Regional Empirical Research On School-running Autonomy Of Elementary And Secondary Schools

School-running autonomy is a series of specialized rights for school to position school-running objectives,make its development of planning,conduct education and teaching,and own specific automatic-space in its personnel management,financial management and enrollment issues based on related law regulations.Implementing and expanding school-running autonomy are realistic problems of deepening reform of educational field and promoting the educational governance system and the modernization of governance which cannot be neglected.However,the lack of school-running autonomy and autonomous function of public elementary and secondary schools had long been the bottleneck problems that restricted educational vigor and educational quality.Therefore,great values and significance are existed in conducting investigation and research of real situations of elementary and secondary school's autonomy,and comprehensively discussing its implementation strategy and guarantee mechanism.This empirical research focused on school-running autonomy of elementary and secondary schools from the perspective of "region",altogether included four research questions:first,to construct the analytical framework of school-running autonomy of elementary and secondary schools for the research;second,to give a comprehensive description of autonomous degree and internal power operation of elementary and secondary schools of the central region of Henan Province;third,to analyse the vital cruxes existed in elementary and secondary schools of the central region of Henan Province;fourth,to discuss the guarantee mechanism of elementary and secondary schools' autonomy.Based on these considerations,this research focused on the core concept of "school-running autonomy",constructed the four-dimensional analytical framework of "Power Subject","Power Behavior","Intersubjective Relationship" and"Guarantee Mechanism",and implemented research design,empirical investigation,relevant issues' analysis and guarantee mechanism's discussion of this research following this logical clue.Specifically,this thesis included three main modules and eight chapters:Module One:Rationale Explanation.Module One was positioned to explain the rationale of this research,concretely included Chapter One "Introduction",Chapter Two "Literature Review" and Chapter Three "Theoretical Basis and Analytical Framework".This module firstly defined and expounded the concept of"school-running autonomy",then followed the guidance of theories for government nature and functions,theories for school's operation and development and governance theory,combined specific research questions and school-running practice,finally put forward the analytical framework of research on school-running autonomy of elementary and secondary schools under the inspiration of "Power Analysis Method"in political science.Module Two:Empirical Investigation.Module Two selected empirical investigation as the main clue,concretely included Chapter Four "Empirical Research Design and Research Tools' Verification" and Chapter Five "Investigation Findings and Data Distribution".This module firstly conducted the design of empirical investigation based on the analytical framework,then verified and established the main research tools of questionnaire and unstructured interview outline,and launched empirical investigation in the Central Region of Henan Province.Through deeply investigation in 3 urban areas,3 county-level cities,1 county and its villages and towns,this research finally received 3467 valid questionnaires,altogether interviewed 28 persons of school leaders,teachers and staffs of education administrative department,and visited 8 schools of different characteristics to collect related cases.Later on,this research adopted SPSS 20.0 software to process data through methods of factor analysis,descriptive statistics,linear regression analysis,differentiation analysis.Specifically focused on the central region of Henan Province,Module Two explored and verified the "five factors" of school's autonomy,described school's autonomous degree on its personnel management,financial management,enrollment management,curriculum management and school's development planning making,described schools' internal power operation,conducted regression analysis to examine the influence of "five factors" on the holistic cognition of school-running autonomy,verified differentiations on the "five factors" of school's autonomy and other related issues of school-running autonomy of different types of schools.Module Three:Discussion and Conclusion.Module Three took analysis of problems and presentation of conclusions as destination,concretely included Chapter Six"Analysis of Relevant Issues",Chapter Seven "Discussion on Guarantee Mechanism"and Chapter Eight "Final Thoughts".This module combined the foundations of rationale explanation and empirical investigation,conducted analysis on "Power Subject","Power Behavior" and "Intersubjective Relationship" of elementary and secondary schools' autonomy in the central region of Henan Province.The existed cruxes were as follows:first,the legal personality of elementary and secondary schools was not clear to some extent;second,school's "autonomy list" was not sure,and was confronted with the situation of legal vacancy;third,the reform of"streamline administration and delegate power to the lower levels" promoted by the government had not extended to elementary and secondary schools;forth,significant differences were existed between schools,and some schools could not even shoulder the responsibility of running school;fifth,democracy mechanism inside school which was distinguished by multiple subjects' participation was not sound.In view of the above questions,this research put forward the guarantee system of elementary and secondary schools' autonomy in the central region of Henan Province with systematic thinking and realistic considerations.Specifically,the guarantee system contained local legislation,institutional reforms of regional teacher recruitment,local educational financial investment and flexible management based on schools'difference,internal guarantee system of school-level through the construction of school's democracy system,the awaken of internal vitality and the maturity of school constitution.On the whole,this research had made beneficial explorations while constructing analytical framework,launching empirical investigation and proceeding problems'analysis.The improving and deepening direction of this research is to lager the sample size based on a more rigorous sampling design,and to explore more deep-seated research problems by case study and action research.