The NPOs And Mechanism Innovation Of Curriculum Reform Governance

In the latest agenda of the central authority and academic research community, one of the most demanding issues of educational policy and management reform is how to reconstruct the existed policy making and management system, and to develop public educational governance system composed of multi-agencies. As the key project of the national educational reform, the new curriculum reform has also witnessed the same demanding of policy and management system reconstruction. With regard to this problem, the curriculum theorists have put forward two strategies:One is to request the provincial and even the central government to found leading mechanism of higher level, the other is to seek for the support from the social power. This article argues that these two strategies should be integrated well, so as to develop "state led, society participated" curriculum reform governance system. The most crucial issue is thus to find the real social power which can play positive and effective role in curriculum reform governance.Based on the theory of governance, this article first analyzed why the social agencies should be adopted to bear the heavy burden of national curriculum reform governance. Then the article argues that the non-profit organizations(NPO), which has played significant role in the national curriculum reform, but overlooked by the policy makers and theorists, is the real social agencies or power deserving of being adopted. This means that if the contributions of the NPOs in recent ten years have been carefully studied, one can find an effective way to develop new curriculum reform mechanisms, and to build "state led, society participated" curriculum reform governance system.To figure out the effective NPO oriented way, the author selects Chinese Youth Development Foundation, The21st Century Educational Institute, Narada Foundation, The Cherished Dreams Foundation, Bainian Vocational School, as the sample NPOs. With the conceptual tools of issue constructing, social capital and networks in the research field of new social movement, this article gives a comprehensive explanation about what the NPOs have done for the national curriculum reform in recent ten years. It reveals that, through exerting themselves'abilities of resource mobilization, social capital and networks, as well as flexible understanding about the national educational policies and the issues widely concerned by the public, the NPOs not only have carved out capacious participating space in the national curriculum reform, but also built up four major fields in which they have taken many kinds of effective actions.The author argues, based on the knowledge of the NPOs'contributions, that many of the fields and actions of the NPOs, such as the local educational institution innovations, social mobilization and multi-agencies integrations, as well as developing non-government evaluating and supervising mechanism of government curriculum reform performance, are all the ones with which the existed policy making and management system can not deal well. The actions of the NPOs can be good remedies for the mechanism losses of the later system. Accordingly, the state can obtain effective new curriculum reform governance mechanisms as long as the NPOs are being wisely adopted. The adoption of the NPOs can even set up sound basement for developing "state led, society participated" curriculum reform governance system. In the final section, the article puts forward that, before officially adopting the NPOs, the state, and the NPOs themselves, still have to take rational reorganizing measures to make the NPOs become more wholesome and positive mechanism of curriculum reform governance.