Abstract: Through defining the concepts of era of the Shifan, era of post-shifan, era of reconstruction of the teacher education system and establishing the theoretical framework, this article probes into the features of the era-post-shifan, and elaborates the governance in this era. Professional education is proposed as the direction of the reconstruction of the teacher education system.
International studies show that teacher education and teacher training programs
in many countries have been gradually promoted from low-ranked institutes
to universities. In China, with the fast economic growth over the past decades,
many normal schools where elementary school teachers were trained and junior
colleges where middle school teachers were educated are being upgraded into
universities in order to meet the increasing needs for high quality teachers.
In this article we examine the historical and current development of teacher
education programs by identifying three eras-Era of Shifan, Era of post-shifan,
and Era of professional teacher education. Two questions are addressed in
this study: If there is a transition period between the era of the Shifan
and the era of professional teacher education-the era of post-shifan, what
kinds of changes have occurred to the teacher education system? What should
we do when reconstructing the teacher education system? Although we refer
to time when discussing the concepts of the three eras, we do not define them
chronically.
1. Concepts and analytic frameworks
What's the era of post-shifan? In the era of post-shifan Chinese teacher education
programs are becoming diversified while the discourse of "shifan"
is still dominant. The key characteristic of this era is the plurality of
teacher education programs, which corresponds to different approaches to reforming
teacher education programs. The proposed approaches include ending the shifan
system consisted of normal schools, junior teacher colleges and normal universities,
promoting normal schools and teacher colleges into universities, integrating
normal schools and teacher colleges into universities, and allowing non-normal
universities to involve in teacher preparation, etc. It comes as no surprise
that teacher education programs become diversified in the era of post-shifan
as we are transiting from the old shifan system to the new teacher education
system. The era of professional teacher education means reconstructing teacher
preparation programs after the post-shifan era. Reconstruction of teacher
education programs aims at establishing teacher education programs at universities
where college of education collaborates with other academic colleges to educate
prospective teachers. In the discourse of preparing teachers, teacher education
will take the place of "shifan" education. The old teacher education
system, "shifan" education system is a hierarchical and monopolized
system. This system is made of normal schools, teacher colleges, and national
and local normal universities that respectively trained prospective teachers
for preschools, elementary schools and secondary schools.
In the following, we examine the three eras through several aspects: models
of resource allocation, structures of the teacher education system, and models
of preparing and training teachers. Especially, the governance issue of teacher
education programs in the era of post-shifan is discussed in detail.
2. The era of shifan
In the era of the shifan, normal schools, two- or three-year teacher colleges,
four-year teacher colleges, and normal universities constituted a hierarchical
and monopolized teacher education system that received all kinds of resources
allocated by the government. Because the government provided tuition waivers,
stipends and fellowship for the students who attended the teacher education
programs, many top graduates of junior high schools and senior high schools
competed hard to get into these schools, colleges and universities. Internationally
teacher education programs are usually housed in public institutions. For
example, although in the US some private research-oriented universities have
teacher education programs, state universities and colleges prepare the most
of the teacher pool. Similarly, in China normal schools, colleges and universities
were parts of a public educational system that was managed according to the
model of the central planning economy. The resources, recruitment of faculty
and enrollment of students, purposes and approaches of teacher education programs,
allocation of graduates were all decided and managed by the government under
the central planning economic system. Therefore the government dominated teacher
education programs in the era of the shifan.
The executive standards from the government prevailed in the era of the shifan.
First, teacher preparation programs and teacher training programs were conducted
in two different kinds of institutions. Teachers were prepared in normal schools,
teacher colleges, and normal universities that formed a monopolized and stratified
teacher education system while in-service teachers were trained in teacher
training schools located in counties and districts or municipal and provincial
institutes of education. The executive standards from the government exerted
exclusive influences on the two kinds of institutions, which resulted in a
hierarchical and monopolized teacher education system with nationally consistent
curriculum and instructional goals. This system was representative of the
central planning economy model.
Such a hierarchical teacher education structure responded to the public school
system that has elementary and secondary schools. Teachers, the important
roles in the school system were thought to need different levels of disciplinary
knowledge, which meant that elementary school teachers finished the normal
school education equivalent to senior high schools in terms of disciplinary
knowledge, junior high school teachers graduated from two- or three-year teacher
colleges or three-year programs at some normal universities, and senior high
school teachers needed to achieve bachelor degrees in a discipline. This rigid
teacher education structure did not allow teachers to move from the "low-ranked"
elementary schools to secondary schools. Consequently, in-service teachers
received their training at different institutes.
With the economic growth and educational development, the legitimacy of this
hierarchical and monopolized teacher education system was challenged. There
are calls for a new era-the era of post-shifan.
3. The Era of post-shifan
As we mention above, in the era of post-shifan teacher education programs
are becoming diverse. On the one hand, the old teacher education system is
being reformed; on the other hand, non-normal universities are being involved
in teacher preparation. Normal schools training preschool and elementary school
teachers have been gradually changed to secondary schools or promoted to five-year
junior teacher colleges that enroll graduates of junior high schools. The
number of normal schools has decreased from 892 in 1997 to 430 in 2002 under
the backdrop of improving preschool and elementary teachers' education credentials
(Ministry of Education, 1999, 2005). Teachers who graduate from these junior
teacher colleges are awarded an associate degree. By 2001 27.4% of elementary
school teachers hold at least an associate degree (Ministry of Education,
2001).
The two- or three-year teacher colleges have been upgraded into four-year
teacher colleges, and four-year teacher colleges have been promoted to normal
universities. At the same time normal universities are trying to reshape their
orientation from preparing teachers to educating students for all occupations
and professions. Some normal universities pursue the aim of becoming research-oriented
universities. It is noteworthy that some teacher colleges and normal universities
have become multipurpose higher educational institutions by combining with
normal schools, other colleges and universities. For example, in 2002 Xingtai
Teacher College in Hebei Province was changed into Xingtai University.
To follow the trend of developed countries that most school teachers are trained
at comprehensive universities, the government encouraged establishing teacher
education programs in those higher education institutions. In 1999 the State
Council released the "Decisions on deepening the educational reform and
improve quality-oriented education in an all-round way" that called for
multipurpose universities to set up schools of education and prepare schoolteachers.
Currently some provincial and local multipurpose universities and few of national
selective universities responded to this call (Cheng, 2000).
In general, in the era of post-shifan, five approaches to changing the institutional
structure of teacher education have emerged. The first one is that selective
normal universities are becoming multipurpose universities from institutes
preparing teachers. Currently there are 36 normal universities in China. Some
national selective normal universities were changed into multipurpose universities
by expanding the scope of their programs, such as establishing the law program
and school of business, etc. Some colleges combined with each other to form
a new normal university. For instance, Tanjin Normal University was made of
Tanjin Teacher College, Tanjin Institute of Education and Tanjin Junior Teacher
College; Hebei Teacher College and Hebei Institute of Education combined into
Hebei Normal University; Shanxi Normal University incorporated Linfen Teacher
College and Shanxi Teacher College. Among 36 normal universities there are
some universities that have been promoted from teacher colleges to normal
universities, such as Jinlin Normal University and Chongqing Normal University.
The second approach is that municipal normal schools, two- or three-year teacher
colleges, institutes of education and teacher training schools were incorporated
into four-year teacher colleges. For instance, Huzhou Junior Teacher College,
Huzhou Teacher Training School and Huzhou Normal School combined together
to form Huzhou Teacher College. Now there are 60 four-year teacher colleges
throughout the whole country. The province that has the most teacher colleges
is Henan with six teacher colleges.
Thirdly, some normal schools, two- or three-year teacher colleges, institutes
of education, teacher training schools and vocational colleges combined together
to become three-year multipurpose colleges. For example, Luliang College was
made of Luliang Teacher College and Luliang Technology College; Sanming College
was established on the basis of Sanming Teacher College, Sanming Vocational
College, Sanming Teacher Training School and Sanming Normal School. So far
in China there are 61 three-year colleges that have teacher education programs.
Guangxi Province has six that is the most among all provinces.
Fourthly, some teacher colleges incorporated other kinds of colleges to form
universities. Suzhou University was the fist case. It was transformed into
a comprehensive university from a teacher college in 1982. Hubei University
was upgraded from Wuhan Teacher College in 1984. Another case is Guangzhou
University that incorporated Guangzhou Teacher College, Guangzhou Junior Teacher
College, Guangzhou Institute of Education, Guangzhou Construction University
and Guangzhou Vocational University of Architecture Corporation in 2000. Nationally
33 universities took this approach to promote themselves to universities while
keeping teacher education programs. Although some comprehensive universities
involved in teacher preparation by establishing college of education, this
kind of change happened outside of the old teacher education system. The last
approach is to establish four-year colleges by merging municipal and provincial
four-year teacher colleges, two- or three-year teacher colleges, and institutes
of education.
The old teacher education system was transformed into a new direction. Teacher
education programs were not exclusively held by normal colleges and universities;
instead, more and more comprehensive colleges are being involved in preparing
teachers. The expansion of teacher education programs into comprehensive colleges
and universities is the most radical change for the institutional structure
of teacher education in the era of post-shifan. This indicates an interim
from the post-shifan era to the era of professional teacher education. Not
only the structure of the previous teacher education system changed from inside,
but also outside the system changes occurred--teacher education programs become
seated in many comprehensive colleges and universities.
In the era of post-shifan who should prepare teachers becomes one of the major
concerns in terms of reforming teacher education. Those institutional changes
discussed above occurred under the background of merging and incorporating
universities and colleges with various academic focuses in the past decade.
Along with the diversified institutions that take responsibility for educating
teachers, educational researchers debate over several issues, such as shifan
education vs. teacher education, closed teacher education system vs. open
teacher education system, shifan students vs. teacher candidates, academic
disciplines vs. professional education. The discourse diversity of the era
of post-shifan is recognized both in educational research and government documents.
China is a country with much regional diversity, including the different development
levels of economy. Regional needs for teachers played a role in reforming
the institutional structure of teacher education in a certain area. In the
economically advanced eastern parts of China, normal schools no longer existed,
teacher colleges were promoted to universities, normal universities became
comprehensive universities, liberal art colleges and comprehensive universities
were involved in preparing teachers. While in the western regions, normal
schools continue to take responsibility of preparing elementary school teachers.
Table 1 shows the numbers of teacher education institutes in provinces.
Table 1. GDP of provinces and Numbers of Teacher Education Institutes （Click
here）
Meanwhile, in this era the government seeks to control the professional
quality of teachers by creating standards for teacher preparation. In 2004
the Ministry of Education launched 2003-2007 New Action Plan to Revitalize
Education in which drafting standards for accreditation of teacher education
institutions, curriculum of teacher education and quality of teacher education
was outlined. But teacher quality can be controlled and standards can be established
and implemented only when a new teacher education system is established. That
is to say that the nationally consistent teacher education system is the premise
of creating and implementing standards for teacher education. During the post-shifan
era with much diversity, it is hard to guarantee teacher quality by one standard.
However, we do not say that the government cannot set up standards to control
and improve teacher quality. The post-shifan era is a period in which we experiment
at establishing professional standards for teacher education. A professional
standard for teacher education that spells out rules and principles is created
for professionalizing teaching and teacher education. The history of the US
teacher education demonstrates that teacher education coming into universities
paved the way for professionalizing teaching and teacher education.
4. Changes in Governance of Teacher Education in the Era of Post-shifan
It is clearly seen that changes of the teacher education system have led to
changes in governance of teacher education programs. The executive and unitary
management from the government is reformed and more players involve in the
governance of teacher education. Professional organizations, colleges and
universities, social organizations and market all begin to claim their rights
to manage teacher education programs. The Department of Teacher Education
at the Ministry of Education, the highest executive office to supervise teacher
education programs, transformed its roles from giving executive orders to
establishing professional standards: improving the management of teacher certification
that started in 2001, seeking to create teacher professional development certification
and trying to connect this certification with renewal of teacher certification,
setting off to develop standards for teacher education institutes, curriculum
and assessment of teacher education programs. At the same time the Department
of Teacher Education decentralized its management of teacher education through
allowing institutes of teacher education to have autonomy in enrollment, curriculum
design, instructional methods, and job allocation of graduates. In the future
for the purpose of professionalizing teaching, the department can control
standards for teacher certification in order to regulate and exert influences
on goals and graduate requirements of teacher education institutes.
Responding to changes in how the Department of Teacher Education managed teacher
education programs and reconstruction of teacher education institutes, Bureaus
of Teacher Education in provinces and cities reduced their executive power,
which gave local teacher education institutes certain autonomy in operation
and administration. However, in fact, the decreased executive power means
the transition of management from those bureaus to bureaus of higher education
because more and more teacher education institutes were promoted to colleges
and universities that should be under the governance of bureaus of higher
education. Therefore some researchers are concerned that power transition
and allocation would result in a dilemma in which bureaus of teacher education
cannot interfere and bureaus of higher education do not know what to do. Not
surprisingly, they worry that quality of teacher education is affected by
this dilemma. During the ongoing curriculum reform, conflicts also occurred
between bureaus of teacher education and bureaus of basic education that take
responsibility for the curriculum reform. They compete for the power to prepare
and train teachers in the reform.
In the market economy parents and students are important players when we talk
about the governance of teacher education. Because public teacher colleges
and normal universities began to charge tuition and no longer provided stipend
and fellowship for students, attending those colleges and universities was
not attractive for those students from economically disadvantaged families.
Also the structural changes in teacher education institutes led to cancellation
of stipend and fellowship for students who studied in teacher education programs.
Some teacher education programs have difficulty in enrolling enough students
or recruiting top students.
5. Era of professional teacher education: reconstruction of the teacher
education system-professional education at Universities
Reconstruction of teacher education refers to educating professional teachers
in four-year colleges and universities. Reconstruction does not mean we discard
the previous teacher education system; instead, we need to re-organize teacher
education institutes and re-create a new teacher education system. In the
era of post-shifan the old teacher education system-the shifan system consisted
of normal schools, teacher colleges and normal universities coexist with comprehensive
colleges and universities that involve in teacher preparation. In the era
of professional teacher education, a new system will be established while
normal schools, teacher colleges and normal universities will be incorporated
into or promoted to comprehensive colleges and universities. Therefore reconstruction
of the teacher education system indicates the end of the shifan system. We
propose that universities establish professional teacher education programs
in professional schools of education where teacher are prepared. School of
education will become one of professional schools at universities and enjoy
as much respect as other professional schools do.
The reform of teacher education came along with the reform of higher education
in China. During the reform, institutes of post-secondary education were re-organized,
re-constructed into different levels of colleges and universities, which is
also reflected in the teacher education system. A nation always has different
levels of teacher education institutes to meet the needs for teachers at different
levels. In China some research-oriented universities have started to involved
in teacher preparation. Teacher education at graduate school level will become
a trend in the future. We hope that will help improve teacher education and
research on teacher education.
Usually in western countries the system of universities is stratified, including
different types, such as research-oriented universities, four-year colleges
and universities, liberal arts colleges, which corresponds to the needs for
various kinds of workers. As professional education of teachers is housed
in universities that have a stratified structure, teacher education programs
will be established at different levels of colleges and universities, such
as department of education at liberal arts colleges and four-year universities,
and graduate school of education at research-oriented universities.
6. Conclusion
The closed teacher education system that had existed over the past decades
are being transformed into a more open system to improve teachers' education
credentials and quality of teachers, which reacts to the need of preparing
qualified talents for the booming market economy and comes along with the
reorganization of higher educational institutions. Calls for reconstruction
of the teacher education system aim at establishing a new system that has
a diversified teacher education programs housed in universities and implemented
on the basis of national standards for accreditation and curriculum of teacher
education programs. In this paper we propose that prospective teachers receive
their professional education in professional school or college of education
at universities. However, some caveats have to be taken into account in the
process of reforming the teacher education system. Huge economic discrepancy
among regions is a significant factor that determines all regions cannot adopt
the same approach to change their teacher education system. Some researchers
(Cheng, 2000; Zhou & Reed, 2005) suggest that normal schools should be
retained in poor and rural areas because college graduates usually find no
attraction to work in these regions. Each province is suggested to support
a key normal university with multipurpose while keeping those single-purposed
teacher colleges to prepare elementary and junior high school teachers. In
addition, since the Teacher Act (1993) claimed teaching as a profession, professionlization
of teachers has occurred in the discourse f policies and education studies.
But it is necessary to clearly define what that means in a social context
with nationally prescribed curriculum standards and textbooks, and emphasizing
student test scores, whereby we can reorganize and redesign teacher education
programs. Researchers also need to study how to keep the alignment between
teacher education programs and teaching practice at schools, national standards
for teacher education programs and for school curriculum.
References:
Cheng, Y. (2000). Theoretical and strategical studies on teacher education
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Hu, A. (2003). The second transformation: Reconstruction of national systems.
Beijing, China: Tsinghua University Press.
Ministry of Education (1999). The action plan to revitalize education in the
twenty-first century. Beijing, China:
Ministry of Education (2001). Suggestions about improving academic degree
levels of elementary school teachers. From http: //www.moe.gov.cn
Ministry of Education (2005). Basic Statistics of Regular Schools in China
by Level & Type. From http: //www.moe.gov.cn
Zhou, J., & Reed, L. (2005). Chinese government documents on teacher education
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