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.
In terms of calculation method, the evaluation reform of education is questioned, which is not only a critical response to the evaluation on the basis of information technology, but also to grasp the breakthrough in the evaluation reform of education while clarifying the challenges and risks. The challenge of evaluation reform of education promoted by calculation lies in how to correct the educational concept, improve the scientificity of improving the evaluation; secondly, how to produce the knowledge of education and promote the professionality of evaluation; thirdly, how to optimize the educational governance and manifest the objectivity of the evaluation. However, limited to the complicated cognition behind the calculation, the evaluation may meet the risks such as the bias intensification, ranking trap, digital divide, materialization dilemma and etc. Regarding this, in order to realize the pursuit of the reform of “putting the risks into challenges”, it is necessary that the breakthrough of the calculation method of the evaluation reform of education should be prompted from the aspects of method in cognition, aim, object and mode, that is to surpass the self-fulfilling prophecy through pursuing the causes, transcend the race via peace agreement, to use the overall development to go beyond the individual features, finally the ample data to take place of the insufficient data.
China’s university evaluation has always been accompanied by a strong top-down administrative dominance for a long time. The allocation of government resources among universities is also closely related to the evaluation results. In such a system, universities are more likely to highlight advantages rather than problems. In the process of promoting the construction of world-class universities, the evaluation system of Chinese universities has gradually changed and international evaluation has become an important way for leading universities to carry out self-evaluation. This study found that the early international evaluations mainly originated from universities’ initiation for specific issues. Under the strong willingness to reform in the universities, international evaluations were introduced into the self-evaluation systems of these universities and promoted organizational changes, such as personnel system reform, university and school management system reform, inter-discipline construction. Since then, the international evaluation mechanism has continued to spread among the first-class universities in China. This article believes that changes in the environment of higher education evaluation system is an important foundation for the spread of international evaluation mechanisms, and the learning and imitating of pioneers is the direct cause of proliferation. Under the effect of the legitimacy mechanism, international evaluation has accelerated its spread among the first-class university groups in China. It has become an important part of the continuous self-reformation of universities.
The impact evaluation of PK-12 educational programs in the United States not only started early in practice, with a relatively solid foundation, but also has developed into an important type of educational scientific research and the evidence source for the evidence-based educational reform at present, accumulating a lot of relatively mature practical experience. After thematically analyzing the text of 25 high-quality evaluation research, this research found that its practical experience is as follows. First of all, adequate evaluation funding is the first prerequisite for evaluation. The funding support comes from government and other sources, the raising is a collective action of wisdom, and the allocation runs through the entire evaluation process. Secondly, professional evaluators are the core input of evaluation. The evaluators come from professional organizations such as universities and colleges, and appropriate evaluators will be carefully selected and determined based on many factors, and there are currently three types of evaluator role positioning, namely, internal evaluators, external evaluators, and evaluators who collaborate internally and externally. Thirdly, scientific evaluation conducting is the key process of evaluation. The evaluation planning usually determines the evaluation type and questions. The evaluation design will clarify the theoretical basis, evaluation methods and outcome measures. And the evaluation implementation will attach great importance to sample recruitment, intervention implementation and data collecting. Fourthly, utility fruit is an important output of evaluation. The evaluation findings will be properly analyzed and reasonably explained. The evaluation results will be written by specifications and presented in various ways. And the evaluation products will be vigorously disseminated and used effectively. In addition, while striving to improve its quality, the impact evaluation of PK-12 educational programs in the U.S. has also begun to burst out new practical trends.
The equity of expenditure per student on basic education affects the equity of educational process and outcome. Based on the data of expenditure per student on basic education and the data of current students from 1995 to 2018, this paper estimates the equity degree of expenditure per student on basic education in China by calculating the Gini coefficient and Theil index. It is found that the equity of expenditure per student on basic education is generally at a “relatively fair” and “relatively reasonable” level and became more equitable from 1995 to 2018. The inter-provincial difference of basic education expenditure per student is greater than the regional difference. The expenditure of basic education per student in eastern China varies greatly among provinces, and the degree of equity is low. The fairness of the average expenditure of senior high school students tends to decrease. According to the research findings, relevant policy recommendations are put forward.
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.
The handling of compulsory withdrawal from colleges is the behavior of colleges and universities to forcibly terminate the legal relationship of students in school, including disciplinary withdrawal and academic elimination. The legal nature of compulsory withdrawal is a state administrative act, and in the specific type of administrative act, it belongs to the cancellation or abolition of unformatted administrative acts that grant benefits. In view of the fact that the handling of compulsory withdrawal has excessively restricted or even deprived students of their basic rights such as the right to identity and the right to education, the formal legality of the compulsory withdrawal system must follow the principle of legal reservation, the principle of clear norms, and the principle of due process. In terms of substantive rationality, the above should comply with the principle of proportionality, the principle of prohibition of improper connection and the principle of trust protection. Based on the conclusions of the legality and rationality of the system, the legalization of the system should be carried out from four aspects. Specifically, first, the basis for withdrawal should be partly based on the principle of relative legal reservation to assign authority; second, the reasons for withdrawal should be divided into political standards, disciplinary standards and academic standards to be determined separately; third, the withdrawal procedure should be established as an open procedure, hearing procedures and period procedures; fourth, rights relief should be improved and explored in school appeals, administrative reconsideration, judicial litigation and administrative compensation and other systematic remedies.
As a well-known cultural group in Qing Dynasty which long lasting, large in numbers and influential, the Tongcheng School is commonly regarded as a literary school because of its famous ancient style prose. Actually, most of the Tongcheng Scholars had rich teaching experiences and educational ideas and closely related to education. Represented by the “Three Ancestors”, the early Tongcheng School took an active part in imperial examination and academies of classical learning in Qing Dynasty and made great effects. Studying on their educational thoughts and practice will help to enrich the comprehensive understanding of education in Qing Dynasty and figure out the internal logic of the later Tongcheng School’s performance in the process of Chinese education modernization.
Writing is a way to both literally and metaphorically put a mark on the world. It is a process to lead students to read critically and deeply, and write effectively and clearly. It is also an approach to figuring out what ideas students really care about and guiding them to write about these ideas with care and depth. Writing courses are usually required in American colleges and universities, which aim to cultivate undergraduates’ written communication ability and critical thinking. The Harvard College Writing Program was founded in 1872, and its expository writing course is the only academic experience required of every undergraduate today. Beginning with her college writing handbooks and expectations for cooperation with China, the interview was carried out with a focus on the following themes: why Nancy Sommers has devoted herself to writing education; why she has focused her research on revision and responding; why she set up the Harvard Writing Project; why she created the Harvard Study of Undergraduate Writing; and why she set up the Writing Workshop for graduate students. In this profound and impressive interview, Sommers attributed her success to loving to read and loving to write. She pointed out that learning to write is a great way for college undergraduates to learn more effectively about the various other subjects which they study, and regarded writing as the power that helps students set a course in life for themselves. At the same time, she stressed that writing is the center of undergraduate education, and that at the heart of writing is really revision. Sommers also elaborated on revision strategies of student writers, responding to student writers, writing partners in the Writing Workshop, the idea of ten thousand hours of practice, the relationship between speaking and writing, “personal dragons,” and avoiding plagiarism.
In the higher education structural system, in the “world”, and in the dual time vision of personal and public time, the second bachelor’s degree education is indispensable. The three key words of its function and essence are adapting, remixing and emerging. The important function of the second bachelor’s degree education in the new era is to quickly respond to the demand for talents and human resources from the changes in the market and industrial structure, and to provide learning opportunities for individual/Dasein with emerging learning motivations to enhance their adaptability; to supplement students enrollment to “unpopular” majors; cultivating top-notch creative talents based on remixing to increase the probability of “emerging” and enhance the country’s momentum for innovation and development. At the same time, the second bachelor’s degree education also provides a repair for the current teaching reforms that are still lagging behind in some colleges and universities. The classifications of remixing provide framework guidelines for the curriculum construction, enrollment qualifications and teaching of the second bachelor’s degree major. In the dual time vision of personal time and public time, the individual/Dasein recognizes himself, locates himself, projects himself with understanding of the world and the earth, and new learning motivation emerges unpredictably and unplannedly in the field within the worldliness and worlding of the world. The second bachelor’s degree education and other learning opportunities together promote the emerging and sheltering of diversity, richness and innovation.
Reflection is an important way to promote the professional development of primary and secondary school teachers. This study conducted a multi-level linear growth model analysis based on three waves of a longitudinal study of 301 primary and secondary school teachers over one year. In this study, the developmental trend of teachers' classroom behaviour, and the influence of reflection on the developmental trend of teachers’ classroom behaviour were described, then the classroom behavior effects with different teaching philosophies through conducting reflection were discussed. The results show that teachers’ classroom behaviour will be significantly and continuously improved with the implementation of reflection. Reflection has different continuous effects on teachers with different teaching philosophies. Teachers who hold a teaching philosophy of student-centeredness are more likely to obtain positive effects of classroom behaviour in the process of reflection. Because of the positive and continuous influence of reflection on teachers’ classroom behaviour, teachers should be guided to form a “student-centeredness” teaching philosophy and should improve classroom behaviour through conducting reflection in the future.
In the past decades, the situative and socio-cultural perspective has deeply influenced the research on teacher learning, and teacher learning occurs in multiple and complex communities or systems. As a result of the high performance in international programs such as PISA, Chinese version of professional learning community (PLC) has gained much attention. This paper introduced a series of empirical studies that focused on teacher learning in multiple learning communities within Chinese cultures and contexts. These studies attempted to respond to three questions: how to build strong PLCs in Chinese context? is Chinese version of PLCs beneficial for teachers? how can the research on teacher learning in Chinese contexts contribute to the international knowledge community? The findings showed that teachers learning was influenced by Chinese cultures and contexts, which was different from the Western counterparts. However, the “others” perspective can help us to understand our own problems, to reflect and improve the educational practice. The unique contexts of teacher learning in China could also make knowledge contributions to the academic community through appropriate conversations.
The Chinese-style fiscal decentralization makes competitive governments the game process of “growth for competition”. The result has intensified the trend of higher education localization and expanded the scale of China’s higher education. Using the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2004 to 2018, the paper explores the impact of fiscal decentralization and competitive government on the expansion of China’s higher education scale. The research found that fiscal decentralization has an inhibitory effect on the scale of local higher education, but competitive government has a significant improvement, and has a moderating effect on the adverse effects of fiscal decentralization on the scale of local higher education. After lagging the variable of competitive government, the estimated coefficient has dropped significantly, indicating that the expansion of higher education scale is likely to be the result of the immediate competition policy of the local government, and it is heterogeneous between the eastern and inland areas. It is necessary for the central government to correctly guide local governments to compete and transform the concept of competition.
Scholarship ability of teaching and learning is a kind of practical expertise structure that teachers can use appropriate methods to study teaching and learning problems, apply the research results to teaching activities, and public sharing for community evaluation and construction, in order to promote students’ deep learning and discipline literacy development. It not only has specialized scholarship knowledge and ability, but also includes pedagogical content ability transformed by the combination of content knowledge and pedagogics among which the ability of curriculum development and teaching design is the core. Scholarship ability of teaching and learning highlights distinctive practical, integrative and developmental. It is related to and different from discipline scholarship ability, educational research ability and scholarly teaching ability. The ways to improve university teachers’ scholarship ability of teaching and learning include constructing the development model, attaching importance to reflective practice, and promoting action research.
Both challenges from population aging and low fertility rate and opportunities from labor relocation and human capital accumulation have been revealed by the seventh National Census. Improving public education are inherent requirements of the new population situation. The crux of education supply in China is not only insufficient quantity, but also inefficient distribution that misses changing education demands derived from population migration. Accordingly, education supply must be adjusted based on a deep understanding about China’s spatial economy evolution. On the one hand, because of continuous population agglomeration, education resources in big cities urgently need to be expanded, especially senior high school education supply. On the other hand, while population is contracting to central urban districts in population outflowing regions, the quality of local education supply needs to be enhanced by centralization. From an institutional perspective, the top-level design should focus on reforming local governance and adjusting fiscal arrangements, and thus mobilizes multiple subjects in improving education supply.
Natural disasters and social disasters can be understood as the phenomena that lead to the destructive shaking of people’s life field and social foundation. And the memory of catastrophe is people’s recollection and recognition of the past phenomenon. For people, the memory of catastrophe is the basis that gives people identities, the wake-up call for survivor, the accident that brings the chance, the place of debate for seeking truth. However, the memory, which is essential to the bildung of individuals, has been completely forgotten by modern education, which is rooted in real life and repels uncertainty. The inheritance of memory is gradually replaced by formal commemoration and knowledge-based disaster prevention education. In fact, disaster prevention education that attaches importance to inheriting the memory of catastrophe is not only self-help education that helps students become survivors, but also co-help education that makes students become volunteers. Under the effect of emotional resonance and sincere dialogue, people who recognized the catastrophe together build a connection, in order to face a new catastrophe that may come again in the future.
Throughout the world the pattern of disengagement established in primary and secondary schools leads to the problem of disengagement in the workplace which, according to Gallup, results in global losses of $7 trillion per year in productivity. In his book China’s New Education Experiment in Action, Professor Zhu Yongxin presents a variety of stories about the success that the innovative schools that follow his principles have achieved. Recent findings in psychological research that are not commonly known in the field of education can help explain the success that Professor Zhu’s principles have facilitated. Through placing their central emphasis on the motivation and engagement of students, the schools that apply the principles of the New Education Experiment produce both academic achievement and “a happy, complete life of education.” Looking to the future, there are challenges that all educational innovations face, no matter where they occur. As a potential means for proactively facing those inevitable challenges to the schools in the New Education Experiment, the value of using scientifically informed measures of the psychological climate in those schools is discussed.
Recent massive application of information technology has led to a great reform of learning style. Compared with emerging practical models, there is lack of profound theory. As a current philosophical leader in the fields of phenomenology of technology, Don Ihde integrated phenomenology with pragmatism together. On that basis, he opened “Experience turning” up to philosophy of technology firstly. Given his theory, it was clear that informational learning style involved complex kinds of relation between machine and human, such as “embodiment relation”, “hermeneutic relation” and “background relation”. Therefore, to focus on only one “relation” and see it as the essence are not the right choice for exploring informational learning style. In the long run, there are some principles which can benefit informational learning style research, including breaking through limitations of reductionism and dualism, transcending confrontation between engineering paradigm and humanism paradigm, emphasizing on mutual promotion of practice and theory, and developing study research continually in the perspective of complexity theory.
Private education group is an important form of capital market and education industry combination, which has a profound influence on the healthy development of private education by effectively utilizing capital market. Private education groups engage two different industries (education and business) and its regulation and operation are facing many risks. Private education group supervision responsibility is not clear; the regulatory means are limited, and law enforcement is weak. Irregularities for profit weaken school legal person property rights, underrate public assets as well. Crossover cross-regional wanton expansion and multi-stakeholder bound would trigger a series of operational risk. Penetrating management of groups deprives member schools’ running autonomy. Listed private education groups control member schools to withdraw funds or conduct connected transactions through structured contracts. Equity financing may lead to barbarian acquisition and profit outflow of non-profit schools. Illegal borrowing and misappropriation of member schools’ funds and investment in non-educational industries may lead to capital chain fracture. International capital investment in private education groups and the establishment of a series of international schools may damage national education sovereignty. It is urgent to establish the governance system, prevent and control assets management risks, regulate excessive and illegal affiliate transactions, and take multiple measures simultaneously to ensure a smooth transition of listed private education group.
Reading was considered to be a graceful activity in traditional Chinese value. However, it gradually became an outdated opinion with the popularity of vulgar pictorials in late Qing. The appearance of vulgar pictorials in large amount, which imitated the models established by foreign pictorials as well as continued the Chinese tradition of left picture right historical narrative, and which was low in price but balanced entertainment and aesthetic, provided a knowledge warehouse for the populace (including females and children). Reading became part of the daily life of the populace who had little knowledge. The contents those vulgar pictorials presented, included not only the cultural images and interpretations articulated by the government and elites, but also the processed images and interpretations articulated by publishers and the authors who drew those pictures. The generalization of those vulgar pictorials provided the public opinions and practical experiences for the establishment of modern social education. The influence on the social value brought by those vulgar pictorials echoed to the cultural interaction between elite and populace.
Educational psychology is one of the fundamental disciplines in the field of education. Over the past hundred years, educational psychology has been continuously innovated by generations of educators and researchers. Entering the 21st century, educational psychology is facing a situation in which opportunities and challenges coexist. In this context, ECNU established the Department of Educational Psychology in the Faculty of Education in 2017, focusing on the learning and development of students of all ages and committed to theoretical innovation and realistic problem solving. What should and can educational psychology do, and how should the discipline develop in the future? To reflect on the past, work on the present, and look to the future, this special issue discussed the positioning and development of educational psychology, with the goal of shedding lights on policymaking and educational reform in China.
Educational psychology as a branch of psychology has a history of more than one hundred years. However, it is still very young as an independent discipline. Internally, it lacks central concerns of its own, a coherent conceptual system, and a distinct methodology. Externally, it faces new challenges brought up by the increasing division of disciplines. In the context of the 21st century, it is increasingly difficult to view educational psychology as a sub-discipline of psychology and ignore its nature as “design science” and “human science”. Repositioning educational psychology entails distinguishing itself from other psychological sciences by establishing distinct central concerns, especially by re-examining its epistemology and methodology. The traditional logic of mechanical reductionism has to be replaced by an organismic logic of emergence that is based on the plasticity, openness, choice, and growth of human beings. At the same time, educational psychology has to draw inspiration from “design science” in its exploration of possibilities and optimality of learning and growth, while psychological and behavioral evidence provides the viability and constraints for such practices.
Creativity is a multifaceted concept which involves creative potentials, creative achievements, creative talents, and many other facets. Basically, creativity can be divided into four types, namely mini-creativity, little creativity, professional creativity, and big creativity. In school context, creativity cultivation should focus on students’ creative potentials, highlight the roles of creative cognition, metacognition, personality, motivation, and domain-specific knowledge. As creativity usually develops from general domains to specific domains, and autonomy and idea generation are the key components of creative processes, school education which aims to cultivate each student’s creativity in everyday classroom activities should encourage students’ autonomy, employ generative tasks, and stimulate creative thinking in specific contexts. To effectively develop students’ creativity, a series of strategies should be employed, which include creating supportive climates, using generative activities, modeling and rewarding creativity, training creative metacognition, setting creativity as separate goals, and providing feedback on creative performance.
Competence can be broadly defined as the capacity of a human being interacting with environment, with the aim to maintain and enhance the survival and development of humankind at both individual and population level. Inherently implied in the concept of competence are such characteristics as agency-driven, socially-constructed and culturally-laden. Therefore, a theory of competence should explicate from an ecological perspective the nature of various competences as well as their epigenetic and developmental mechanism within the dynamically bilateral relationship of co-existence and co-ordination between an individual and environment. Competence development is an organic process, a process of continuous becoming and constructing throughout the life-span of an individual, during which various elements and their relationships are involved and integrated across a variety of layers including those of physical-biological, social-cultural as well as psychological-behavioral. In particular, collective practice, individual agency and social transaction constitute a three-dimensional dialectic system for human competence development, within which the culture plays a mediated role in that it can be considered as tools in the most general sense. Under this theoretical perspective, three approaches to competence model building can be described as demand-functional approach, culture-psychological configuration approach and hologram-layer approach, respectively. These approaches are complementary with each other and provide a more comprehensive and systematic understanding of the nature, structure and development of human competences.
Higher-order thinking is a key competence for individuals to adapt to external environments and cope with future challenges. The theory of constructivism argues that people do not passively receive information from the environment, but actively construct knowledge to update their mental models. In authentic learning contexts, higher-order thinking manifests as the ability to identify the connection between prior knowledge and external information, transfer background knowledge to a new situation, and solve complex problems that do not have definite answers. Higher-order thinking is not a single thought process, but a complex cognitive process in which multiple mental operations coordinately work together. The conceptual framework of higher-order thinking incorporates the analysis of problem situations, the identification and formation of the relationship between old and new knowledge, the synthesis of information from different dimensions, the creation of new knowledge, and the monitoring, management and adjustment of the thinking process. The conceptual framework explains how the five cognitive components influence each other and synergistically regulate the process of cognitive development. The framework provides a new theoretical perspective for interpreting higher-order thinking, and lays a theoretical foundation for in-depth research on the developmental mechanism of higher-order thinking.
This study of a sample of 860 Chinese secondary school students used Raven reasoning test and Big Five personality scale to investigate the longitudinal relationship between intelligence, personality and students’ academic performance in three subjects (Chinese, Math, and English). This is a three-wave longitudinal study covering one school year. The cross-lagged panel model analyses indicated that: (1) students’ previous intelligence level can significantly and positively predicted their academic performance in all three subjects. That is, students with high intelligence level tended to achieve higher academic performance in three subjects; (2) students’ personality traits, especially openness, also significantly and positively predicted their academic performance in all three subjects; (3) in the long-term run, there is a compensatory interaction between students’ intelligence and openness in the prediction of academic performance. In this regard, both intelligence and personality traits are very important for students’ learning. Educators should not only pay attention to the development of students’ potential and intelligence, but also to the cultivation of students’ personality traits.
As a bridge between compulsory education and higher education, high school education plays a vital role in Chinese education system. Whether students can establish adaptive motivational beliefs in high school significantly influences their future academic development. Using latent cross-lagged modeling, the present study investigated the longitudinal interrelation among self-concept, interest value, and effort cost in students’ academic achievement from grade 11 to 12 for both math and English domains. Results based on a sample of 694 Chinese high school students revealed significant reciprocity between self-concept and effort cost in math. In math, effort cost in the second semester of grade 11 also negatively predicted interest value in the first semester of grade 12. In English, the development of motivational beliefs is relatively independent, only self-concept in the first semester of grade 11 negatively predicted effort cost in the second semester of grade 11. In both math and English, self-concept positively predicted academic achievement, whereas effort cost negatively predicted academic achievement. Latent interaction analysis further revealed that there was significant interaction effect between self-concept and effort cost on achievement in the math domain. Findings of the present study highlight the importance of students’ motivational beliefs in influencing their academic achievement. In the meantime, the developmental trajectories of motivational beliefs are dynamic and demonstrate a clear pattern of domain-specificity.
In order to clarify the impact of digital tools-supported teaching on students’ learning outcomes, this study conducted a meta-analysis based on 137 experiments and quasi-experiments. The results show that compared with traditional teaching, digital tools-supported teaching can enhance learning motivation (g=0.482) and improve academic achievement (g=0.479). In addition, this positive effect was moderated by demographics, knowledge assessments, and study attributes.The specific manifestations were as follows: in terms of demographic, the use of digital tools to support teaching in the context of collectivism culture had a more significant positive impact on learning motivation and academic achievement compared with individualism culture; the predictive effect of digital tools-supported teaching on learning motivation and academic achievement is not affected by the stage; the influence of digital tools-supported teaching on boys’ academic achievement is significantly higher than that of girls. In terms of knowledge assessment, compared with digital tutorials and simulation, intelligent tutoring system and hypermedia are more conducive to improving academic achievement; as opposed to other subjects, the teaching supported by digital tools has a greater impact on language learning motivation, but the teaching supported by digital tools has a significant impact on mathematics and science achievement. In terms of study attributes, the use of digital tools by trained teachers had a better impact on student motivation than did untrained teachers; only when the intervention time of digital teaching is moderate can it give full play to its best effect on academic achievement; the impact of digital tools-supported teaching on academic achievement is strengthened as the intensity of intervention increases; with the change of years, the predictive effect of digital tools- supported teaching on learning motivation will become more and more prominent.
This paper proposes to use the Bayesian network method to analyze educational research data in view of the complexity, uncertainty and dynamic characteristics of current educational research problems. In terms of research paradigm, Bayesian network integrates theoretical and data-driven research procedures, determines a prior model based on educational research theories and expert experience, and updates data evidence that can support or oppose the theoretical model by collecting new data. In terms of data analysis, Bayesian network brings the uncertainty of variables or variables’ relations into the model and gives accurate inference and prediction by means of probability. In terms of application, Bayesian network can evaluate students’ knowledge mastery, ability training and competence development in real teaching and learning situations. This offers methods and technical support for dynamic evaluation of teaching and learning process.
Focusing on the topic of “The Past, Present and Future of Educational Psychology”, scholars from the Department of Educational Psychology at East China Normal University and Professor Eric Anderman of The Ohio State University reviewed the current trends in educational psychology and discussed the relationship between educational psychology and brain sciences, learning sciences, and other disciplines in the field of education. On this basis, we further reflected on the challenges and opportunities facing educational psychology in the new era, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We discussed how educational psychology could promote children and adolescents’ learning and development, how theory and practice could support each other, and how to respond to the needs of future development in society. Finally, Professor Anderman emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in the field, and provided his suggestions for the development of educational psychology in China.
Advocating educational improvement science as an emerging transdisciplinary area, I reflect philosophically on the three major pathways through which the education mission has been realized in human history and discern the misuses and pitfalls of reform. I also examine the terms “reform” and “improve” and their synonyms both etymologically and in East-West cultural and political traditions, which are embodied in educational theorizations and practical implications. Based on these reflections, I propose the concept of neo-improvementalism, define educational improvement science, and systemically elaborate on its philosophical assumptions, disciplinary fundamentals, and theoretical frameworks. I identify and elucidate growability, developability, and improvability as the three key properties of education and construct disciplinary knowledge of educational improvement science through two main categories, namely, subject matter knowledge and profound knowledge. I then highlight three foundational characteristics of educational improvement science – namely, discipline-oriented, systems thinking, and evidence-based – and the building of professional improvement communities promoting institutional improvement capabilities. I conclude that educational improvement science is the art of the improving organization for classes, schools, and more broadly defined educational agencies, and that its birth signifies the respect and recognition of the disciplinary status and specialization of educational improvement. Finally, I call for the recognition of the significance of educational improvement science and research thereon, especially with respect to discipline-building and exploration based on local characteristics in a global vision, and the cultivation of new fronters of educational research and practices, which need to be enhanced through disciplinarization and scientificization.
The academic burden of primary and secondary school students is a “long-standing and difficult” problem, but the thinking on this problem always stays at the level of matter-of-factly. The human-being is a social existence, and the role is the embodiment of man’s sociality. Students are the social roles assigned by the government and society to school-age children, with “thick” normative requirements. Students are institutionalized roles, and school’s spatial context is the boundary of students’ roles. The role of students with boundaries now spills over to families, communities and society. Even if juveniles are separated from school’s spatial context, they are still students. The excessive spillover and solidification of students’ roles make juveniles unable to get a break from students’ roles and their normative requirements, and lose the opportunity to try other social roles. In particular, the significant role of juveniles at home is still students rather than children, and all ethical norms pinned on children’s roles in traditional culture have lost their role support. For juveniles, the most fundamental burden is the role burden, and the academic burden is only a secondary burden derived from the role burden.
The connection between body and space is the basis for interaction between people and the world. Different education spaces influence and shape different people. The concept of traditional education space is the product of the industrialization era. Closed, fixed and static are its main characteristics, and it is attached to the education production and its efficiency through the auxiliary education management and the creation of power relations. The schoolyard built with adult perspective and preferences is far from nature and children; the wall fences create barriers and confinements to the body while resisting injuries; school buildings divide the learning space into separate functional activity areas; windows can only transmit light and surveillance in one direction; platform and Box format seat imply the relationship between authority and obedience, and divides the respective powers. While meeting the established educational needs, it also served and gave birth to those negative educational concepts. To transform the educational space, it is necessary to make the educational space open, interactive and equal, and use its scientific and biophilic nature to meet the real needs of current teaching and learning.
The education reform based on key competencies is a global education policy, promoted by most countries in the world to improve the quality of talent training in respond to social changes and economic competition. The success of its implementation is related to the country’s labour quality and economic prosperity, as well as global competitiveness. In order to find the main influencing factors and the model that would most likely lead to success of the reform’s implementation, this study compares the key competencies-based education reforms of China, the United States, and Finland from the perspectives of political commitment and implementation capacities. It then points out that, in terms of education reform, China has strong political commitment but not strong implementation capacities; the United States has strong reform implementation capacities but not strong political commitment; Finland has both strong political commitment and implementation capacities, which is a more ideal reform model. China could learn from the experience of Finland and the United States from the aspects of evaluation methods, teacher education and training, and innovation in teaching and learning environments to enhance the implementation capacities, meanwhile keep up the political commitment, transform it into execution, bring non-governmental actors into the reform and further promote the successful implementation of the reform.
The discipline construction of rural pedagogy is a necessary requirement for building the supporting system of rural revitalization in the new era, enriching the connotation of rural pedagogy in the new era, promoting the development of theoretical research and practice of rural education, and perfecting the discipline system of Chinese pedagogy. The discipline construction of rural pedagogy urgently needs to solve the problems of concept definition, research object, research category, discipline positioning and nature, construction of “three systems” and research methods. The construction of rural pedagogy in the context of rural revitalization needs to address four aspects: clarifying the basic concept of rural pedagogy discipline construction; clarifying the basic idea of rural pedagogy discipline construction; dealing with the relationship between the research of rural pedagogy and rural education, the rural pedagogy and rural education practice, the rural pedagogy and related disciplines and Chinese rural pedagogy research and the western, and strengthening the external guarantee of discipline construction of rural pedagogy.
Rural education has its own unique value attribution, spiritual connotation, discourse system and practice methods. To realize the characteristic development of rural education, it is necessary to preserve its unique cultural connotation. However, the development of rural education has lost its culture essence, which is mainly manifested in the value decline of local culture, the division of nature and social attributes, and the dependent development mechanisms. In response to this, it is necessary to consider providing rural teenagers with education that are compatible with their cultural model of “Cultural Responsive Education”. This educational concept highlights the unique connotation of rural culture, and emphasizes “locality” of education concept, curriculum, teaching methods, teacher training and evaluation mode. It promotes the characteristic development of rural education at three levels, including reconstructing confidence of rural education’s cultural identity, unifying rural education’s cultural crack, cultivating rural education’s open cultural mind. Implementing cultural responsive education includes the purpose of education responding to the characteristics of regional culture, the contents of education emphasizing the integration of urban and rural culture, the teaching methods taking advantages of rural areas’ characteristics.Besides, experts conceive the concept of adaptive evaluation system, and teachers strengthen their cultural understanding and reflection consciousness.
In 2015, OECD officially promulgated Start Strong IV: Monitoring in Childhood Education and Care, which clearly proposed kindergarten teacher’s quality monitoring as a part of education quality system. However, there is still a lack of scientific and effective quality monitoring tools for kindergarten teachers in China. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop an effective monitoring tool for kindergarten teachers to provide reference and basis for educational supervision and decision-making. As the theory of cultural existentialism pedagogy (CEP) has its unique vision in the analysis of teacher’s professional development, and pays special attention to the edification of teacher’s humanistic spirit and empowerment, this study takes CEP as the main theoretical framework, regards teachers as “the whole” educators, and develops the “Kindergarten Teacher’s Quality Monitoring Scale”, including five dimensions of healthy condition, practical wisdom, cultural competence, empowerment and autonomy, and commitment and loyalty. In this study, 1,768 teachers from 80 kindergartens in 7 municipal districts of Shanghai with randomly stratified sampling took part in filling the scale. The results are as follows. First, according to the small group analysis, item-total correlation analysis, reliability analysis, and favor loading analysis of classical test theory, the scale has excellent discrimination and reliability. Second, the results of exploratory factor analysis show that kindergarten teacher’s quality consists of 5 dimensions, which are healthy condition, practical wisdom, cultural competence, empowerment and autonomy, and commitment and loyalty. The secondary indicators are composed of 14 items, including physical and mental health, good society, teachers’ moral cultivation, professional knowledge, professional ability, cultural consciousness, cultural cultivation ability, cultural comparative vision, teaching autonomy, professional growth right, participation in decision-making right, educational belief, professional identity and professional mission. Third, the fitness index with confirmatory factor analysis shows that the RMSEA is 0.057, far less than 0.5; X2/df is 3.83, less than 5; CFI, IFI, TLI are all 0.9, GFI, AGFI, NFI are all above 0.85, so the scale has good structure validity.
Studying and supporting early childhood learning is the core competence that kindergarten teachers should possess. The development of an assessment tool will help scientifically diagnose and promote teacher professional development. Based on the COMET work analysis method and behavior integration taxonomy, the study constructs an assessment tool composed of competence dimensions, indicators, and four levels. The surveying attribute test results show that the difficulty, discrimination, and grade division of the evaluation tools are reasonable and have good internal consistency. The confirmatory factor analysis shows that the theoretical model fits well with the observation data and has a high structural effect. It can be seen that the evaluation tools are of high quality and good performance, which can be used as a tool for teacher self-evaluation, and has high application value for kindergarten teachers, kindergarten managers and education administration departments.
The view that educational ideology is educational theory is inspired by Feng Qi’s thought of “two aspects”. There is an internal connection between educational thought and educational theory, which is a systematic educational thought. XueJibecame a “transit station” for modern Chinese scholars to understand and accept western educational theories, because it has the theoretical potential to be transformed. The process of transforming XueJi into a necessary book of normal education and even a monograph of education is the process in which the educational thoughts of XueJi are brought into the domain of pedagogy. Our reflection on transforming the educational thought of XueJi into educational theory is a double academic consciousness based on the construction of Chinese educational discourse system. It not only requires the educational historian to sincerely review the “Chinese language expressed in the West” to study the educational thought of XueJi with the pedagogical framework, but also requires the educational historian to form the self-consciousness leading the educational discourse system of China. The academic work of the educational thought of XueJi is to realize the docking between ancient educational texts and contemporary contexts, to communicate the ancient and modern educational traditions of China, and to explore an academic path based on the traditional lifeline for Chinese pedagogy.
中国人文社会科学核心期刊
