Four-year Trend Studies On "Top-notch Students Project" In Top Universities Of China—The Case From Nanjing University

All over the world,educators,universities and governments are making constant trials and explorations of the cultivation of elite talents.Developed countries have seen relatively good effects of running school based on different levels and types,and of cultivating students' creativity and critical thinking.Compared to these countries,we have fallen behind.In 2009,the Ministry of Education launched Cultivation of Top-notch Students in Basic Disciplines Pilot Project(in abbreviation,the Top-notch Students Project),which was piloted at 11 top universities,including Peking University,Tsinghua University,Nanjing University,etc.Considering the importance of basic disciplines and basic research in the development and sustainability of national science and technology,the Top-notch Students Project was mainly carried out in five basic disciplines,such as mathematics,physics,chemistry,biological sciences and computer science.The purpose of this plan is to attract the best students into the basic scientific research,and to help the supported students grow into leading talents in the basic disciplines and eventually into world-famous scientists.In 2010,the project was selected into the National Education Plan as well as the Talent Plan and the number of participant universities was increased to 19.To accumulate experience in cultivating top-notch talents,we should have a close study of the development pattern of the top-notch talents in China,carry out research on the effects of the project,and then provide suggestions for the improvement of related policy-making,project implementation and result evaluation.In this paper,drawing on the analysis and synthesizing of relevant theories,the author concludes that creativity and critical thinking plays as the core characteristics of top-notch talents and as the key indicators of assessment of top-notch talents.In addition,according to many previous studies,the factors that affect college students'creativity and critical thinking can be divided into external factors and internal factors.The former include the difficulty level and forefront level of the course,the rationality of curriculum structure,teaching methods,interaction between teachers and students,and so on.The latter mainly concern learning motivation,which is further divided into intrinsic motivation and external motivation.Based on the previous studies,this current study designed a questionnaire,and conducted a questionnaire survey and an interview survey.By tracking the development process of the subject students over four years and by comparing the subject students in top-notch project to those in the regular classes,the current study examines the role of various reform initiatives in the Top-notch Students Project.In general,the study has adopted the methodology of trend analysis and quasi-experimental approach.The subjects of experiment group(later referred to as"top class")consist of students admitted in 2011 to three disciplines of Nanjing University which participate the Top-notch Students Project,namely,KuangYaming Honors School,chemistry and computer science.The subjects of the control group are students from regular classes which are not in the Top-notch Students Project(later referred to as "regular class").The study carries out trend surveys on the two groups,comparing the development of creativity and critical thinking of the subjects,and then conducting follow-up causal analyses.The study takes the survey in 2011 as baseline,and conducts a follow-up survey on a yearly basis until the subjects graduate.This longitudinal study spans 4 years.The purpose is to obtain the complete data over the four years on the development of creativity and critical thinking in the top classes and regular classes.Based on the questionnaire results,I also interviewed some of the respondents at two time points:the 1st year and the 4th year,in hope that the interview data and further analysis could reveal the changing status of the subjects and some subtle factors behind the changes which could hardly be found in questionnaire findings.The questionnaire includes five scales:scale of creativity,scale of critical thinking,scale of academic motivation,scale of the learning process of students,self-report scale of learning performance from the students.The findings from the four-year trend study are as follows.Firstly,the top class students make little progress in creativity and critical thinking as well as the regular class students.The results of the interview survey also shows that from freshman to senior year,the top class students did not achieve significant improvement in the cognitive and emotional development.Secondly,there is no statistically significant difference between the top classes and regular classes on the yearly basis.Thirdly,compared to the regular classes,the top classes exhibit a more obvious polarization trend between the best performers and weakest performers.Fourthly,intrinsic motivation is the main influence(or explanatory factor)on creativity and critical thinking of the top class students.Other influences are much insignificant,such as interaction between teachers and students,participation in scientific research.The major negative influence factors come from structure and gradient of curriculum and interaction between teachers and students.The findings also indicate the emergence of the effect of the General Education Curriculum Reform that was launched in 2009.The study shows that about 75%of top-notch students endorse the Top-notch Students Project.Integrating the findings of the current study and research in literature,the author comes to the following conclusions:Firstly,On the whole,the ongoing Top-notch Students Project was not exerting significant effects as expected.But this training mode is conducive to the emergence of more outstanding students.This shows that the selection mechanism needs to be improved.Secondly,curriculum is the most urgent problem.The inadequacy of reasonability of curriculum structure and the lack of gradient setting and challenge in curriculum hinder the release of talent and learning enthusiasm as well as the improvement of abilities of analyzing,synthesizing and evaluation,which results in the insufficient academic improvement among top-notch students.Therefore,it is an urgent task to innovate curriculum,including rationally designing the curriculum gradient and comprehensively considering the appropriate curriculum challenge.Compared to curriculum,the teaching method innovation is not so urgent.Thirdly,intrinsic motivation is a very important influence in the students'learning process.If measures are taken to improve students' intrinsic academic motivation,their creativity and critical thinking will be greatly improved.Fourthly,resources of quality teachers are relatively limited.Teachers' efforts in teaching cannot meet students' expectations.So it is difficult to achieve the individualized cultivation of students.The main recommendations of this study include:Firstly,curriculum reform is a top priority.We should above all stimulate students' intrinsic motivation and identify clear cognitive-oriented training objectives.The coherence between courses and appropriate degree of curriculum challenge also needs to be taken into account.At the same time,we should help students to understand the logic,principles and significance of the existing curriculum system.Secondly,a program should be devised that can systematically promote the intrinsic motivation of student learning.We must take into account the intrinsic motivation at different stages with different emphases.In the first years,teachers should pay more attention to the knowledge that can stimulate students' interest in learning and in the senior year,the attention should be given to the quality of general education curriculum.Teachers also need to ensure that all top-notch students can have access to adequate quality educational resources so that they can develop the intrinsic motivation.Thirdly,it is necessary to deepen the reform of the General Education Curriculum.The reform of the corresponding teaching philosophy,content and methods can help the top-notch students better understand the significance of related courses and attach importance to such courses.Fourthly,integration of research and teaching needs to be strengthened.Through the combination of science and.education,we can involve more high-level teachers in scientific research into top-notch talent cultivation.Fifthly,selection criteria should focus on the intrinsic motivation of students.Selection should be based on the student's potential rather than on the number of students assigned to a university who could be admitted to the project.Considering the fact that the total number of students in the Top-notch Students Project is not large,in the future researchers might conduct surveys at other 18 universities in order to do a large-scale systematic analysis.In the meantime,we need to further consider the impacts of the cultural factors and develop an appropriate creativity and critical thinking scale which takes full account of the characteristics of the learning behaviors of Chinese college students.