Browsing by Author "Li, Ruipeng"

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    The implementation of Chinese quality education in the context of the National College/University entrance examination : a case study of two senior secondary schools in Taiyuani city
    (2010) Li, Ruipeng; Gilmour, James David
    As the unique selective mechanism for senior secondary school students who are 'qualified' to access higher education institutions, the National College/University Entrance Examination (NCEE) in China has contributed significantly to a one-sided pursuit of examination scores and promotion rates by schools and to an overloaded 'school burden' for students. Thus, the Quality Education reforms were formally launched in 1993. These focus on developing well-rounded individuals, lightening the school students' academic workload, changing the one-sided pursuit of the NCEE promotion rate and reforming the NCEE testing subject areas, testing contents, and assessment methods. The latest Quality Education reform was a new curriculum introduced by the Ministry of Education (MoE) in July 2001. This study focuses on the implementation of the new curriculum in practice and the tension between the goal of the Quality Education and the NCEE pressure. It provides an analysis of the impact of the new curriculum on the managerial decisions of the senior secondary school principals, the pedagogic strategies use of the teachers and the learning strategies of the Grade 11 students. The site for this study is Taiyuan City, the capital city of Shanxi province. There were two participating schools, a high performing school (HPS) and a low performing school (LPS). This was done to examine the hypothesis that the degree of implementation of the new curriculum would be different in these schools due to differing performance pressures. In order to find out how principals and teachers maintain and improve pass rates under the pressures of the NCEE while at the same time attempting to implement the requirements of the new curriculum, and the workload of the Grade 11 students, the iv study conducted structured interviews with 2 principals and 8 teachers, administered questionnaires to 120 students and had 16 classroom observations in the schools. The findings of this study indicated that, firstly, although the requirement of the new measures of the new curriculum had been implemented, the managerial decisions of the principals still focused on the NCEE preparation. Secondly, the pedagogic strategies that were employed by teachers for the compulsory courses focused only on examination preparation, and even if they attempted to employ the learner-centred teaching in the selective courses, the large class sizes and the tradition of the Examination-oriented Education hindered the implementation. Thirdly, instead of lightening the school students' academic workload, the organisation of the new curriculum aggravated it. Thus, consequences of the pursuit of the NCEE promotion rate still remain, and there is a limited processing of the full implementation of the aims of Quality Education.