Shanghai: the Olympus of Chinese education

Click here for original source

The rising importance of worldwide studies, which aim to assess achievement of a country in educational sphere, gained its impetus under the influence of globalization process. One of the most representative examples is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which takes a sixth round of its execution in many countries worldwide this year. It is interesting that every time there is a so-called “PISA-shock” – awareness of a country or group of countries on personal low achievement or surprisingly high results of another country. The PISA 2009 and 2012 were not exception as well. Shanghai, the city of mainland China, scored the highest results among familiar leaders of the study: Finland, South Korea, Switzerland, Japan etc.  The world educational community, political leaders and media reported on a global “PISA-shock”, generating a number of reports, declarations and policies usually asking the same questions: “How did they do it?”,  “Why our result are low or not high enough?” and “What should we do to raise the level of national education?” Today, we will be able to understand the nature of Shanghai's success and examine this achievement more closely.

570 (556) in reading, 613 (600) in mathematics, 580 (575) in science - these numbers represent impressive achievements of Shanghai students and teachers in 2012, where the lower numbers in brackets show us their first victory in 2009 (OECD, 2010; OECD, 2014). For example, corresponding scores of Finland, previously perceived “reference society”, are on the level of 524 (536) in reading, 519 (541) in mathematics and 545 (554) in science in 2012 and 2009 accordingly. Yin Houqing, vice-director of general Shanghai municipal education commission, explains how Shanghai administration solves issues connected with creation of new schools, which usually lack of traditions, experience and well-trained teachers (OECD & Pearson Foundation, 2012). The “Empowered Administration” is an approach to improve the quality of weaker schools by cooperation with strong institutions. It implies the creation of partner schools system, where the strong school or educational institution provides pedagogical and administrative guidance that is usually offered by retired teachers and school principals.  Such cooperation involves many stakeholders, such as municipal government, partner schools or firms, financing district education authority and external evaluators of project. It is worth to mention that cooperation is a precise agreement with clearly defined parties’ responsibilities, rights and obligations.

      Ms. Lu Lingdi, a teacher of Zhabei district school number 8, was mentored by Mr. Lui Jinghai - a principal with experience in promoting active change in struggling schools. His philosophy, namely “success education” consisted of three main components:

-          all students are viewed as potential high achievers;

-          developing students’ self-confidence is the primary aim;

-          intensive teacher mentorship is the tactic (OECD & Pearson Foundation, 2012).

The school governed by Mr. Lui Jinghai, and, in particular, the level of Lu's teaching illustrated an impressive progress. Mr. Lui emphasizes that in order to change teachers’ practices in a better way for a long perspective the only advisory approach is not enough. Accordingly, the solution is to show young teacher how the good lesson should look like, from the lesson plan to PPT, giving them insight into the whole procedure. In other words, a master class.

To sum up, the breakthrough of Shanghai is a good illustration of how educational policy should work. The approach described above is not something impossible and hard to implement, we know it, but do not use it extensively. It is sad to observe that in reality our schools are lacking collegiality; they do not support retired experts, rejecting their priceless experience. The thing we should learn from our Chinese colleagues is how to follow exact prescriptions, not imitate activity but really act. The Shanghai's experience is now a strong internal reference system for China (Sellar & Lingard, 2013). The success of Shanghai can be translated to another cites of the country, and who knows, but maybe we are witnessing the beginning of flourishing “Asian Century”.

References:

OECD & Pearson Foundation. (2012, January 24). Shanghai, China - Strong performers and successful reformers in education. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/yxT94FXwSPM

OECD. (2010). PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary. Paris : OECD PUBLISHING. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/46619703.pdf

OECD. (2014). PISA 2012 results in focus: What 15-year-olds know and what they can do with what they know . Paris: OECD PUBLISHING.

Sellar, S., & Lingard, B. (2013). Looking East: Shanghai, PISA 2009 and the reconstitution of reference societies in the global education policy field. Comparative Education, 49(4), 464–485. doi:10.1080/03050068.2013.770943