As a kind of field-based training, the emphasis of training content in *Serving a Temporary Position*, according to related policy, is not fixed but depends on whatever trainees' lack of (Organization Department of CCCPC, 1994, 2000). However, the heavy emphasis is always placed on practical leadership knowledge and management skills. The specific requirements for trainees in *Serving a Temporary Position* set out either by the education bureau of sending district or by the result of discussion between sending district and receiving schools. In an established case of *Serving a Temporary Position* in Hubei Province, for example, the sending district firstly stipulated a list of individual trainees' daily work at receiving schools in which the classroom observation, school policy documents study, interaction with teachers and students, seeking advice from their mentors, and self-reflection were included. Secondly, the trainees were required to plan and organize a school-wide event at their receiving schools to demonstrate their leadership capacity and management skills during the *Serving a Temporary Position*. Finally, they were required to submit a comprehensive work report to review and summarize the leadership knowledge and management skills acquired during the *Serving a Temporary Position,* and to plan some possible and feasible change in their future work after their *Serving a Temporary Position* (Qin, 2007). In addition to the requirements mentioned in the case of *Serving a Temporary Position* in Hubei Province, school data collection (e.g. school strategic plan, school yearbooks, school rules and regulations, working plans of subject teams, syllabuses of school developed curricular, school developed instructional materials, etc.), themed interview with staff, and personal journal during the *Serving a Temporary Position* are also the requirements for trainees in other cases of *Serving a Temporary Position* (Zhang, 2001; Tu, 2010; Zhao,2013).

#### *2.2.4 Principal Career-ladder System* **[**XIAO-ZHANG-ZHI-JI-ZHI**]**

*Principal Career-ladder System* **[**XIAO-ZHANG-ZHI-JI-ZHI**]**is a reformed rank system for principals emerged in mid 1990s in China. It is intended to establish a profession-oriented and performance-related career-ladder to promote the professionalization of principals.

In China, the role of principal is conventionally seen as a type of officials rather than professnk of principals is bound up with level and chy, the principals of key senior high schools were awarded the Division-Head rank while the principals of ordinary senior high schools, junior high schools as well as district central primary schools, and ordinary primary schools were respectively awarded the Deputy-Division-Head rank, Section-Head rank, and Deputy- Section-Head rank. When Chinese government decided to promote the professionalization of school leadership in 1990s, the conventional hierarchy for school principals obviously had become an obstacle. The major ionals. In the conventional hierarchy for principals, the ra size of their schools. Under this hierar

maladies of the conventional hierarchy were identified as follows (Yuan, 1996; Yang,2006; Wang,2012; The Task Group of Shandong Institute of Administration, 2016; Wang, 2016): 䈄㻾einforcing the consciousness that principals are officials rather than professionals. As a result, principals usually lack intrinsic motivation for professional development.

䈄Principals mobility or rotation is difficult or even hindered because talented principals are only willing to move to higher ranks (being bound up with key senior high and district central primary schools) rather than to lower ranks (being bound up with ordinary and even disadvantage schools). Hence, it is difficult to send a talented principal to disadvantage and low-performing schools.

䈄It is not fair to those principals who have been working hard in disadvantage schools and making substantial contribution to their schools improvement though their school are still low-performing schools.

To improve the professionalism of principals, it was necessary to establish a profession-oriented and performance-related rank system for principals to replace the conventional hierarchy. In 1994, Education Bureau of Jingan District, Shanghai issued a local policy document titled *Provisional Regulations of Jingan District on Principal Career-ladder System* to replace the conventional hierarchy for school principals in the district (Yuan, 1996). It is known as the term *Principal Career-ladder System* (PCLS) was first officially used and also the first policy initiatives set out by a local education authority to develop and implement a district-wide profession-oriented and performance-related rank system for principals (Wang, 2012; Wang, 2016; Wang, 2017; Yuan, et. al., 2017). The establishment of PCLS as one of local policy initiatives was endorsed by Chinese central government in 1999. In the document *The Decision of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Deepening Education Reform and Promoting Quality-Oriented Education in An All-Round Way*, CCCPC and the State Council called for local governments to try out the PCLS, gradually improve the selecting and promotion system for principals, and encourage outstanding principals to serve in disadvantage and challenging schools (CCCPC and the State Council, 1999).Since then, encouraging, promoting, and implementing the PCLS has been reiterated by Chinese central government (State Council,2001; Office of the National Medium and Long Term Education Working Group,2010; Organization Department of CCCPC and MOE,2017; CCCPC and the State Council,2018). By 2018, the PCLS has been implemented in most provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government. However, there is no unified the PCLS across the country because the PCLS is actually a type of performance-related pay system. It is impossible for central government to establish a unified PCLS for principals all over the country since the principal salary system which set in terms of local consumption level is different from province to province, and even different from district to district.

To further explain the PCLS in detail, we take the PCLS of Shanghai as an example. Under the PCLS of Shanghai, the school principals are classified into a hierarchical rank system with five rank titles and eleven levels (see Figure 2.2).

 *Levels*

# **Figure 2.2 The rank titles and levels of** *Principal Career-ladder System* **of Shanghai** Initial principals start from the rank title of Junior Principal at Level C. They will promote to Level B and Level A if they pass the annual appraisals in the first year and the second year. The junior principals at level A are eligible to apply for the rank title of Middle Principal. The candidates for Middle Principal will be evaluated and get the rank title of Middle Principal if they pass the evaluation. Principals who get the title of Middle Principal start from Level D and then promote to next level (e.g. from Level D to Level C, from Level C to Level B, etc.) biennially if they pass the annual appraisal for two consecutive years. However, the middle principals will be eligible to apply for the rank of Senior Principal after three years working as Middle Principal. Namely, they can apply for the rank of Senior Principal in second year of Middle Principal at

Level C if they think that their performance is good enough. As candidates for Senior Principal, they will be evaluated and get the rank title of Senior Principal if they pass the evaluation. The rule of promotion from Level D to Level A of Senior Principal is almost same as promotion rule for Middle Principal. Although Senior Principals will be eligible to apply for the rank of Superfine Principal after two years working as Senior Principals, it is difficult for most of candidates to pass the strict evaluation because the quota of Superfine Principals is generally less than five percent of the total number of serving principals (SMEC, 2015a). Evaluations for the candidates of Middle Principal, Senior Principal, and Superfine Principal in Shanghai are conducted according to *evaluation and accreditation criteria for primary and secondary school principal career-ladder of Shanghai (Revised edition)* developed and published by Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. The framework of the criteria consists of three indicators and eight sub-indicators (see Table 2.2). The *The*

Source from: Shanghai Municipal Education Commission,2015b.

evaluation indicators and sub-indicators for Middle, Senior, and Superfine Principals are same but the detailed contents under the sub-indicators to evaluate the candidates of different rank titles are different. Besides the criteria, the prerequisites for applicants who apply for any rank titles are also set. It is noteworthy that one of prerequisites for applicants is to have lessons in their schools and no less than two periods each week (SMEC, 2015a). It suggests that principals should never

#### *2.2.5 Term-Accountability by Objectives* [REN-QI-MU-BIAO-ZE-REN-ZHI]

*Term-Accountability by Objectives* [REN-QI-MU-BIAO-ZE-REN-ZHI] refers to the system to ensure a principal, in his/her leadership term, to take responsibility in setting appropriate objectives for his/her school development and leading school members to achieve the objectives, and the principal will be finally evaluated in the light of the extent of objectives achievement. In fact, the *Term-Accountability by Objectives* (TABO) is a system closely related to the PCLS in practice and is usually employed as one of supporting systems for PCLS.

Before 1980s, the position of principal in China was a de facto tenured position. At the time, once a person was appointed to the post of principal, there was no definite time limit for his position whether he did more or less and did well or badly. Namely, once a principal was appointed, he/she wouldn¶t be terminated until he/she retired or unless he/she was under extraordinary circumstances, such as committing a crime or coming down with severe illness. Thus, the de facto tenured system for principals was increasingly inconsistent with the societal expectations for principals in the education reform launched in the mid-1980s in China. During the mid-1980s and the early 1990s, some education bureaus at district level in large cities took the lead in abolishing the de facto tenured system for principals by establishing a new system so-called TABO as an alternative to the old system (Ni, 1984; Liu ,1999). To some extent, the idea of the TABO actually drew on some basic ideas of *Management by Objectives* (MBO) presented in Peter Drucker¶s book *The Practice of Management* since 1980s is the time when MOB was introduced into China and became popular soon. Those leaders at education bureaus of districts in large cities who had accepted some basic ideas of MBO put the ideas into the local context and coined the term TABO in early 1980s. TABO as a term was acknowledged and officially used by Chinese government in 2001 in *The decision of State Council's on the reform and development of basic education* (State Council, 2001). TABO was reiterated and advocated by the Ministry of Personnel (MOP) and the MOE when these two departments jointly stated in their RHD that ³the principals of primary and secondary schools should be given a fixed-term appointment. The ordinary term of office for principals is three to five years, and they can be reappointed. It is necessary to make clear principals responsibilities associated with the objectives of their term of office.´(MOP and MOE, 2003). The RHD of the MOP and the MOE in 2003 really gave the momentum to promote TABO being more widely prevalent in China in the early 21st century (Wang, 2004; Cao, 2006; Jia, 2009; Zhang, 2010). In 2017, the Organization Department of CCCPC and the MOE clearly stated in a RHD titled *Circular of Organization Department of CCCPC and the MOE on publishing of Provisional measures for the management of leaders of primary and secondary schools* that the TABO should be generally implemented in managing school leadership team and team members (Organization Department of CCCPC and MOE, 2017). Therefore, the TABO has become a policy requirement that must be implemented since 2017.

In the implementation of TABO, local education authorities usually make some corresponding provisions and detailed requirements. In Tanggu District of Tianjin, for example, the Education Bureau of Tanggu District emphasized that the objectives setting for TABO was not exclusively a principal¶s personal job. Rather, the school staff should involve in the process of objectives setting. Moreover, the principal should report the extent of objectives achievement to school staff at the end of his/her term and the feedback of staff could be a part of basis to determine if he/she can get his/her another leadership term (Jia, 2009). In Daoli District of Haerbin, the education bureau of the district set five-step procedure to exercise TABO. The first step was that the education bureau signed the contract with individual principals to clearly define and describe the performance requirements for the principals on achieving the objectives of their school effectiveness and improvement within their leadership term. Secondly, the education bureau made efforts to enhance their leadership capacity and management skills to address possible challenge by providing principals with various leadership workshops, seminars, and forums. Thirdly, the officials of education bureau worked with professional and consultancy staff of district-level supporting institutions (e.g. teacher training institute, teaching-study office, etc. ) in monitoring individual principals¶ on-going performance of leadership for school effectiveness and improvement and providing principals with timely, professional and targeted support. Fourthly, the professionals of the support units at the district made an effort to identify the cases of best leadership practices by school visits, field observations, and interaction with school leaders and teachers. Then they spread the successful leadership experience over the district. Finally, the directorates of education bureau and professional support units of the district assisted individual principals to find out existing defects in their leadership practice and identified their school¶s potential challenge by providing the information collected from school documents examining and

survey of stakeholders (Liu, 1999). The most important part of the TABO is perhaps the final comprehensive appraisal of the principals¶ performance at the end of their leadership term. The final appraisal will determine whether they can get reappointment for next term or have to leave the position of principal, and whether they can promote to higher rank or stay at their original rank.

#### *2.2.6 Leadership Team Appraisal* **[**LING-DAO-BAN-ZI-KAO-HE]

As we illustrated in Chapter 1, a school leadership team in China refers to all leaders at school level, which is composed of a principal, a Party secretary, vice-principals, and a chairperson of School Trade Union. *Leadership Team Appraisal* [LING-DAO-BAN-ZI-KAO-HE] is the process to appraise the performance of the team as a whole as well as individual performance of each team member. However, the principal is always the focal person in *Leadership Team Appraisal* (hereafter called LTA) since the principal is the chief leader in the team according to the *Education Law of PRC* and the *Principal Responsibility System*. The policy basis for LTA is relevant RHDs jointly issued by the Organization Department of CCCPC and the MOE. LTA can be conducted either at the end of a year (if it is an annual LTA) or at the end of a leadership term (if it is a leadership term LTA). In the most recent published RHD involving the policy of LTA, the Organization Department of CCCPC and the MOE once again emphasized the importance of LTA and stated that the results of the LTA should be respectively fed back to the leadership team and every team member in a proper way, as well as to be recorded and would affect team members¶ career development in the future (Organization Department of CCCPC and MOE, 2017). To fully understand the LTA, it is necessary to explore another three terms, *Reporting Performance and Integrity* [SHU-ZHI-SHU-LIAN], *democratic reviewing* [MIN-ZHU-PING-YI] and *Comprehensive Evaluation* [ZHONG-HE-PING-JIA].

#### *2.2.7 Reporting Performance and Integrity* [SHU-ZHI-SHU-LIAN]

In the term *Reporting Performance and Integrity* [SHU-ZHI-SHU-LIAN@ WKH ³performance´ UHIHUVWRWKH ³leadership performance´ZKHUHDVWKH ³integrity´ UHIHUVWRWKH ³Dleader¶s personal integrity´ *Reporting Performance and Integrity* is one of phases in the procedure of LTA, in which the school leadership team members respectively report their leadership performance and personal integrity to the LTA task group organized by local education bureau(usually composed of officials from education bureau and the professionals from district-level supporting institutions), and all school staff and the representatives of other stakeholders. A normal *Reporting Performance and Integrity* begins with the task group¶s introduction of the purposes of this LTA, the ways of information collection, and the procedure to the LTA. Following the introduction, the principal as the chief leader of leadership team represents the team to report the school¶s progress and achievements in achieving desired goals and objectives. After the principal¶s repot, other members of the leadership team, one by one, report respectively how they fulfilled their leadership responsibilities, how they contributed to achieving desired goals and objectives of the school, and how they kept their personal integrity and didn¶t abuse their authority in their leadership practice. Commonly, the principal¶s report of leadership team¶s performance should focus on how accomplishment of the objectives regarding student outcomes, teacher development and team building, building of staff ethics and code of conduct, campus construction and environment creating, campus safety, and school policy and regulations development while the focal issues of leaders¶ personal integrity is concerned with the appropriateness of school funding allocation, reception costs, school vehicles using, major equipment purchasing, and infrastructure maintenance and renovation (Fu & Li, 2004; Shen, 2005; GY County Education Bureau, 2017).

#### *2.2.8 Democratic Reviewing* [MIN-ZHU-PING-YI]

*Democratic Reviewing* [MIN-ZHU-PING-YI] means to appraise the performance and personal integrity of leadership team members by democratic ways. In practice of LTA, the typical way of *Democratic Reviewing* is to rate leadership team by a performance checklist. It is conducted just following the *Reporting Performance and Integrity*. The LTA task group will hand out a performance checklist with the names of leadership team members to every school staff member and representative of other stakeholders at the venue of *Reporting Performance and Integrity* and asked them to tick respectively on the leadership performance and personal integrity of each member of the leadership team in the light of the rating scale ranging from very much satisfied to unsatisfied. Another way of *Democratic Reviewing* which is also conducted by LTA task group is the individual staff interview. Commonly, they pick up interviewees from the middle managers and teachers of the school randomly and interview with them individually to collect the information about the leadership performance and personal integrity of the leadership team members. Finally, the LTA task group will write a summary of the *Democratic Reviewing* based on the result of performance checklist and the information from the staff interview (Liu & Liu, 2006; GY County Education Bureau, 2017).

#### *2.2.9 Comprehensive Evaluation* [ZONG-HE-PING-JIA]

The LTA is defined in China¶s educational context as a type of *Comprehensive Evaluation* [ZONG-HE-PING-JIA]. The final result of LTA depends on not only the result of *Democratic Reviewing*, but also results or conclusions from some other appraisal means of LTA. In the case of LTA conducted in one of districts of Shanghai, the complete work of the LTA consisted of *Democratic Reviewing* (with 40% weight), mutual evaluation between school leaders within the district (10% weight), the report of school inspection conducted by the district inspection office (20% weight), and the comment of the director/vice-director of the district education bureau (30% weight)(Chen,1999). Finally, the task group will submit a comprehensive LTA report with overall conclusion and detailed comments on school performance, as well as every leadership team member to education bureau. This LTA report will serve as a key reference for school leaders¶ retaining their leadership position or getting reappointment and getting promotion or demotion.

#### **2.3 Summary and Discussion**

In this chapter, nine key terms have been explored and interpreted, by which one can understand the outline and features of China¶s policy regarding management of principals. In exploring the term [HONG-TOU-WEN-JIAN], the author reviewed nine important RHDs concerning management of principals promulgated by Chinese central government, and generally reflected the course of the policy evolution in past 36 years in China. Moreover, one can also see one of Chinese characteristics in supervising leadership which different from those in Western countries, that is, ³cadres(leaders) should be supervised by the Party´ [DANG-GUAN-GAN-BU] (Organization Department of CCCPC and MOE,2017)*.* It is the CPC¶s tradition and one of the CPC¶s principles in leadership, too. Anyway, the principal's status is still a type of cadres in ChinD¶s political or administrative context though Chinese government has recently tended to view principals as professionals rather than officials. It is the reason why most important RHDs regarding principal management were developed and issued jointly by the Organization Department of CCCPC and the MOE (see No. 4 and No.9 RHDs in Table 2.1). Next term concerned by this chapter is [HOU-BEI-XIAO-ZHANG]. The , as one of preparation stages for principals/vice principals, has been highlighted in school OHDGHU¶V preparation since the Organization Department of CCCPC proclaimed in 1992 that school *Red-Head-Document Reserve Principal Reserve Principal*

principals should be normally selected from the reserve cadres (principals) (Organization Department of CCCPC & SEC,1992). The author of this book conducted two interviews respectively with school principals and Education Bureau Officials in 2018. In the interview with education bureau officials at district /county level (hereafter called *Intrview2018-EBO*), all interviewees thought that it was necessary for prospective principals/vice principals to have experience of reserve principal before they were appointed as principal/vice principal. Eleven out of fifteen interviewees confirmed that reserve principal was a no-skip-stage in school leadership preparation of their district/county education system (See Appendix B). In the interview with principals (hereafter called *Intrview2018- Principal*), 14 out of 17 interviewees said that they had had the experience of reserve principal before they got the position of principal/vice-principal (See Appendix B). It seems that the policy about *reserve principal* is positive and effective in &KLQD¶V leadership preparation after we examine the prerequisite, quota and proportion, procedure of selection, pre-service training, and so on. Nevertheless, there are also some defects in the policy. One of salient defects could be the regulation on the restriction for FDQGLGDWH¶s age. Although there is no uniform regulation on the upper age limit for *reserve principal* candidates, they are generally, in practice of leadership preparation, limited to no older than 45years old. The restriction for FDQGLGDWH¶s age is beneficial to the early development and fast growth of young talents, but, on the other hand, the staff is definitely excluded from the candidate list of *reserve principal* if they aren¶t middle managers or don¶t display their leadership talent until middle age. ³This is exactly the opposite of a famous Chinese saying, µ[a] great talent takes time to mature [DA-QI-WAN-&+(1\*@¶´, one of interviewees of *Intrview2018- Principal* said. For those middle managers who are nearly 40 years old, whether or not they can enter the candidate list of reserve principal is crucial because it means, for them, now or never. The third term [GUA-ZHI-DUAN-LIAN] is about a kind of field-based training approach for school leadership which has been widely accepted and employed in China since 1990s. The purpose, format, and content of this field-based leadership training were examined in this chapter by related literature review. Interestingly, we found that the approach of *serving a temporary position* is somewhat similar to the Problem Based Learning (PBL) approach though the former was created by the Chinese leadership practitioners and the latter was developed by the American scholars. In their book *Problem Based Learning in Leadership Development*, Edwin M. Bridges and Philip *Serving a Temporary Position*

Hallinger wrote, ³PBL proponents assume that learning involves both *knowing* and *doing*. Knowledge and the ability to use that knowledge are of equal important. Program designers also assume that students bring knowledge to each learning experience. Moreover, PBL adherents assume that students are more likely to learn new knowledge when the following conditions are met: (1) their prior knowledge is activated and they are encouraged to incorporate new knowledge isto their preexisting knowledge; (2) they are given numerous opportunities to apply it; and (3) they encode the new knowledge in a context that resembles the context in which it subsequently will be used. ´(Bridges & Hallinger,1995, p.5) If this is the underlying assumption of PBL, then it is largely similar to the assumption of . The fourth term *Principal Career-ladder System* **[**XIAO-ZHANG-ZHI-JI-ZHI**]** is a management system regarding principals¶ current income and their career development in the long run. It has had strongly influence and will *Serving a Temporary Position*

continue to have a profound influence on the school leadership selection, preparation, development, and appraisal because it means that the conventional hierarchy for principals has been replaced by a profession-oriented and performance-related rank system. In exploring the term, the author reviewed the conventional hierarchy for principals and identified its major maladies. The author illustrated the policy from central government which encouraged and promoted local education authorities to adopt *Principal Career-ladder System* (PCLS) and examined the progress of PCLS in practice, in particular, the case of PCLS in Shanghai. It is noted that one of prerequisites for applicants who apply for any rank titles is to have at least two lessons per week. This prerequisite once again demonstrates how the assumption of "a good principal, first of all, should be a good teacher " is embedded in China¶s policy regarding principal management. It is found out that the feedback on PCLS was positive in general by reviewing several related surveys and interviews conducted by Chinese researchers in recent years. (Yang, 2006; Guo, 2007; Wang, 2012). Yet, some challenges in implementation of PCLS remain to be addressed though most of principals and local education authority officials agree with the PCLS (Lin, 2016). Ten years after the implementation of PCLS in Shanghai, for example, a survey of Shanghai principals revealed that only a bit change of principals¶ enthusiasm for work, sense of responsibility, average income, and social status has happened since the implementation of PCLS (Yang, 2006). Perhaps, one of the big challenges is that the real performance of principals is technically difficult to be fairly evaluated given the antecedent variables of leadership are different from school to school,

which is difficult for evaluators to make an in-depth comparison and analysis in a limited period of time. The fifth term explored in this chapter is [REN-QI-MU-BIAO-ZE-REN-ZHI]. It was emerged in 1980s when leaders of some local education authorities in large cities would like to change the stale and rigid convention of de facto tenured appointment for principals and to create a new system to replace the old one. The (TABO) turned up as the local initiative of school leadership accountability, but it was advocated by Chinese central government later on and has become a clear and mandatory requirement since 2017. Thus, the TABO has been widely adopted by local education authorities in China since then. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the pioneering TABO proponents actually drew on some basic ideas of Drucker¶s *Management of Objectives*. However, the ideas and notions in implementing TABO in some districts was borrowed from another Western created theory, the Total Quality Management although this Western theory had EHHQPRGLILHGLQ&KLQD¶VOHDGHUVKLSFRQWH[W. Perhaps, it is just a case in point that how Western leadership knowledge, as one of knowledge sources of China¶s school leadership, contributes to contemporary ChinD¶V school leadership practice. The last four terms of this chapter are related to leadership appraisal. In exploring the term **[**LING-DAO-BAN-ZI-KAO-HE]. The author reviewed the most recent policy regarding (LTA), and interpreted the terms *Reporting Performance and Integrity* [SHU-ZHI-SHU-LIAN], *Democratic Reviewing* [MIN-ZHU-PING-YI] and *Comprehensive Evaluation* [ZONG-HE-PING-JIA] which are revolved around th e LTA. Among these three terms, the first one, *Reporting Performance and Integrity* may contain the most distinctive Chinese cultural characteristics given the personal integrity of the principal and other members of the leadership team is set as an independent part that is equally important to leadership performance in LTA. In the view of the majority of Chinese teachers, principal¶s personal integrity is paramount. They admitted in a questionnaire survey that ³personally, I put a higher YDOXHRQP\SULQFLSDO¶Vupright character or moral modeling than his/her knowledge and skills in management´ (see *CSTWCE2017-teachers* in Appendix A). Almost similarly, one Chinese researcher found out, based on a broad interview with primary school teachers in a district, that teachers generally believed that the most important quality of principals is the moral integrity, followed by their skills and capacity in leadership and management (Wang, 2012). Yet, does it *Term-Accountability by Objectives Term-Accountability by Objectives Leadership Team Appraisal Leadership Team Appraisal*

suggest that there is a potential conflict, in China's LTA, between the requirements for principal professionalization (modern leadership knowledge and skills) and traditional Chinese view for the SULQFLSDO¶V UROH" It remains to be concerned with. As a component of the whole principal management system, the LTA established in the early 1990s has, in general, made the remarkable contribution to promoting the professionalization of Chinese principals. However, in the opinion of some Chinese researchers in the field of school leadership, it is necessary for some aspects of the LTA to be improved. For example, focusing on both the performance of the team as a whole and on individual performance of team members in the LTA can leads, in LTA practice, to confusion between school performance and personal performance (Wang & Yang, 2016). One of the frequent misunderstandings in LTA is that every member of leadership team at a prestigious school must be excellent, and every member of leadership team at a high performing school must perform very well, or vice versa.

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# **Chapter 3**

# **Creating a Culture Fostering Student Development**

#### **3.1 Introduction**

Among the professional standards for principals formulated by the Ministry of Education in 2013 and 2015, the ³creating a culture fostering student development´ was set as one of the six core practices of school leadership (MOE, 2013, 2015). Like many schools elsewhere in the world, China¶s schools also use material and immaterial aspects of school culture to positively influence students and promote their healthy development and growth. As we know, a school culture is made from a set of customs, principles, norms, values, and beliefs and can be manifested by school¶ banner, badge, uniform, decoration, motto, song, rules, events, etc. However, the main concern of this chapter is not focused on all aspects of school culture but concentrated in those leadership behaviors, strategies and school ceremonies on which the Chinese-featured leadership values, beliefs, principles, and styles being reflected. First of all, The terms in this chapter was selected based on broad literature review, in which the author paid particular attention to the works of principals and the stories of successful principals because most of the terms concerned in this chapter are not initially coined or developed by researchers, but by leadership practitioners, and such terms, compared with scholarly terms, often contain rich practical wisdom. Secondly, the author attempted to confirm the value of the terms in leadership practice by interview with principals and questionnaire for principals and teachers in order to focus on the widely accepted and high frequency used terms in China¶s school leadership context. By doing so, nine key terms were finally selected, which include *Putting Student Development First* [YI-XUE-SHENG-FA-ZHAN-WEI-BEN], *Collectivism* [JI-TI-ZHU-YI], *Sense of Ownership* [ZHU-REN-WENG-YI-SHI], *Building a Class-based Student Collective* [BAN-JI-TI-JIAN-SHE], *Flag Raising Ceremony* [SHENG-QI-YI-SHI], *Moral Modeling* [YI-SHEN-ZUO-ZE], *Emotional Management* [QING-GAN-GUAN-LI], *Heart to Heart Talk* [TAN-XIN], and *Home Visits* [JIA-FANG]. Although parts of the terms seem to be the school leadership behavior towards school staff, the effects of the leadership are actually mediated by teachers¶ behaviors towards students in teaching and learning or other school activities and finally make contributions to creating a culture fostering student development via teachers¶ interactions with students.

#### **3.2 Key Terms**

#### *3.2.1 Putting*㻌*Student Development First* [YI-XUE-SHENG-FA-ZHAN-WEI-BEN]

The term *Putting Student Development First* [YI-XUE-SHENG-FA-ZHAN-WEI-BEN] was initially put forward after the old version of (GPE) was replaced by a new version of GPE in 1990s (the GPE as a term will be further explored in Chapter 5). The old version of GPE set out in 1960s placed particular emphasis that education must serve the proletarian politics. A typical example was that late Chinese paramount leader Mao Zedong said in 1964 in a conversation with his nephew, a student of Harbin Engineering University, "class struggle is your key subject.... How can you to be a university graduate without even knowing class struggle? "(Mao,1967, p. 22). It suggested that education is viewed as one of tools for class struggle at the time in China. Thereby students would be soldiers for class struggle. The students¶ individual characteristic, in this context, was negligible as long as they had sufficient revolutionary quality. However, Chinese government decided to adopt the ³Reform and Opening-up´ policy in 1978 after the Proletarian Cultural Revolution was ended. Then the expression ³education must serve the proletarian politics´ of the old GPE was replaced by ³education VKDOO VHUYH WKH FRQVWUXFWLRQ RI VRFLDOLVW PRGHUQL]DWLRQ´ in the new version of GPE. This new orientation of ³serve modernization´ was reinforced when Deng Xiaoping, the chief planner of China's reform and opening up wrote an inscription for the Jingshan School in Beijing in 1983. The Deng¶V inscription was ³education should be geared towards the modernization, the world, and the future.´ (Party Literature Studies Office, 1990, p. 132). Obviously, it was imperative for school education to promote student achievement and preparation for China¶s modernization, global competitiveness, and the future society (e.g., the knowledge society) by fostering more talents who were not only knowledge-based and skilled, but also with innovative consciousness and distinctive personality. The change of educational orientation led by new GPE created a public opinion to advocate school to diversified educational provision to meet the needs of individual students with different personal characteristics. The *Putting Student Development First* (PSDF) as an educational idea was raised under this context. *Guiding Principle for Education*

The PSDF was first officially used in 1998 by Shanghai Reform Committee of Primary and Secondary School Curriculum (SRCPSSC) when the Committee developed the municipal curriculum reform plan for the second phase of primary and secondary schools. 15 In the curriculum reform plan, the meaning of the PSDF was that the school education provision should be suitable for every student and the curriculum should meet various needs of different students to lay a solid foundation for the lifelong development of every student (Zhang, 2002). The MoE seemed to indorse the idea of PSDF in school education when it claimed to advocate "the personalized learning under the guidance of teachers "in its *Compendium for Curriculum Reform of Basic Education (Trial ed.)* published in 2001 (MOE, 2001). In practice, many principals embraced the idea soon and, in the light of their understanding, gave it rich concrete content. In a book, for example, recording the dialogue on school leadership between the book editor and 60 high performing school principals, the term PSDF was mentioned by more than half of the 60 principals as the overriding theme in their leadership practice, and most of them recognized the significance to building a culture fostering student development under the idea of PSDF. One of the 60 principals explained what PSDF was from the perspective of school leadership practice (Ma, et al., 2005, p. 246):

The connotation of the term *Putting Student Development First* is to give first priority to every student well development and growth. A school should manage to provide students with the learning resources as abundant as possible and with the necessary time and space for their ample and independent development. In the process of learning, every student's personal interest, hobby, talent and personality can be brought into full play and developed. That is to say, student affairs regarding their development should be placed to the center stage of school practice, and all other school work should serve the development of every student.

To actualize the idea of PSDF, many schools have made efforts in setting flexible learning objectives for students with different academic level, rebuilding and enriching their school curriculum system,16establishing various student clubs for students with special talent, and

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changing the approach to teaching and learning to tailor education to meet the different needs of students and to assist every student's ample and independent development in the last 20 years. In short, the PSDF as a leadership idea has already had a great influence on the building of China's school culture. The PSDF as an orientation of school development, on the other hand, has exerted a substantial influence on the reform of school curriculum and the transformation of learning approach in China since the term was first officially used in 1998.

#### *3.2.2 Collectivism* [JI-TI-ZHU-YI]

*Collectivism* [JI-TI-ZHU-YI] is a term that has long existed in Western sociological, psychological or educational literature. However, the meaning of *Collectivism*, in China's context, is not exactly the same as that of in Western literature. The essence of the term *Collectivism*, in CPC's official terminology, is that the people's interests stand above everything else (The 19th National Congress of the CPC, 2017). The "people" means here "all public members" or "masses". Mao Zedong argued in 1957 "our People's Government is one that genuinely represents the people's interests; it is a government that serves the people."(Mao, 1966, p. 46) Mao's perspective that the people's interests stand above everything else was later developed into a statement that "individual interests must be subordinated to collective interests, the partial interests must be subordinated to overall interests, and immediate interests must be subordinated to long-term interests."(Zhao, 2014). Later, the *Collectivism* was written into the Article 24 of the Constitution of PRC as one of the civic attitudes advocated by the Constitution (National People's Congress,1982). However, it seemed that it would be not very appropriate to hold on the position that individual interests were absolutely neglected after the 14th National Congress of the CPC set out the transformation from the socialist planned economy system to socialist market economy system in 1992. The term *Collectivism* was understood as "both of the individual and collective interests should be taken into account, but when necessary, individual interests should be subordinated to collective interests (Zhao, 2014). At the moment, individual interests should be subordinated to collective interests is no longer a mandatory requirement, but placing the collective good before self-interest is still advocated. In China's school context, the sense of *Collectivism* is seen as one of moral principles fostering the culture of interdependence between school members as well as the basis of the harmony in school. With this respect, a veteran principal tends in his/her leadership practice to pay attention to protecting the personal interests of school staff while encouraging staff to take

consideration school interests consciously. In China's schools, the building of collectivist climate is usually exercised through various means in school life. One of the typical means to build collectivist culture is *Building a Class-based Student Collective* which is the term will be explored later in this chapter.

#### *3.2.3 Sense of Ownership* [ZHU-REN-WENG-YI-SHI]

Like the *Collectivism*, the *Sense of Ownership* [ZHU-REN-WENG-YI-SHI] is also advocated by the Constitution of PRC. When reviewing the history of modern China, it is claimed in the preface of the Constitution that the Chinese people took the state power into their own hands and became the owner of the country after the founding of the Peopleÿs Republic of China. Thereupon, the *Sense of Ownership* is advocated in Article 42 of the Constitution, "Labor is the honorable duty of all citizens who have the ability to work. Workers of state-owned enterprises and urban and rural collective economic organizations should treat their own work with the sense of national ownership."(National People's Congress,1982) In late Chinese leader Mao Zedongÿs view, the people (sometimes used as synonyms for masses) is not only the master/owner of the country but also the real creator of the world. Mao argued in 1945, ĀThe people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history."(Mao, 1966, p.118), and he strongly advised the CPC leading cadres to respect the masses and appreciate their wisdom, "The masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant, and without this understanding it is impossible to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge."(Mao, 1966, p.118) In fact, Mao's view on the masses together with the CPC's leadership tenet of the *Mass Line* (see Chapter 1) is the ideological source of the term *Sense of Ownership* in Chinaÿs leadership context. In today's practice of school leadership, however, the term *Sense of Ownership* has no longer carried so much political and ideological meaning. In school leadership practice, principals usually advocate staffÿs *Sense of Ownership* to encourage their organizational citizenship behavior and to arouse their enthusiasm, initiative and creativity in daily routine. As an experienced principal claimed, "one of practical ways to strengthen teachers' *Sense of Ownership* is to explain the significance of school short-term and long-term plan to staff in detail in order to make school staff fully understand that the rise and fall of schools are closely related to themselves."(Fu, 2008) For teachers, the form teachers (form teacher is used synonymously with class advisor in some cases) in particular, one of their responsibilities is to cultivate studentsÿ *Sense of Ownership* so as to develop studentsÿ social awareness, capacity to self-management, and responsible attitudes towards collective good through the way of *Building a Class-based Student Collective.* As the results of *CSSLM2017-principals* and *CSSLM2017-teachers* show, both China's principals and teachers attach great importance to cultivate the *Sense of Ownership* in their day to day work at the moment (see Appendix A).

#### *3.2.4 Building a Class-based Student Collective* [BAN-JI-TI-JIAN-SHE]

*Building a Class-based Student Collective* [BAN-JI-TI-JIAN-SHE] is one of means most widely used in China's school to create class-based cultural environment in which the sense of collectivism, ownership, and positive learning climate are fostered. *Building a Class-based Student Collective* (BCBSC) as a term usually refers to the process of change a collection of individual students of a class into a class collective in which students develop their shared vision and goals for the collective, shared moral sense and code of conduct towards school life while every student has the opportunity to display his/her talent, develop his/her personalized character, and get the acceptance of collective members (Hu, 2007a; An, 2013). The term BCBSC in some other context refers to a mandatory task that the form teachers must undertake and rest of subject teachers must involve in. The fundamental end of BCBSC, anyway, is to assist every student to well accomplish his/her socialization and promote every student's sound development and growth.

Historically, the term BCBSC was originally borrowed from Soviet Union in 1950s during WKH ³OHDUQLQJ6RYLHWPRYHPHQW´7KH6RYLHW HGXFDWLRQLVW\$&0DNDUHQNR Ⱥɧɬɨɧɋɟɦɺɧɨɜɢɱ ɆɚɤɚɪɟɧɤɨILUPO\EHOLHYHGEDVHGRQKLVH[SHULHQFHRIVFKRROOHDGHUVKLSIURPWRWKDW the BCBSC was one of most important means to educate children. He contended that the education exercised "in a collective, by the collective, and for the collective" was the best and most effective way to educate children (Zhao,1992, p. 590). Makarenko summed up the BCBSC as three essential propositions. First, the collectivity was the foundation of education. It seemed to him that a child's "disposition can well develop when he/she takes part in a well-organized, disciplined, tenacious collective life with a sense of great pride over time.ā (Makarenko,1956, p. 289). He believed that the foremost priority for school leadership was building of a collective. Second, the collective was a means of education. Makarenko argued that a collective itself was the teacher for every individual in the collective. Thus, he called for teachers to educate individual students through the collective (Zhao,1992, p. 591). Third, the building of student collective was one of the goals of education. Makarenko insisted that the key purpose of socialist education was to foster the collectivists for Soviet society. He claimed that the primary task of teachers, in the context of socialist society, was to cultivate a strong and conscious collective, and prepare the students with the sense of collectivism to enable them to understand that the collective and the state's interests must be placed unconditionally above the interests of individuals (Zuo & Zhang, 1984; Zhao,1992, p. 592). Indeed, Makarenko's views and arguments regarding the role of collective and collectivism in education shaped Chinese educators' initial understanding of the BCBSC at the time. Nonetheless, the Makarenko's name and his works about BCBSC have faded out of Chinese education for a long time since the "Reform and Opening-up" policy was adopted in late 1978 in China, especially since the idea of *Putting Student Development First* was indorsed by Chinese government in 2001. Although the *Collectivism* is still advocated and the BCBSC is still valued, the core mission of BCBSC has been modified. Today, the fundamental end of BCBSC is no longer to prepare communist soldiers with the sense of extreme collectivism but to promote every student's personalized development in a good collective climate. Or, in the words of an outstanding form teacher, the essential function of a class-based student collective "has transformed from fostering the individuals who absolutely submit to the collective to providing opportunities and resources for the all-round development of each student" (Lu, 2017, p. 4).

The BCBSC is highly valued in current China's school education. In *CSTWCE2017-teachers*, more than 78 % respondents strongly agreed that the BCBSC is great helpful to ensure the quality of learning and to promote students' healthy and sound development. Concomitantly, over 73% of respondents in *CSSLM2017-principals* strongly agreed that BCBSC is the primary task of the form teachers (see Appendix A). In school practice, a form teacher plays the roles of guide, coordinator, and facilitator for BCBSC. The form teacher of a class is normally selected from subject teachers who have good moral character and strong social skills. It is found, based on relevant literature review, that following three strategies have been most widely adopted by the form teachers in the process of BCBSC. The first strategy is to set up the shared norms of a class. In exercising the strategy, a form teacher should not only make the students in his/her class understand and follow the rules and regulations of the school (e.g. the bell schedule, the framework for discipline), but also set up shared norms of their own class. In practice, the form

teachers tend to guide students of their classes to set up the shared norms by creating certain situation to make student understand the importance of shared norms (Hu, 2007c; Gao, 2011). In one of practical cases, for example, a form teacher gave her students a special assignment to learn how to make classrooms clean and tidy in the new students' first week in a primary school. The form teacher divided the class into five groups and six students for each group. Each group turned on the duty to make and keep classrooms clean and tidy at one of weekdays.17 The students of rest groups played the roles of observers and advisors to assist the group on duty to continually improve the way to accomplish the group task with high quality by cooperation among the group members. The form teacher held a class conference next week to encourage students to consider and discuss what matters in a cooperative work and what norms will be helpful for work collectively. It is deemed to be one of good ways to assist students setting up shared norms by their own. (Lu, 2017, pp. 32-33). The second strategy is to develop students' the sense of self-management and the capacity to shoulder responsibilities for the class. Conventionally, a student leadership team called "class committee" will be elected by all students of the class in the first months after new students initiate their school life. A class committee is usually composed of a captain and five or more committee members who take the responsibilities to coordinate the class activities regarding learning, sports, health, entertainment, and social practice. A form teacher usually encourages the class committee to organize student activities by itself and work with rest of students of the class to bring into full play the everybody's initiative and collective wisdom in defining the class vision and manifesting class spirit by their own class motto, badge, song, and classroom decoration, etc. The members of a class committee must be shifted according to the system of rotation after one school year so as to make more students have chance to serve the class collective and get the experience of class leadership (Hu, 2007c; An, 2013). Moreover, to develop every student's leadership capacity, most form teachers always would like to create more "leadership position" for the students who seem to have little chance to be elected as the members of class committee. In a process of BCBSC, a form teacher can create more than 20 such

<sup>˄˅,</sup>Q&KLQDWKHUHLVDIL[HGFODVVURRPIRUHYHU\FODVVLQDOOJUDGHV,QVWHDGRIPRYLQJWR YDULRXVFODVVURRPVZKHUHGLIIHUHQWVXEMHFWWHDFKHUVZRUNWKHUHWKHFRPPRQVFHQHVLQ\$PHULFDQ VFKRROVWKHVWXGHQWVXVXDOO\VWD\LQDIL[HGFODVVURRPWRZDLWIRUWHDFKHUVRIYDULRXVVXEMHFWV WRFRPHWRWKHLUFODVVURRPWRKDYHWKHLUOHVVRQ˄˅&KLQHVHVWXGHQWVDUHHQFRXUDJHGWRNHHS WKHLUFODVVURRPVFOHDQDQGWLG\E\WKHPVHOYHVWRPDNHVWXGHQWVÿWKHVHQVHRIODERU

³leadership position´ as discipline supervisor, leader of morning exercises, manager of class-mini-library, weather forecaster, personal appearance reminder, and so on and so forth in RUGHUWRHQVXUHDOPRVWDOOVWXGHQWVFDQJHWFKDQFHWRREWDLQWKH³OHDGHUVKLSH[SHULHQFH´(An, 2013; Lu,2017, p. 28-30). The third strategy is to optimize interpersonal climate in the class-based student collective. By various themed activities as well as one on one communication, an experienced form teacher can always lead individual students to develop positive attitudes towards and develop student empathy for their peers with learning difficulties or encountering emotional frustration (Hu, 2007b; Gai, 2012). Anyway, what strategies the form teachers used in BCBSC depends on specific educational situation and individual form teachers personal experience and character because there are no standardized procedure and unified approach to *Building a Class-based Student Collective*. As a researcher said, ³there are no two identical classes in a school, Nor a perfect way of BCBSC.´(Hu,2007a)

#### *3.2.5 Flag Raising Ceremony* [SHENG-QI-YI-SHI]

*Flag Raising Ceremony* [SHENG-QI-YI-SHI] is one of typical school rites of China held every Monday morning to mark the beginning of a new school weekDQGWKH³)ODJ´KHUHUHIHUVWRWKH National Flag RI3HRSOH¶V5HSXEOLF RI&KLQD. According to the *Law of the People's Republic of China on National Flag*, the full time primary and secondary schools, except holidays, should hold a (national) *Flag Raising Ceremony* once a week (1DWLRQDO 3HRSOH¶V&RQJUHVV,1990).After the promulgation of the law, the State Education Commission (SEC) published the *Circular on the implementation of the "law of the People's Republic of China on national flag" and the strict regulation of raising and lowering the national flag in primary and secondary schools* to stipulate that the *Flag Raising Ceremony* is held every Monday morning (except for winter and summer holidays, or in bad weather), and all the staff and students in the school should take part in the *Flag Raising Ceremony* when the ceremony is held (SEC, 1990). The SEC also stipulated the standard procedure for the *Flag Raising Ceremony*. The four-step procedure is composed by (SEC, 1990):

 Flag coming into the field (the flag bearer holds the flag, flag guards on both sides of the flag bearer, to step toward the flagpole accompanied by a small marching band with the instruments of trumpets and drums. At the same time, the presence of all staff and students standing upright).

Flag raising (all staff and students salute the flag while National Anthem is being played).

• Singing the National Anthem after completing the flag rising.

• Speeches under the National Flag (short and instructive speeches by the principal or middle managers).

In school practice, the *Flag Raising Ceremony* is not only a kind of patriotic education to enhance student sense of national identity, but also a means of reinforcing the school spirit by the "speeches under the National Flag". The main topics of the speeches are usually to review school progress made in the past week, to share the stories in the school that reflects the culture advocated by the school, and to praise specific behavior of certain students conformed to the code of conduct that embody the spirit of the school (Song, et al., 2010; Xu, et al., 2016).

#### *3.2.6 Moral Modeling* [YI-SHEN-ZUO-ZE]

*Moral Modeling* [YI-SHEN-ZUO-ZE] refers to a leader attempts to maximize his/her moral leverage over organization members through setting an example for the organization members by his/her personal virtues and moral integrity. The advocacy of leaders' *Moral Modeling* can be traced back to ancient China. For example, Confucius had a well-known saying in *The Analects* that "If the ruler [leader] himself is upright, all with go well even though he does not give orders. But if he himself is not upright, even though he gives orders, they will not be obeyed."(Waley, 1998, p.163) Similarly, some Western pioneers of modern education, such as John Locke in his book *Some thoughts concerning education* in 1693, also had almost similar expressions when they talked about the influence of educator's behavior on students (Yang, 2003). At the moment, however, the *Moral Modeling* is most likely to really work and to be highly valued in China's leadership context. This point of view is based on the findings of relevant empirical studies. In an empirical study to develop a transformational leadership rating scale of China, Chinese researchers identified a dimension of transformational leadership in Chinese leadership context, called *Moral Modeling* which had not been mentioned by Western researchers when they constructed the dimensions of transformational leadership in Western leadership context. Furthermore, they identified, based on the results of several rounds of questionnaire surveys, that the dimension of *Moral Modeling* incorporated eight leadership conducts (Li and Shi, 2005):

Ь%eing honest in performing his/her official duties and not seeking private benefits.

Ь%eing always the first one to bear hardship and the last one to enjoy comfort.

#### 3.2 Key Terms 81

ЬRegardless of personal gains and losses in performing his/her duty.

Ь3utting organizational or colleagues¶ interests before his/her personal interests.

Ь%eing willing to forget his/her personal interests to ensure group/organizational interests.

Ь%eing willing to work with colleagues in a hard time.

Ь1ever taking other¶s products as his/her own, and

Ь1o retaliation against colleagues.

They also found, based on the results of a range of questionnaire, that a leader¶s *Moral Modeling* had a significant positive impact on employee satisfaction as well as organizational commitment. They believed that it reflected, in a way, the difference between Chinese and Western cultural context of leadership because Western researchers hadn¶t identified this leadership dimension in their transformational leadership research (Li & Shi, 2005; Yang, Wang, & Zhang, 2014). Later, the Chinese researchers found in other empirical studies that the leaders¶ *Moral Modeling* had a significant positive impact on team satisfaction (Li, 2014) and the engagement of initiate staff (Li & Mao, 2018). The findings of above-mentioned empirical studies are also supported by the results of the surveys to Chinese principals and teachers conducted in 2017. In the survey of *CSSLM2017-principals*, 60.5 % respondents (principals) STRONGLY AGREED with the questionnaire item of ³sFKRROVWDIIXVXDOO\SXWDKLJKHUYDOXHRQWKHLUSULQFLSDO¶Vupright character and *Moral Modeling* than his/her knowledge and skills in management´ while 35.2 percent of the respondents AGREED with the item. In the survey of *CSTWCE2017-teachers*, 79.7 percent of the respondents (teachers) STRONGLY AGREED with ³Personally, I put a higher value on my SULQFLSDO¶Vupright character and *Moral Modeling* than his/her management knowledge and skills´ while 16.1 percent of respondents AGREED with the same item (see Appendix A). On the other hand, not a few principals affirmed, from the practical perspective, the significance of *Moral Modeling* in school leadership practice. An experienced principal of a senior high school argued that a principal should relied on not only administrative power, but also his/her personal moral standing and *Moral Modeling* to enable teachers to realize their potential at work (Xiang, 2010b). ³It is often said that students¶ behavior is a mirror of their teacher's behavior. Similarly, the teachers¶ behavior also reflects their principal's behavior.´ He added (Xiang, 2010a). Another school principal believed based on his leadership experience that a principal¶V *Moral Modeling* was helpful to building up prestige of the principal, making psychologically compatible between teachers and the principal, and playing, under certain circumstances, the role of substitute for leadership (Wen, 1995). Certainly, the Chinese government has always advocated that leaders from all walks of life ought to set a good example by their own conduct. In *the Professional Standards for Principals of Senior High School*, for example, the *Moral Modeling* is set as one of professional requirements for the principals (MOE, 2015).

,Q&KLQD¶V VFKRROa teacher¶s *Moral Modeling* is also highly valued because a teacher, the form teacher in particular is seen as a leader in leading the class-based student collective, and the *Moral Modeling* is the foundation of teachers' prestige (Yang, 2003). Some related studies have also provided evidence for the importance of teachers¶ *Moral Modeling*. For example, when students were asked in an interview that what was the moment that their teacher impressed them deeply, the answers were, ³Watching the sweat on the forehead of our teacher when he was cleaning up our classroom with us´. ³After sprained my ankle, I was picked up from my home to school by my teacher every morning´. ³Feeling the performance of our class was not good enough, the form teacher criticized herself openly in front of the whole class´ (Guo, 1998). Therefore, &KLQD¶VVFKRROWHDFKHUVDUHHQFRXUDJHGWRGHPRQVWUDWHWKHLUPRUDOVWDQGLQJDQGXSULJKWZKHQWKH\ work with their students in classroom or other occasions in school. However, the teacher¶s *Moral Modeling* is often expressed by another term, (a teacher should) *Be a model of virtue for students* [WEI-REN-SHI-BIAO].

#### *3.2.7 Emotional Management* [QING-GAN-GUAN-LI]

In Chinese school context, *Emotional Management* [QING-GAN-GUAN-LI] generally refers to the leadership behaviors which can encourage and help school staff to positively face challenging situations, to struggle forward in meeting with tough task, to reconcile a broken relationship with their colleagues and even family members, and to smoothly get through whatever personal hard time. So far, however, there has been no universally acknowledged definition of *Emotional Management* in China. Part of the reason is that the term was not originally proposed by any scholars, but rather it was first developed in leadership practice and coined by leadership practitioners. An experienced principal believed that the *Emotional Management* was a leadership approach with humanist orientation reflected on the idea of putting people first. He described the *Emotional Management* as the leadership with empathy, which was concerned about the inner world of school staff. He argued that the *Emotional Management* was DNLQGRI³VRIWPDQDJHPHQW´ in comparison with the ³hard management´ that relied on rules and regulations. The end of the *Emotional Management* was to motivate school staff with emotional factors and to gain the trust of staff by sincerity (Zhang, 2013). Another experienced principal contended that the essentials for successful *Emotional Management* were frequent informal communication with their staff, principals¶ *Moral Modeling*, and substantive support for their staff. According to the principal's view, the regular informal communication between principals and school staff can help principals to understand and decode timely their staff¶s emotions at work. 3ULQFLSDOV¶*Moral Modeling* can help principals to gain the trust of staff. And the leadership substantive support can manifest the respect and sincerity to school staff (Zou, 2002). A number of stories and cases of successful Chinese principals have really provided evidence for the above-PHQWLRQHG SULQFLSDOV¶ YLHZV concerning the essentials for *Emotional Management* (Wu, 2008; Xie, 2013; Lai, 2013; NTRFMO, 2014; Lu, 2017). Furthermore, the value of ³substantive support´ in *Emotional Management* has been particularly affirmed in Chinese school leadership context. For example, when talking about *Emotional Management*, a high school principal who has served as principal in three schools in the past 20 years emphasized that the principal should put his/her staff¶s worries and frustrations in his/her mind and try to provide substantive support for solving the problems they face. It seems to be necessary for a principal who is concerned with *Emotional Management* to take the initiative to visit his/her staff in hospital to show concern for them, to attend the funeral of a teacher¶s spouse as a sign of sympathy, to attend the wedding of his/her staff to offer congratulations to the bridegroom and bride. (Shao, 2018). Similarly, the principal must defend the legitimate interests of his/her staff if their interests are violated (Wu, 2008). By doing so, a principal, in Chinese cultural context, will gain the praise and trust from his/her staff over time. The surveys of school principals and teachers conducted in 2017 also largely confirmed the significance of *Emotional Management* in school leadership. The result of *CSSLM2017-principals* showed that 75.7 percent of the respondents (principals) STRONGLY AGREED with ³It is great helpful for leadership practice to pay attention to emotional dimension of leadership´ while 22.4 percent of the respondents AGREED with the item. In the survey of *CSTWCE2017-teachers*, 80.5 percent of the respondents (teachers) STRONGLY AGREED with ³I prefer the leaders who respect teachers' emotional needs´ while 16.1 percent of respondents AGREED with the item (see Appendix A).

#### *3.2.8 Heart to Heart Talk* [TAN-XIN]

*Heart to Heart Talk* [TAN-XIN] is one of methods most commonly used in the practice of the *Emotional Management.* It refers to the one on one talk between a superior and a subordinate (e.g., a principal vs. a middle manager, a middle manager vs. lower manager, a lower manager vs. an ordinary teacher), which is mainly concerned with emotional needs of school staff. Sometimes, however, the principal can have a *Heart to Heart Talk* with an ordinary teacher directly if necessary. The *Heart to Heart Talk* is a kind of in-depth communication to exchange of views, to enhance mutual understanding and trust, to euphemistically convey the superior's advice for the subordinate, to express the concern and sympathy of the superior to the subordinate, or to express emotional support from the superior to the subordinate. Anyway, the purpose of the *Heart to Heart Talk* is not fixed, but rather depends on specific situations. Like the term *Emotional Management*, the *Heart to Heart Talk* is not a scholarly term, but initially developed and used in &KLQD¶VOHDGHUVKLSSUDFWLFHThe role of *Heart to Heart Talk* in school leadership and management is, by and large, still out of the horizon of school leadership researchers in Chinese universities since there has been very little empirical research on this theme thus far. Nevertheless, Chinese school leadership practitioners do attach great importance to *Heart to Heart Talk*, and they view the *Heart to Heart Talk* as one of effective methods in their *Emotional Management*. In *Intrview2018- Principal*, 16 out of 17 interviewees said that the *emotional management* had been valued in their leadership practice. 15 out of 17 interviewees admitted that they used the *Heart to Heart Talk* and *home visits* (the term will be explored later) whenever necessary. (See Appendix B). In addition, some principals also discussed, in their written works about their *Emotional Management* experience, that how they employ the method of *Heart to Heart Talk* in leadership practice. From such written works by principals, the *Heart to Heart Talk* is most likely to be used when 1) a teacher violates rules and regulations of the school and faces an impending penalty; 2) the performance of a teacher is criticized by students or parents; 3) there is a fierce dispute between two teachers; 4) a teacher is suffering a frustration in his/her work; 5) a teacher has hard time in his/her personal life (e.g. the psychological trauma from marital problems, upset caused by a family accident, and the death of a closest family member) (Zhang, 1996, p. 188; Liu,2000, p. 506; Zou, 2002; Wu, 2008; Lu, 2017; Shao, 2018). Indeed, the written works by Chinese principals over 40 years includes a number of leadership stories about how school leadership, through using the method of *Heart to Heart Talk*, changes teachers¶ negative attitudes towards their work, improves teachers¶ performance, resolves the disputes between teachers, revives teachers¶ enthusiasm after setbacks in their work, and gives teachers comfort and encouragement in their hard time. Moreover, some principals, in their written works, summed up four key words of successful *Heart to Heart Talk* in leadership: listening, empathy, flexibility and sincerity (Li, 2007; Lv, 2010; Liu, 2013). It is important to note that the *Heart to Heart Talk* not only happens between leadership and school staff, but also happens between teachers and students. Teachers, especially the form teachers often use *Heart to Heart Talk* as one of the methods they learned from their school leaders to meet their student emotional needs (Liu, 2007, p.65; Zhang, 2013, p.52, 96; Lu, 2017, p.122).

#### *3.2.9 Home Visits* [JIA-FANG]

*Home Visits* [JIA-FANG] is another method most commonly used in the practice of the *Emotional Management.* It usually refers to the school leaders to pay a visit to staff¶s home through which the positive influence of leadership can be extended beyond the workplace, and the staff and their family members can recognize that they are highly valued by school leadership. As one of methods in *Emotional Management*, it is most likely to be conducted when a teacher is suffering from serious illness or his/her family has hard time. In other cases, school leaders may have a *Home Visit* to convey congratulations to a teacher on the honor he/she obtained and praise, in front of his/her family members, his/her contributions to the school. A *Home Visits* is sometimes used alongside the *Heart to Heart Talk* since the *Heart to Heart Talk* conducted at a teacher¶s home often gets a more effective result than it conducted in school (Xie, 2003; Wu, 2008; Deng, 2015). In general, the *Home Visits* are valued by school principals at the moment. In the survey of *CSSLM2017-principals*, 75.1 percent of the respondents (principals) STRONGLY AGREED with ³In staff management, it is important to have heart-to±heart talk with staff, to try to comfort to staff, or to pay visits to their homes at right time.´ while 22.0 percent of the respondents AGREED with the item. Meanwhile, the *home visits* as a way of expressing leadership concern for teachers is also supported by most teachers. In the survey of *CSTWCE2017-teachers*, 71.7 percent of the respondents (teachers) STRONGLY AGREED with ³It makes me feel warm if a leader can have heart-to±heart talk with me, try to comfort to me, or pay a visit to my home when I have a hard time with my job or my life㻚´ while 21.5 percent of respondents AGREED with the item (see Appendix A).

#### **3.3 Summary and Discussion**

This chapter attempts to explore the key terms which are widely used by school leadership practitioners in WKHLUSUDFWLFHRI³creating a culture fostering student development´ The first term presented in this chapter is *Putting Student Development First*

[YI-XUE-SHENG-FA-ZHAN-WEI-BEN] which is viewed as the overarching belief in building the school culture fostering student development and growth by most of ChinD¶V principals. Just as one of principals interpreted, the term means that a school should give first priority to every student well development, and ensure every student¶s personal interest, hobby, talent, and personality to be brought into full play and develop (Ma, et al.,2005, p. 246). It may not seem new to Western school leadership, but looking back at China¶s old version of GPE, which emphasized that ³education must serve the proletarian politics´, it is undoubtedly a great step forward. The second term *Collectivism* [JI-TI-ZHU-YI] is originally drawn from the CPC¶s terminology. The *Collectivism* or sense of *Collectivism* as one of the civic attitudes is advocated by the Constitution of PRC. In school leadership context, it is seen as one of moral principles fostering the culture of interdependence between school members as well as the basis of the harmony in school though the very meaning of the term has a little bit changed in the last decades. The third term *Sense of Ownership* [ZHU-REN-WENG-YI-SHI] is also originally drawn from the CPC¶s terminology and advocated by the Constitution of PRC. In China䇻s school leadership practice, principals advocate staff䇻s *Sense of Ownership* in order to encourage their organizational citizenship behavior and to arouse their enthusiasm, initiative and creativity in daily routine. For students, the cultivation of *Sense of Ownership* is regarded as a vehicle to develop their social awareness as well as the capacity to self-management. The fourth term explored in this chapter is the *Building a Class-based Student Collective* [BAN-JI-TI-JIAN-SHE]. It refers to the process of change a collection of individual students of a class into a class collective in which students develop their shared vision and goals for their class, shared moral sense and code of conduct towards school life while every student has the opportunity to display his/her talent, develop his/her personalized character, and get the acceptance of collective members. Through exploring this term, one can recognize that the leverage of the Soviet management knowledge over China¶s school leadership is still existed though the young generation of Chinese school leaders and teachers know little about the ³learning-Soviet-movement´ which took place about 60 years ago. However, the core

mission of *Building a Class-based Student Collective* has been modified nowadays. In China¶s school, there is a range of rites and ceremonies to manifest and reinforce the school spirit, thereby making a contribution to the building of a school culture fostering student development and growth. The *flag-raising ceremony* [SHENG-QI-YI-SHI] is selected as the fifth term in this chapter because it is one of typical school rites of China held every week in every school to foster student patriotic awareness and school spirit. By interpreting the term, one can get a glimpse of the panorama of school rites and ceremonies in China¶s schools.

Compared with first five terms presented in this chapter, perhaps the sixth and seventh terms seem more deserving of further discussion. As we know, some Western scholars have pointed out the significance of moral side of school leadership (cf. Sergiovanni, 1996, p.58; Sergiovanni and Starratt, 1998, pp. 45-48). When he discussed the source of authority for leadership, for example, Sergiovanni argued, ³we now rely almost exclusively on bureaucratic authority, psychological authority, and technical-rational authority.« Important as these sources may be, they are not as powerful as moral authority as a basis for school leadership practice.´ (Sergiovanni,1992, p. XV). When Sergiovanni illustrated the moral side of leadership, he listed the elements of moral leadership which consisted of the purposing, professional ideal, community norms, covenant, collegiality and leadership as stewardship, but the leaders' personal virtues are not included (Sergiovanni, 1992). However, the Chinese researchers, Li and Shi identified one of leadership dimensions called *Moral Modeling* [YI-SHEN-ZUO-ZE] in their developing a China¶s transformational leadership rating scale in 2005 (Li & Shi, 2005). Later, the related empirical studies in Chinese leadership context reveled that the leadership dimension composed by eight leadership conducts, through which there was a significant positive impact on both employee satisfaction and organizational commitment (Li and Shi, 2005; Li, 2014). Furthermore, findings of the empirical studies are also supported by the results of the surveys to Chinese principals and teachers conducted by the author of this book in 2017(see Appendix A). It confirms that the principal *Moral Modeling* really works in China¶s school leadership context, and, at the same time, is highly valued by most Chinese principals and teachers (see Appendix A). Does *Moral Modeling* exclusively work in Chinese leadership context? Are there any successful Western leaders with the leadership characters or conducts close to the *Moral Modeling*? Can it be one of potential research themes for Western scholars in the field of school leadership? These questions triggered

by the sixth term in this chapter are worthy of consideration by international colleagues. Next, let's turn our attention to the seventh term *Emotional Management* [QING-GAN-GUAN-LI]. A number of written works of principals and stories of successful leadership have affirmed the positive role of *Emotional Management* in China¶s school leadership practice. The results of questionnaire surveys conducted by the author in 2017 showed that the *Emotional Management* in leadership is really valued by most Chinese principals and teachers (see Appendix A). Similarly, some Western scholars also contended that the emotional side of school leadership should not be overlooked (Hallinger, 2003, p. 291). However, it could be important to note that some differences between Chinese *Emotional Management* and Western *Emotional Management /leadership* (if the *Emotional Management* really exists in Western school leadership practice). For example, ³LQGLYLGXDOL]HG consideration´ seems to be one of aspects of *Emotional Management*, but the scope of the ³LQGLYLGXDOL]HG consideration´ in Chinese and Western leadership may not be the same. In Chinese cultural context, a principal¶s ³individualized consideration´ towards individual teachers is not confined to the workplace, but often extends to teachers' family life. In a successful principal¶s story, the principal was described as follows (The Project Team of Pengzhi Liu¶s Perspectives and Practice of School Education, 2010, p.145):

She [the principal] has sincere feelings for students and teachers. No matter who was in a very hard time, she will shed tears with sympathy. She always tries her best to help the students or teachers in time without hesitation. She hired a ODZ\HUIRUDWHDFKHU¶VSHUVRQDOODZVXLWDVVRFLDWHGZLWKWKHWHDFKHU¶VIDPLO\ trouble; she went to the hospital many times to meet with doctors to discuss and work out the specific plan of medical treatment for her assistant principal who was VHULRXVO\LOO«

It may be difficult for the school leaders in the Western cultural context to understand what this Chinese principal did, but such a ³individualized consideration´ with typical Chinese characteristics must be praised in Chinese cultural context. Throughout the literature on *Emotional Management* in China, there have been little empirical studies on the theme thus far. Anyway, it seems that only when more empirical studies with sophisticated methods and instruments emerge in China in the future will it be possible to truly reveal the mechanism of *Emotional Management* in school leadership.

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# **Chapter 4**

# **Guiding and Facilitating Teacher Development**㻌

#### **4.1 Introduction**

Historically, the Chinese nation had a tradition of respecting teachers and valuing education. For example, Confucius as the typical and outstanding representative of ancient Chinese educator has been respected for thousands of years in China. Although the tradition was almost completely destroyed in the Proletariat Cultural Revolution during 1966-1976, it was quickly restored and reinforced after the end of the Cultural Revolution, especially after the educational reform was launched in the 1980s. In 1985, at the ninth meeting of the Standing Committee of the Sixth National People's Congress, the State Council¶s proposal on the establishment of Teacher's Day was passed, which designated September 10 as Teacher's Day every year (Feng, et al. 2002). From then on, school teachers all over the country have annually celebrated their festival on September 10 in various ways, and local governments and communities expressed respect for teachers and provided teachers with support in substantive ways. In 1986, the first professional title system in Chinese history for primary and secondary school teachers was established by Chinese central government (SEC, 1986). ,WLVDV\VWHPLQZKLFKWKHWHDFKHUV¶VHQLRULW\LVFRXSOHGZLWKWKHLUMRE performance. The establishment of this system not only makes the ladder of teachers' career clear, but also leads teachers' career into the track of professional development. In another development, to construct a pool of quality candidates for the teaching profession, the reform of the ³separated´ teacher education system has been put on the agenda of the central government in 1990s. 7KH³VHSDUDWHG´WHDFKHUHGXFDWLRQV\VWHPUHIHUVWRWKHWHDFKHUHGXFDWLRQV\VWHPVHSDUDWHG from comprehensive higher education system, in which the normal (teacher training) colleges/universities exclusively take the responsibility to prepare teachers for primary and secondary schools of the country. In the normal college/university, a student simultaneously studies both a main subject (e.g. Mathematics, History, etc.) and the pedagogy of that subject, leading to a combined bachelor's degree and teaching credential to qualify as a teacher of that subject. However, it was gradually recognized in 1990s that the academic foundation of the graduates from normal colleges/universities, except for the research normal universities (e.g. Beijing Normal University, East China Normal University, etc) was not strong enough to meet the increasing societal expectations in the era of educational reform (Sun and Yang, 1999; Jin and Wang, 2008). In 1996, the State Education Commission published a RHD, *Opinions on the reform and development of normal education* to set out initiatives to encourage comprehensive universities, the research comprehensive universities in particular, to share partial responsibility of teacher education (SEC, 1996). CCCPC and State Council reiterated the policy to encourage non-normal universities to participate in teacher preparation and teacher development (CCCPC and State Council, 1999). By the end of 2000, fifty-three comprehensive universities of China had undertaken teacher education programs (Li and Shi, 2002). On the other hand, the research normal universities carried out the reform of programs enrichment in the late 1980s. In East China Normal University, IRU LQVWDQFH ³selective courses were offered to students of all majors on the basis of maintaining the fundamental courses. These selective courses were applied in nature or designed to broaden student¶s knowledge. For instance, the Department of Psychology offered psychological consultation, the Department of Economics offered econometrics, and the Department of Environmental Science offered environmental mathematics´ (Yuan, et al. 2015, p.219). As a result, a range of non-normal majors and programs were set up in East China Normal University in 1990s. By the same token, Beijing Normal University has exercised similar reform. By the end of the 20th century, more than half of majors and programs in East China Normal University and Beijing Normal University had been non-normal ones. Thus, the ³separated´ teacher education system was broken through at the turn of the 21st century. Since the beginning of the 21st century, ³because of the improvemHQWLQWHDFKHUV¶VDODU\VFDOHVWHDFKLQJKDVULVHQXS the ladder of preferred occupations´ (OECD, 2011, p.88). Some graduates of prestigious research interested in working in the elite senior high schools in coastal metropolis because of the advantageous working conditions of these schools. It was really the good news for school education that the most gifted and talented young people would like to enter the teaching profession of basic education, but the challenge was that they had not experienced pre-service teacher training. This alternative human resource for teaching profession, together with the fact of unbalanced quality of graduates from different leveled normal colleges/universities at the time highlighted the imperative to set up the credential or license system for those who are going to enter the teaching profession. Consequently, the central government proclaimed in 2010 that the universities (e.g. Peking University and Tsinghua University) have begun to be government would establish the national teacher qualification examination for the candidates of

teaching profession (Office of the National Medium and Long Term Education Working Group, 2010). In the following year, the MOE started a pilot project of teacher qualification examination in a few municipalities and provinces (Wang and Shen, 2017). In 2013, the MOE published the policy document titled *Provisional measures for the qualification examination of primary and secondary school teachers* to set up the policy framework for the competitive examination required to enter the teaching profession, in which the prerequisites for the examinee, the content and format of the examination and other details were clearly stipulated (MOE, 2013). Consequently, the graduates of normal universities/colleges had no longer enjoyed the privilege of naturally obtaining the qualifications of entry into teaching profession upon graduation from then on, and they had to take the competitive qualification examination like comprehensive university graduates if they were going to be teachers. Over the same period, the continuing professional development (CPD) for in-service teachers was also received unprecedented attention from Chinese government because the increasing demand for professional quality of teachers emerged from the curriculum reform (Qu and Cui, 2014; Li, 2018). In 2013, the MOE set out the policy of the mandatory periodical registration system for in-service teachers, and stipulated that the primary and secondary school serving teachers should apply for re-registration every five years to renew their qualifications. The prerequisites for re-registration are that the applicant has completed 360 hours of the continuing professional development (CPD) courses in the last five years and passed the five-year work performance appraisal (MOE, 2013). This policy of periodical registration largely reflects that Chinese government, like the international education community, has held the idea that ³teachers, like many other professionals, need to remain abreast of what is new in their field and be able to respond to the emerging demands of their job´ (OECD, 2017, p.4). However, it is hard to complete the 360 hours¶ off-the-job CPD learning in five years for in-service teachers. On the other hand, researchers claimed that teachers engaged in professional learning only when the learning is substantively helpful to address the specific challenge that they faced every day (Liu, 2003; You and Zhang, 2014). Therefore, school-based teacher development as a prevalent CPD approach came into being as the times require. In fact, most teachers really believe that school-based teacher development is important for their professional growth. In the *CSTWCE2017-teachers*, for example, 72.6 percent of the respondents (teachers) STRONGLY

AGREED with ³school-based development is indispensable to the professional growth of teachers.´ while 21.5 percent of the respondents AGREED with the item (see Appendix A). Consequently, school-based teacher development has become one of the most important parts of the CPD for in-service teachers in China since the 21st century (Zhang, et al., 2005; Yuan, 2015, p. 227). Given school-based teacher development is one of the most widely adopted approaches of CPD for teachers in China today, school principals inevitably are regarded as the key person to guide and facilitate the professional development of teachers who are working at their schools. This is why the MOE respectively designated in 2013 and 2015 ³JXLGing and facilitating teacher development´ as one of the six key leadership practices of the principals in compulsory education schools and senior high schools (MOE, 2013, 2015). Given the above-mentioned China¶s policies and practical situation of teacher education and CPD, it seems reasonable to explore and interpret two groups of terms in this chapter. The first group of terms includes the *Professional Title System for Teachers* [JIAO-SHI-ZHUAN-YE-ZHI-WU-ZHI-DU], the *Honorary Titles for Teachers* [JIAO-SHI-RONG-YU-CHEN-HAO] and the *Periodical Registration of Teacher Qualification* [JIAO-SHI-DING-QI-ZHU-CE], which would provide international audience with the background knowledge about China¶s policy on teaching profession. The second group of terms explored in this chapter are consisted of the *Leadership for School-Based Teacher Development* [XIAO-BEN-JIAO-SHI-FA-ZHAN-LING-DAO], the *Construction of Teacher Ethics* [SHI-DE-JIAN-SHE],the *Passing on Experience by Guidance and Support* [CHUAN-BANG-DAI] and the *Fostering a Cohort of Backbone Teachers* [GU-GAN-JIAO-SHI-PEI-YANG], which are closely associated with the essential responsibilities that China¶s principals must shoulder under the government mandatory requirement of ³guiding and facilitating teacher development´.

#### **4.2 Key Terms**

#### *4.2.1 Professional Title System for Teachers* [JIAO-SHI-ZHUAN-YE-ZHI-WU-ZHI-DU]

obtain the professional titles ³Third-grade teacher´, ³Second-grade teacher´, ³First-grade teacher´, ³Senior-grade teacher´ and ³Top-grade teacher´ successively. The *Professional Title System for Teachers* was set out by Chinese government in 1986 to reinforce the teacher professionalism and provide incentives for teachers¶ continuous learning and professional advancement (SEC, 1986). teaching profession, through which individual teachers have opportunity to climb up gradually and The *Professional Title System for Teachers* [JIAO-SHI-ZHUAN-YE-ZHI-WU-ZHI-DU] is a career ladder of

The *Teachers Law of the People¶s Republic of China,* which came into force in 1994, confirms that the State adopts the *Professional Title System for Teachers* (1DWLRQDO 3HRSOH¶V&RQJUHVV, 1993). The *Professional Title System for Teachers* has become a statutory system in China from then on.

In the RHD of State Education Commission (SEC) in 1986, there were only four professional titles for teachers (from ³Third-grade teacher´ to the ³Senior-grade teacher´), which composed the teacher career ladder set by the SEC. \$VD UHYLVHG YHUVLRQWKHWLWOHRI³7RS-graGHWHDFKHU´ZDV added to the teacher career ladder in the jointly released RHD of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) and the Ministry of Education (MOE) in 2015(MOHRSS and MOE, 2015). The current five-step career ladder for teaching professionals, that is, the professional title system for China¶s teachers is formulated in accordance with the provisions of the RHD in 2015 (see Figure 6.1). The *Professional Title System for Teachers* is more than a seniority-based, but the sysWHPLQZKLFKWKHWHDFKHUV¶VHQLRULW\LVFRXSOHGZLWKWKHLU job performance. Obtaining the titles of ³third-grade teacher´ and ³second-grade teacher´ are basically based on teachers¶ seniority. All teachers who are qualified to teach can successively acquire these two titles within three to five years. Nevertheless, individual teachers cannot rely only on their seniority to obtain the last three titles (from the ³first-grade teacher´ to the ³top-grade teacher´) because there is a quota system for these three titles. Moreover, the higher the title is, the smaller the quota is. For example, the statistics in 2017 showed that there were 12 million teachers working at the primary and secondary schools of China (MOE, 2017), but the quota in 2018 for ³top-grade teacher´ was 2,604, accounting for only three in ten thousand of the total number of teachers **(**MOHRSS and MOE, 2018). In fact, essential characteristic of the *Professional Title System for Teachers* LV ³competitive´. According to Mr. Lei, the head of task *Professional Title System for Teachers* of the SEC, the significance of establishing professional rank system for teachers lies in abolishing teacher's tenure system and introducing competitive mechanism when teachers climb up their career ladder (Zhang and Lei, 1998). It is believed that the *Professional Title System for Teachers*, particularly the competitive mechanism in the title system has played, over the past three decades, an active role in stimulating teachers' motivation for their continuing professional learning and performance improvement (Chen and Peng, 2016). Concomitantly, the social status of teachers has also been improved because the *Title System for Teachers* highlighted the professionalism of the teaching profession (Li, 2005; Zhou, *Professional* group on

2012). However, debates have been accompanied by the *Professional Title System for Teachers* since it was created. Some researchers criticized that the quota of teachers' professional titles often led to fierce competition among teachers, which resulted in disharmony within teacher teams (Zhou, 2012; Shi et al.,2016). Other critics pointed out that the evaluation in the accreditation of teachers¶ professional titles often involuntarily paid too much attention to the quantifiable part of teacherV¶SHUIRUPDQFH (e.g. their students achievement, their publications, outcomes of scientific research, praises for their open lessons, etc) and neglected the teachers' love for students and their commitment to ordinary daily work which were hardly observed and evaluated by the expert panel of accreditation (Li, 2005; Zhou, 2012; Chen and Peng, 2016).

**Figure 4.1 The five-step career ladder of China¶s teaching professionals**

#### *4.2.2 Honorary Titles for Teachers* [JIAO-SHI-RONG-YU-CHEN-HAO]

*Honorary Titles for Teachers* [JIAO-SHI-RONG-YU-CHEN-HAO] refers to the titles conferred on the teachers in recognition of their excellent professional achievements and extraordinary contributions in fulfilling their educational duties. Because a few of these titles applies to non-teaching staff, they can also be called *Honorary Titles for Educators* in some context. As noted earlier in this chapter, there has always been a social tradition of respecting teachers in Chinese history. For example, Confucius, as the best-known educator in ancient China, was awarded various honorary titles and autograph inscription by over twenty emperors from Han Dynasty (202 B.C.-220A.D.) to Qing Dynasty (1636-1912). However, the China's modern system of *Honorary Titles for Teachers* was not established until the late 1970s. The first *Honorary Titles for Teachers* of modern China, the *Superfine Teacher* [TE-JI-JIAO-SHI], was created in 1978 when the Interim provisions on the selection of *Superfine Teacher* was jointly issued by the MOE and the National Planning Commission (MOE and NPC, 1978). In subsequent years, several other *Honorary Titles for Teachers* were created, and the formal system of *Honorary Titles for Teachers* in China was established in 1980s. Correspondingly, provincial, municipal, district and county governments also established local system of *Honorary Titles for Teachers* in the same period. At present, there are six honorary titles of teachers established by the central government (see Table 4.1).