Saturation has become an important criterion to judge the quality of qualitative research and explain the rationality of sample size. This paper systematically and critically reviews the literature and introduces three types of saturation: theoretical saturation, thematical saturation and data saturation and points out that researchers should consider their own overall research design to decide which model to adopt. The paper also introduces three ways to record the process of saturation. Among them, the structural coding book is more suitable for recording deductive thematical saturation and data saturation. There are two types of saturation tables which are more suitable for recording a prior thematical saturation. The conceptual depth scale is particularly suitable for recording theoretical saturation. This paper points out that saturation is a process rather than an event. Quality rather than quantity is the key to understand saturation. Saturation itself should be a concrete methodology practice. Researchers should pay attention to the concept of saturation and make a clear statement of the process of achieving saturation, which can help to improve the standardization, transparency, quality and recognition of qualitative research.
The effective implementation of the “Double Reducation” policy needs to accurately identify the deep-seated reasons why students choose to participate in extracurricular tutoring. Studying the time when primary and secondary school students participate in extracurricular tutoring for the first time can provide an empirical basis for relieving the extracurricular tutoring needs of parents and students. Based on the data of the 2017 China Institute for Educational Finance Research-Household Survey (CIEFR-HS 2017), this paper uses the method of survival analysis to describe primary and secondary school students’ first-time participation in extracurricular tutoring, and discusses the impact of family socio-economic background on the survival time of students’ first-time participation in extracurricular tutoring. This paper finds that, first, most of the primary and secondary school students in China have participated in extracurricular tutoring, and many of them have participated in extracurricular tutoring relatively early. Second, the time of primary and secondary school students who participate in extracurricular tutoring of subjects for the first time is significantly earlier than that of interest classes, and the difference is more prominent with the increase of grade. Third, there is a significant difference in the first time students from urban and rural and different social classes participate in extracurricular tutoring, but the difference gradually reduces with the increase of school period. Fourth, family socio-economic status has a significant positive impact on the time of students’ first participation in extracurricular tutoring. Students with better family socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to participate in extracurricular tutoring earlier, but this difference decreases with the increase of students’ learning period. In the context of “Double Reduction” policy, it is suggested that the government should continue to improve the quality of elementary education to meet the needs of parents and students for individualized education. Besides, it's important to provide academic counseling for disadvantaged students with poor academic performance, and provide subsidies for the students of vulnerable groups with poor academic performance. Also, it’s important to guide parents to choose extracurricular tutoring rationally, as well as objectively and dialectically examine the impact of extracurricular tutoring on the development of students.
This report analyzes the Suzhou data in the SSES main study on 10-year-old and 15-year-old students’ social and emotional skills. The results show that 10-year-old students score higher on all 15 social and emotional skills than 15-year-old students. Among 10-year-old students, girls score higher on cooperation, empathy, sociability, persistence, and tolerance than boys. Except for tolerance, among 15-year-old students, boys score higher on other social and emotional skills than girls. Optimism is by far the most closely related ability to life satisfaction and psychological well-being, followed by energy and trust. Stress resilience and optimism are most closely related to students’ test anxiety. In general, sense of school belonging and teacher-student relationship are positively correlated with all 15 social and emotional skills, in particular with optimism, curiosity and cooperation. In contrast, school bullying is negatively correlated with all 15 social and emotional skills, in particular with emotion regulation (optimism, emotional control and stress resilience).
The “Comprehensive Investigation of Employment Situation of College Graduates in China During the Epidemic Period” conducted the second round of surveys in 34 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities across the country for two and a half months from June to August 2021. Compared with the first round of survey in 2020, the following findings were found. (a) Nearly 50 percent of graduates signed a monthly salary of 3,001-5,000 yuan after tax. (b) The overall matching rate of job positions and majors increased significantly. (c) Employment satisfaction remained high but declined slightly, and (d) the rate of considering leaving had increased slightly. In 2021, unemployed graduates felt that the impact of epidemic factors on employment had significantly reduced. Their intentions of employment within the government system were obvious. Those who failed in civil service examinations and higher education had strong willing to retake the examinations. Different from the situation of employed graduates, the “salary package” exceeding the “place of work” became a significant employment factor for unemployed graduates. At the same time, the gap between expected salary and actual salary was widening. The ranking of employment expectations for private enterprises had dropped significantly. In the survey sample, employers’ recruitment plans were shrinking, but rates were rising. The salary levels were increasing, as well as the recruitment standards. The satisfaction of college graduates with the employment guidance work of the college remained good, which was the same as in 2020. Through logistic regression analysis, it was found that the variables include gender, household registration, family economic status, school type, school level, subject type, subject level, personal education, academic performance, entrepreneurial willingness etc., had significant differences in the impact of different categories on employment. The same as in 2020, men have a significant employment advantage over women. This employment advantage existed in the comparison of economically non-difficult families with economically difficult families as well. Meanwhile, employment advantage was showed in the comparative between colleges of science and engineering and finance and agriculture and forestry colleges, national "Double Tops" universities and higher vocational college, humanities and social sciences, national double first-class disciplines and ordinary disciplines, master’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees. The graduates from top 20 percent of professional rankings had more advantage than the 20-60 percent and bottom 40 percent graduates. Difference from 2020, the findings show that rural household registration graduates have a higher employment probability than urban household registration graduates, current graduates from medical colleges and normal colleges had a higher employment probability than colleges of science and engineering graduates, the employment probability of undergraduate graduates was lower than that of college graduates, and the employment probability of agricultural medicine was higher than that of humanities.
The development of education should be forward-looking. Under the guidance of China’s Education Modernization 2035 Plan, it is necessary to conduct research on the change of the school-age population and the allocation of educational resources during the period of 2020—2035. The queue element method based on Leslie matrix and interview were adopted to predict the number of students, schools, teachers and the required funds of compulsory education during the period of 2020—2035. The results showed that: compared with 2020, the total number of students in compulsory education will drop by 30 million in 2035. Based on the current school size, 5,000 new primary schools should be built until 2026, with 4,000 new middle schools should be built until 2030. A large number of primary schools in rural areas will lie idle (37.3 thousand); Based on the current teacher-student ratio, the demand for full-time teachers in compulsory education is decreasing, with a surplus of about 1.49 million primary school teachers and 370 thousand junior high school teachers. In 2031, the number of compulsory education students in urban areas will exceed that in townships, and compulsory education will generally enter an era dominated by urban education. The transfer of students from rural areas to townships and urban areas should be fully considered, while it is suggested to plan the distribution of schools scientifically, improve the school-running standards, reduce the student-teacher ratio and the class size, optimize the allocation of teacher resources between preschool, nursery education and compulsory education.
This technical report presents the analysis of Suzhou data in the SSES main study and the assessment of psychometric properties of items and scales that involve a series of iterative modelling and analysis steps. These steps included the calculation of Alpha and Omega to evalute the subscales’ relibiabilities; the application of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to evaluate constructs; multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) to review measurement equivalence across groups (age cohorts and gender groups); and using the Item Response Theory (IRT) and Generalised Partial Credit Model (GPCM) to scale items and generate scores for study participants.
Since the beginning of the new century, New Education Initiative has clung to various value criteria such as persisting idealism, in-depth field consciousness, cooperative attitude of living together, and compassionate public welfare. Taking teacher growth as the logical starting point, “Ten Actions” incorporating building a scholarly campus and related courses as the path, and helping members of the new education community “live a happy life full of education” as the goal, New Education Experiment has undergone fruitful exploration. In the past two decades, some educational philosophy and actions proposed by New Education Initiative including “teacher growth model” and “creating a scholarly campus” have played a vital role in promoting teacher professional development, building a society with reading atmosphere, and facilitating mutual education among families, schools, communities and governments. They have also made positive contributions to giving impetus to the combination of educational theory and practice, combating educational alienation, returning to the essence of education, and improving the regional education ecology on a large scale. Looking forward to the future, we will continue to consummate the curriculum system, build up trial future learning centres, explore the teacher training system, strive to make New Education Initiative as a banner of quality-oriented education and become a new school of education rooted in China.
Emotional regulation is an important part of social and emotional skills. Under the research framework of OECD, it includes three skills: stress resistance, optimism and emotional control. Based on the data of 10-year-old and 15-year-old students’ participation in OECD Social and Emotional Skills Study in Suzhou, this paper presents the emotional regulation performance of Suzhou students by using descriptive statistics, difference test and regression analysis. The study finds that stress resistance, optimism and emotional control are significantly related to other skills, and there are significant differences in age and gender, urban and rural areas. There is no significant difference between general high schools and vocational high schools. Emotional regulation is significantly affected by the relevant factors of background, students, teachers, school and family. It has a significant impact on life outcome variables such as health, well-being, satisfaction, test anxiety, closeness to family and closeness to others. Therefore, the relevant subjects should pay full attention to the cultivation of students’ emotional regulation, clarify their own roles, and choose the right path and strategy to promote the improvement of students’ emotional regulation.
This study uses the thinking method of “four beams and eight pillars”, draws on the structural logic of the CIPP evaluation model and follows the five-step research path of sequential evidence-based to analyze the status quo, international comparison, theoretical formulation, empirical construction and policy suggestions of China’s early childhood education indicators system. First, it selected the current Chinese early childhood education texts that have great influence in China to conduct content analysis to structurally describe the status quo of China’s early childhood education indicators system. Then it analyzed the structural problems of China’s current early childhood education indicators system by juxtaposing and comparing the structural framework and specific indicators in both domestic and international early childhood education indicators system. Subsequently, it conceived the structural framework and specific contents of the high-quality early childhood education indicators system including four first-level indicators of background, input, process and outcome, 13 second-level indicators and 55 third-level indicators. Then, based on empirical research, it constructed the “four beams and eight pillars” and key indicators of the new era China’s high-quality early childhood education indicators system, which includes four first-level indicators (value quality, condition quality, process quality, and outcome quality), eight second-level indicators (value orientation, social background, system and mechanism, resource allocation, care and education, management of kindergartens, popularization and universal benefit, safety and high quality) and 57 third-level indicators. Finally, it put forward five policy recommendations for the construction of China’s high-quality early childhood education indicators system. First, actively construct a structural framework to impove overall attention to systemic quality. Second, pay special attention to background factors to ensure priority attention to value quality.Third, pay attention continuously to input factors to ensure long-term attention to condition quality. Fourth, put emphasis strongly on process factors to ensure focus on process quality. Fifth, rationally strengthen the output factors to ensure comprehensive attention to the outcome quality.
Educational expectations are the expectations of individuals, parents, or teachers for the future level of education of learners, which have a great impact on academic performance and individual development. Numerous studies have overlooked the prevalence of differences in educational expectations between parents and children, while such differences can easily result in poor behavioral and performance. Based on the large-scale data of the 2014—2015 China Education Panel Survey, we use OLS, PSM and corrected Bootstrap method to explore the effects of parent-child discrepancies in education expectations on the academic performance of adolescents, as well as the differences in the influence mechanisms. The research has found that, firstly, parent-child discrepancies in education expectations have negative and significant effects on the academic performance of adolescents. Secondly, upward-biased parent-child discrepancies in education expectations, typically manifest as holding high hopes for children, are not rational, with a significant and negative effect on academic performance. However, there is no significant relationship between downward-biased parent-child discrepancies in education expectations and academic performance. Thirdly, psychological stress, academic burden and negative emotions play partial mediating roles in the relationship between the upward-biased parent-child discrepancies in education expectations and academic achievement. Finally, compared to that of girls, the academic performance of boys is more susceptible to the negative impact of upward-biased parent-child discrepancies in education expectations. Based on the results of empirical research, we put forward countermeasures such as forming appropriate educational expectations and improving parent-child communication.
K-12 students were pushed to the forefront of online learning with their widely-involved parents by the Covid-19 pandemic. There is a public concern about their learning performance, adaptability and parental influences. This study is based on the large-scale online teaching survey authorized by Jiangsu Education Department. Several descriptive or exploratory statistical analysis were carried out on 449,650 valid student questionnaires. It's found that with the parental involvement in online learning, students had satisfying learning involvement and acceptable goal attainment, but their learning psychology was not so good, though there were certain demographic differences. Homework guidance and good learning environment are two important parental factors that affect learning outcomes, also positively predicting learning involvement. Besides, parent-child communication atmosphere and family expectations both influence learning involvement. Learning psychology is positively affected by homework guidance, learning environment, parent-child atmosphere and family expectations. There are five typical online learners through cluster analysis, whose characteristics reflect different family parenting styles. The research suggests that in the post-epidemic era blended learning has to pay attention to several aspects such as home-school collaboration, learning psychological intervention, and online learning interaction.
The supervisor-postgraduate relationship plays a role in the quality of postgraduate education. The mode of supervisor-postgraduate relationship is moving from unity to diversity. Existent literature tends to conceptualize the supervisor and postgraduate as particular roles respectively and thus construct their relationship. This study attempts to move beyond the above literature focusing on the role play in constructing supervisor-postgraduate relationship and look at their relationship from an interpersonal perspective. Drawing upon Leary’s interpersonal circle constructed by Influence and Proximity as two axes, the study explores how these two dimensions are evaluated by both supervisors and postgraduates and thereafter types of supervisor-postgraduate relationship generated from the two axes, and the correlations between types of supervisor- postgraduate relationship and supervisors as well as students’ backgrounds, interaction, and the surrounding climate and conditions. Our study surveyed 3,903 supervisors and 865 postgraduates, and found that the supervisor-postgraduate relationship largely fell into the category of “equal and close” one, with “slightly equal but distant” one and “highly authoritative and distant” one co-existing. However, there seem poor correlations between different types of supervisor-postgraduate relationship and supervisors and students’ backgrounds; certain frequency and length of interaction seem to more correlate with “highly equal and close” supervisor-postgraduate relationship; and for postgraduate students, supportive climate and conditions regarding funding and wellbeing appear to more correlate with “equal and close” supervisor-postgraduate relationship.
This study uses the data from the OECD youth social and emotional skills assessment in Suzhou, China as the data source to present one dimension of the social and emotional skills survey about engaging with others. The results show that there is a significant medium correlation between engaging with others and other dimensions of social and emotional skills. There are significant differences in engaging with others among students of different ages, genders, schools and regions. Also, students’ engaging with others is significantly affected by students’ safe feelings and peer relationship, family background, teachers and school factors. Engaging with others has a significant impact on the life outcome variables of different groups of students. Therefore, the research results deliver some implications. First, intimate peer relationship is essential for improving students’ engaging with others. Second, harmonious teacher-student relationship is an important guarantee to promote students’ engaging with others. Third, good school atmosphere is the key to improving students’ engaging with others. Finally, positive family education is an important foundation for developing students’ engaging with others.
As a basic accomplishment for children to face, adapt to the future and transform the future, programming has been constantly paid more and more attention to and attached importance to. However, how much educational value it has, for this reason, many scholars have carried out a large number of experiments and quasi-experimental studies based on the individual development of children, but the results are not the same. The question of whether programming can actually promote the individual development of children remains a subject of academic debate. Based on this, this study uses the meta-analysis method to quantitatively analyze 28 foreign experiments and quasi-experimental studies on the influence of programming on the individual development of children. It is found that: (1) overall, the combined effect size of the included studies is 0.61, which is in the upper-middle level, indicating that programming can positively promote the individual development of children; (2) specifically, programming can significantly and positively promote students’ cognitive development, behavioral development and emotional development; (3) compared with primary schools and preschools, programming plays a more prominent role in children’s separate development in middle schools; (4) compared with medium-term and long-term programming activities, short-term programming activities have a more significant promoting effect on children’s individual development; (5) programming has a greater effect on children’s individual development in small-scale samples than in medium and large samples; (6) different programming forms have different effects, among which unplugged programming has a more significant effect on children’s individual development. Based on the findings of the research conclusions, it is expected to provide reference for the future research and practice of programming for children in China.
Principal curriculum leadership is an important guarantee for school curriculum development, teachers’ professional development and students’ quality improvement. Based on the concept interpretation and dimension decomposition of principal's curriculum leadership, this study discusses the constituent elements and mechanism of principal curriculum leadership. Taking principals of primary and secondary schools as the research objects, descriptive statistics and PLS-SEM were used to analyze the status quo and model test, respectively, to explore the relationship between principals’ curriculum awareness and curriculum leadership effectiveness. The results show that principals of primary and secondary schools have strong ability of curriculum planning and management, but weak ability of curriculum awareness and curriculum assessment. Principals’ curriculum management ability and curriculum assessment ability have a direct impact on curriculum leadership effectiveness, while principals’ curriculum awareness has a positive impact on curriculum leadership effectiveness through six mediation pathways (including four chain mediation roles). Based on the above research results, suggestions are put forward to pay attention to the scientific and accurate training of principals’ curriculum leadership, strengthen the empirical research on the emotional and intellectual elements of principals’ curriculum leadership, and build a narration-based mechanism for improving principals’ curriculum leadership.
Open-mindedness is one of the five dimensions of social and emotional skills under the research framework of OECD. It includes three skills: tolerance, curiosity and creativity. Based on the data of 10-year-old and 15-year-old students’ participation in OECD’s study on Social and Emotional Skills in Suzhou, this report presents the open-mindedness performance of Suzhou students by using descriptive statistics, difference test and regression analysis. The study finds that there are considerable gaps on open-mindedness scores with respect to age and gender, school location (urban vs. rural), and high school stream (general vs. vocational). Open-mindedness is significantly affected by background, student, teacher, school, and family-related factors; it has a significant impact on life outcome variables. Therefore, the cultivation of students’ open-mindedness needs more scientific and accurate policy support.
Conceptual framework of children’s all-around development through a multi-disciplinary approach is based on Marxist “all-around development of humans”. It attempts to construct a conceptual framework for children’s all-around development through a multi-disciplinary perspective, consisting of “five pairs of concepts and twelve categories”. Specifically, it includes the conceptual construction of children’s civic and moral development through the lens of political science and ethics; the conceptual construction of children’s cognitive and emotional development through the lens of psychology and brain science; the conceptual construction of children’s social and personality development through the lens of sociology, psychology, social psychology; the construction of children’s artistic and aesthetic development through the lens of art studies and aesthetics; the conceptual construction of children’s health and safety development through the lens of human kinematics, nutrition, and safety; the conceptual construction of children’s physical and brain development through the lens of physiology and brain science. The construction of children’s all-around development through a multi-disciplinary approach is to deepen the discussion around the basic theories for children’s development. The conceptual framework provides theoretical reference for a more comprehensive grasp of the goal of education, as well as theoretical basis for constructing a scientific educational evaluation system.
This article argues that social responsibility is one of the core characteristics of top-notch talents. At the very beginning, the article clarifies the necessity of cultivating social responsibility for top-notch talents. Then, the article analyzes the profound connotation and important elements of top-notch talents’ social responsibility based on the relative theories and models. Furthermore, the article analyzes the relationship between social responsibility and other characteristics crucial to the top-notch talents’ development. In the end, the article puts forward suggestions and guidance on the cultivation of top-notch talents’ social responsibility so that the programs and services can be enhanced.
Task performance is an important part of social and emotional skills. Under the research framework of OECD, it includes three skills: self-control, responsibility and persistence. Based on the data of 10-year-old and 15-year-old students’ participation in OECD Social and Emotional Skills Study in Suzhou, the current paper presents the task performance results of Suzhou students by using descriptive statistics, difference test and regression analysis. The study finds that self-control, responsibility and persistence are significantly related to other skills, and there are significant differences in age and gender, between urban and rural areas, and between general high schools and vocational high schools. Task performance is significantly affected by the relevant factors of background, students, teachers, school and family. It has a significant impact on life outcome variables such as health, well-being, satisfaction, test anxiety, closeness to family and closeness to others. Based on the findings, we make several recommendations for school educators, policy makers and researchers.
The independence of education law is not confirmed by the characteristics of the legal branch; on the contrary, the independence of the education law confirms that the education law can be regarded as an independent department law. The independence of education law is determined by the typological characteristics of education law, which is the narrow sense of educational legal relationship, which belongs to the core category of education law. In the stage of the continuous development of education law, it is necessary to focus on the legal relationship of narrow sense education, highlight the research on the nodal issues, and focus on the joint and detail issues of the education law with the legal relationship of narrow sense education and its embodied educational value. Then, we should construct the system of education law, form the order of education law, stabilize the scope of education law, and ensure the independence of education law.
中国人文社会科学核心期刊
