Abstract:

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the national government has issued 78 education policies related to the training of principals. From the perspective of policy tools and using the bibliometrics analysis, this paper found that the transformation process of China’s principals training policy over the seventy years can be divided into five stages: the "torturous exploration" stage from 1949 to 1976; the "establishment of rules and regulations" stage from 1977 to 1989; "ensuring being qualified" stage from 1990 to 1999; the "fair development" stage from 2000-2012; and "leading education to excellence stage" since 2013. The logic of the evolution of the principals’ training policy can be described as follows: in terms of policy supply, from administrative authority guidance to professional capacity building; in terms of policy value orientation, from reforming education to cultivating excellent principals to improve education; in terms of policy goal orientation, from post needs to national standards and norms guidance; in terms of policy implementation, from focusing on the summary of training models to pursuing the generation of educational ideas. The development of the future principal training presents the four trend characteristics: innovating the training mode system; promoting digital training through technology-enabled means; updating professional standards and optimizing curriculum programs; constructing the training assessment and evaluation for cultivating educationist-oriented principals.

Key words: principal training, education policy, historical changes, evolution logic, future development