Studies On The Policy Synergy On Constructing Teachers’ Team In Rural China

As a key to solving the imbalanced and insufficient allocation of urban and rural teachers in China,strengthening the construction of rural teacher teams lays a foundation for facilitating integrated,balanced development of rural-urban compulsory education and serves as a critical guideline for implementing the Rural Revitalization Strategy.Hence a series of policies on constructing rural teacher teams have been introduced and implemented in recent years,including The Plan for Supporting Rural Teachers（2015～2020）.As yet,China has preliminarily established a policy system for constructing rural teacher teams with Chinese characteristics,making unprecedented achievements in this regard.On the other hand,such a policy system can hardly be facilitated as a whole because constructing rural teacher teams is characterized by typical cross-over cooperation and close connections between different departments,a long duration,and inconsistency between powers of offices,human rights,and financial rights.Nor can policies be implemented faithfully.For these reasons,it remains prominent that rural teachers are unwilling to teach at the grassroots level,have a high turnover,and fail to provide qualified teaching.This phenomenon,in turn,hinders the fulfillment of relevant policy goals.As China enters a new stage of developing into a modernized socialist country in all respects,rural teachers remain the weakest link of constructing teacher teams.The 19^th National Congress of the Communist Party of China regarded"pursuing reform in a more systematic,holistic,and coordinated way"as critical experience for achieving significant breakthroughs in comprehensively deepening the reform.For one thing,it forebodes the need for further adjusting and improving the policy system of constructing rural teachers,strengthening the synergy between policies in this regard,and eliminating policy and institutional barriers that hinder the stability,structural optimization,and quality improvement of rural teachers.For another,it necessitates studies on such a policy system from the perspective of policy synergy.Not only will these studies lay a theoretical foundation for adjusting and improving the policy system,but also they are conducive for solving the deadlock wherein subjects have inconsistent responsibilities and relevant policies are fragmentary.Equally important,such studies will contribute to the fulfilling of policy goals in this regard,develop this undertaking as a priority,set up a rural teacher management mechanism wherein the power to offices,human rights,and financial rights are consistent,and modernize the system and capacities of governing rural teachers.On this basis,the study focuses on exploring the deviation between the actual synergy between policies on constructing rural teacher teams and synergy objectives.Guided by the Theory of Policy synergy,the paper constructs a theoretical framework for analyzing synergy between policies on different directional dimensions.Specifically,it analyzes the policy synergy on the time and spatial dimensions（horizontal,vertical,and horizontal-vertical）.The research can be divided into two parts.In the first part,the paper collects 205 national-level policies on constructing rural teacher teams since the reform and opening up from the websites of China’s State Council and Ministry of Education to set up a text database.All policy text is analyzed to find the changes in policies on constructing rural teacher teams.Meanwhile,the Delphi method is employed to formulate standards for evaluating such policy synerigies’evolution.Then a model for measuring policy synerigies’evolution is constructed to analyze the features of the departmental synerigies’evolution and the measure synerigies’evolution.In the second part,the paper collects data from the Education Statistics Yearbook of China,the statistical reports on educational development in China,and data published by relevant national departments.Next,a questionnaire survey is conducted at 15 rural schools selected from sample provinces and counties,including A Province,X County of A Province,B Province,and L County in B Province.Meanwhile,an in-depth interview with 11 administrative personnel from relevant government departments and 15 headmasters or principals of selected rural schools is conducted to analyze the implementation of policies on constructing rural teacher teams from the national and sampled county level.Besides,the Scheme for Implementing the Supportive Plan in sample provinces and counties is analyzed in detail.Eventually,a field interview with administrative personnel from governmental departments is carried out to analyze the synergy between relevant policies and factors hindering policy implementation.On this basis,the paper establishes a mechanism for the synergy between policies on constructing rural teacher teams.According to study findings,the synergy between policies on constructing rural teacher teams refers to establishing a policy system for constructing rural teacher teams with complete elements and an appropriate structure and fulfilling relevant policy goals by giving play to policies’integrated effect.To this end,the theoretical basis for sub-policies on constructing rural teacher teams in different stages should be consistent with the policy paradigm proposed by the times.Secondly,all policies on constructing rural teacher teams should support each other and those in other regards.Thirdly,the subjects of policies on different levels and of different categories should have clear responsibilities.Meanwhile,all policy subjects’relations,structures,and functions should be combined and improved systematically.It ensures the sub-policies on constructing rural teacher teams and relevant elements are consistent,coordinated,mutually supportive.Lastly,policy subjects should have consistent and coherent actions to produce policy synergy.According to study findings,varied governance concepts on rural-urban compulsory education have been proposed in different stages since the reform and opening up.The policies on constructing rural teacher teams in China undergo changes in four stages:the adjustment and recovery of compulsory education（1978～1984）,imbalanced development of compulsory education（1985～2001）,compulsory education’s transition from imbalanced to balanced development（2002～2011）,and compulsory education’s shift from basically-balanced to quality balanced development（2012～present）.These transitions are characterized by the drive mechanism of developing governance conceptions for rural-urban development,the process guarantee of reforming compulsory education’s management systems,the goal orientation on efficiency-based justice,and take"educating in rural areas"as the discourse rule.According to study findings,the synergy between departments that issue policies on constructing rural teacher teams is evolving.After 2006,the proportion of departments jointly introducing policies for constructing rural teacher teams rose significantly,proving the formulation of relevant policies shifted from single-department orientation to multiple-department cooperation.After 2012,many policies on constructing rural teacher teams were jointly issued by several departments,with a higher policy efficacy.As a result,it raised the synergy effect of relevant policy departments and significantly reduced policy fluctuations,indicating that the number of departments formulating policies on constructing rural teacher teams enjoyed a steady increase.Despite variations in the synergy degree,a common feature can be found among policies on constructing rural teacher teams:After 2012,policies on constructing rural teacher teams increased or decreased in the same direction,reflecting a high synergy level.Besides,the synergy between complementary policy measures and other policy measures is significantly higher than that between policies on evaluations,welfare,and training.According to study findings,the implementation of policies on constructing rural teacher teams is hindered by a host of problems:firstly,rural teachers have inadequate knowledge of policies in this regard;secondly,rural teachers are characterized by a young age structure,a high turnover,and low willingness to stay on their posts.Although rural teachers can be supplemented by multiple channels,the turnover remains severely high for two reasons:firstly,rural teachers are less satisfied with their salaries than public civil servants and demand for an increase in the sum of living subsidies;secondly,the salaries of rural teachers differ widely from region to region.In addition to structural saturation of positions,rural teachers are also confronted with unjust occupational title appraisals,which result from restrictions on evaluation conditions,flaws in the evaluation process,and fierce competition between teachers in different studying stages for the same occupational title.This phenomenon is further exacerbated by inadequate opportunities for receiving municipal-level,provincial-level,and national training or a poor training effect.Although honorary awards are offered to rural teachers,they mainly play a promotional role and fail to serve as effective incentives.For the reasons above,rural teachers’professional identity remains low.Currently,policy synergy has been achieved in constructing rural teacher teams by providing"one allocation,one discussion,one reporting,and one solution for one affair".Such synergy is characterized by"linked synergy"that relies on the government’s normal work operation mechanism,"diversified synergy"that varies with the implemented policy,"policy-cooperative synergy"that bases on levels of interactions between departments,and"hierarchical policy synergy"that meets the requirement for policy rematching.However,there is no denying that policy pseudo-synergy also exists behind policy synergy.It is manifested in the synergy failures of policy subjects and those of policy elements.Specifically,the subjects of policies on constructing rural teacher teams have mechanical synergy,symbolic synergy,and selective synergy,and the elements concerning policies on constructing rural teacher teams are ambiguous,lacking,and contradictory.According to study findings,the factors for the synergy failures of policies on constructing rural teacher teams include hindrances resulting from incomplete governance mechanisms for constructing rural teacher teams,the single forms of communication between policy subjects,the struggles of interests between policy subjects,and low text quality of policies.According to the analytical findings mentioned above,a policy synergy mechanism,consisting of the value identity mechanism,the structural mechanism,and the procedural mechanism,should be established to facilitate the policy synergy of constructing rural teacher teams.The value identity mechanism serves as the foundation,attempting to deepen policy subjects’understanding of synergy and foster urban-rural education governance conception that favors rural areas.The structural mechanism is the key,focusing on improving the governance mechanism for rural teacher teams and strengthening the authority of allocating rural teacher resources.The procedural mechanism provides guarantees,orienting on improving procedures concerning the information exchanges and interest coordination of educational policy decisions and raising the accuracy of policy support for constructing rural teacher teams.