Abstract:

Over the past 40 years since the Reform and Opening-up, the effective implementation of the academic and vocational education streaming policy has made great contributions to the structural reform of secondary education, the national economic construction, and the human resources development. In the future, with the changes of the social environment, the streaming will also face many disputes and challenges. To deeply understand the current streaming contradiction and clarify the future institutional trend, we need to “face the history”, and examinations based on the perspective of Historical Institutionalism is an effective way. Through reviewing the policy texts since the Reform and Opening-up, it is found that the development of China’s streaming policy shows the characteristics of gradual institutional change dominated by the state, and has experienced four stages: the recovery of the secondary vocational education with the aim of economic construction, the streaming exploration from pursuing efficiency to emphasizing reasonableness, the streaming landslide under the impact of college enrollment expansion, and the integration of the vocational and academic education under the concept of “people-oriented”. The adjustment of industrial structure, the reform of national governance and the prevalence of the cultural concept of people-oriented have promoted policy development as the overarching structure, and the interaction between the micro actors and the policies also has brought opportunities for its reform. Rationally viewing the “path dependence” and policy reform, giving full play to the role of institutional background in guiding and promoting policies, and establishing “decentralized decision-making” and “diversified cooperation” mechanisms are the effective ways to break through the institutional obstruction and realize the path optimization.

Key words: the academic and vocational education streaming, educational policy, historical sequence, institutional logic, Historical Institutionalism