"Public Service On Campus": Reform And Development Of Initial Training For College And University Faculty

Faculty are the core power of higher education and important carriers of university prestige. But no profession in the world expects new comers' full contribution even with very severe pre-service education. All nations have paid attention and attached importance to the training and development of new faculty. China's policy is institutionalized large-scale top-down initial training. This policy has been put into practice for more than a decade since 1998. There is an efficacy crisis in initial training because of its irrational design, although it has good original intention. Initial training for colleges and universities faculty is calling for Research. There are many studies on this issue. But most of them are not systemic and thorough. Many of the studies overlook the issue and put forward improvement solution just from the managers' angle of view, hence the distortion of attribution. This causes more confused in true colors of initial training for colleges and universities faculty.The paper employs the methods of Sino-American comparative study, questionnaire and personal inquiry. Our standpoint is to facilitate the development of new faculty in colleges and universities. We begin with rethink on initial training ideal and make a thorough analysis and deconstruction and reconstruction of its organizational form, contents, methods and evaluation. Then we make an attribution analysis and point out the ultimate trend of reform and development of initial training for colleges and universities faculty in China.There are altogether eight chapters in this paper.Chapter One:Introduction. This chapter includes the origin of selected topic, the value of the study, definition of the main concepts, literature review, basic contents, research ideas and methods.Chapter Two:The origin and status quo of initial training for colleges and universities faculty in China. We review and analyze in this chapter the policies of training for college and university faculty. Then we expatiate the necessity of initial training for colleges and universities faculty in China from the aspects of new faculty' development, improvement of higher education in China and common topic of international higher education. Based on the status quo investigation we point out five issues of initial training for colleges and universities faculty in China:training philosophy, organizational form, training contents, training methods and evaluation. The following five chapters are the discussions of these issues.Chapter Three:"public service"---on the philosophy of initial training for colleges and universities faculty. The training philosophy is the key factor of the training effect. This chapter explains the philosophies of initial training for colleges and universities faculty in China and America (managerialism vs. public service)and compares their forming background and the major differences. The lack of public service theory and the prevailing of managerialism influence the policy-making and implementation of initial training for colleges and universities faculty. The key is to change our philosophy.Chapter Four:"low gravity center"---on the organizational form of initial training for colleges and universities faculty. Nowadays initial training for colleges and universities faculty is running under the uniform Administrative orders. This chapter analyzes the organizational form of initial training in China and makes case studies of the course, the operating modes and organization principles of American faculty development. We make some reference proposals on the basis of Sino-American comparison.Chapter Five:"pragmatics"---on the contents of initial training for colleges and universities faculty. The contents of our initial training are disciplinary constructed and planned. It leads to emptiness of contents, formalization, dogmatization and lack of practicability and direction. In this chapter we analyze the status quo of initial training for colleges and universities faculty. Then we classify the contents of initial training for American college and university faculty and analyze its core contents and practicability. We propose some measures to improve initial training for colleges and universities faculty.Chapter Six:"self-direction"---on the methods of initial training for colleges and universities faculty. Nowadays the major method in our initial training is infusion. It is very monotonous but not out of the intention of training center. It is actually the microcosmic mirrorimage of classroom teaching in colleges and universities and the natural extension of primary and secondary school education methods. And it is restrained and influenced by class scale and the assessment of initial training. We classify and describe more than 10 American training methods and employ adult learning theory to analyze them on the basis of comparison and point out the possible inspirations.Chapter Seven:"who is the examiner?"—on the evaluation of initial training for colleges and universities faculty. We describe the "exam feast" of initial training and point out a relevant negative effect, that is"faculty cheat too". On the contrary, in America there are no assessments on participating faculty but the evaluation on the training result by the participating faculty. This inverted relations between Chinese and American is thought-provoking. This chapter is an analysis of the institutional relation between initial training and qualification certificate of colleges and universities faculty. We insist that the unreasonable institutional relation should be eliminated and the reversed relationship between Subject and Object should be corrected. We also insist that the function of initial training as "a sieve" should be replaced by "a pump".Chapter Eight:"public service on campus"---the trend of initial training for Chinese college and university faculty. Although the previous chapters(3-7) made a comparison between China and America of initial training for colleges and universities faculty and destructed and reconstructed every step of it. To find the ultimate solution to the low or even no efficiency of initial training we need an imputation analysis. We think that the prime reason of low efficiency of initial training is the replacement of faculty' self-determination by administration orders, that is, the coerciveness and uniformity of initial training for Chinese college and university faculty. We propose that the ultimate solution lies in the moving down of management centers and the raising up of service theory, i.e, "public service on campus" based on both school-based training and intrinsic training for faculty. This is the ultimate trend of the reform and development of initial training for Chinese college and university faculty.