow of principals and teachers. In fact, the generation of any kind of culture is a process of continuous construction, and it is often intentionally adjusted and then reconstructed.
Re-activation of Development Motive Based on Internal Ecology
Every school can be regarded as an ecosystem. According to the logic of talent cultivation, from the beginning of enrollment, curriculum teaching is supported by resources and other factors, and finally students finish their studies and graduate. In this ecological chain, the key to raising or lowering the niche lies in the quality of principals and teachers. Generally speaking, there are two aspects to improve the quality of principals and teachers. First, the professional quality of principals and teachers can be improved through multi-channel continuous learning. The second is to rationally allocate the team of principals and teachers, optimize the team structure and activate the endogenous motivation of the team.
The essence of implementing the exchange policy between principals and teachers is the reform of the supply-side structure of education, which can stimulate the endogenous motivation of principals and teachers through the redistribution and combination of high-quality resources. Generally speaking, the endogenous motivation sources of principals and teachers involve values, needs, cognition, ability, emotion, interest and other elements, which interact with each other to form the dynamic basis of principals and teachers’ communication. The introduction of policies is only the first step, and the matching of external requirements and endogenous motivation is the direction of the next step. From a deeper perspective, efforts need to be made in the following aspects: firstly, to stimulate the internal driving force of the development of principals and teachers, to provide more appropriate "culture medium" for principals and teachers, the government to build a policy system for principals and teachers to strive for "four haves", and the school to actively broaden the development space of teachers and form an environment to stimulate the development motivation of principals and teachers; Secondly, meet the reasonable demands of principals and teachers, provide personalized support for the problems caused by mobility, and solve the practical difficulties of principals and teachers; The third is to build a system and mechanism to support team building, strengthen the sense of cooperation, enhance the ability of principals and teachers to adapt to the new environment, and enhance the cohesion of the new team.
Guangming Daily (13th edition, January 4, 2022)
关于作者