Research On The Optimization Strategy Of Teacher Certification System Under The New Dual-track Model

Teacher certification system is a mandatory regulation on the conditions and status of those engaged in educational and teaching activities.It is a professional license system implemented by the state for teachers,and it is also the basic security system to ensure the quality of education.The institutionalized construction of teachers certification in China began in the 1990 s and it had experienced three major adjustments and formed four distinctive development stages.In this research,these stages are named as the exploration stage,the formation stage,the optimization stage and the transformation stage respectively.The current transformation stage of the teacher certification system in China began in July 2020,and it is marked by the implementation Plan of the Reform for teachers’ certification.The new teacher certification system was hoped to overcome problems of channel ossification through implementing a differentiated certification scheme for different types of applicants.For example,the independent assessment scheme of exam-free certification is implemented for high-quality normal university students,while national unified examination scheme is implemented for non-normal university students and some normal university students.Although the design of the teacher qualification system has been optimized by the reform,but a closer look still reveals many problems that need to be addressed,Some of them are old problems that have not been solved in the past,some are new problems in current implementation,and some are potential problems in future development.This research divides these problems into four categories: The first one is the problem of conditions setting for teacher qualification,which includes two sub-problems: the lack of differentiation for educational background and the failure of nationality restriction.The second is the ability assessment of teachers’ qualifications,including the "sham education teaching ability" in the qualification examination and the arbitrariness of educational practice evaluation.The third is the problem of the classification and integration of teacher qualifications,including the omission for some type of teacher certificates,and the integration problem for different types of teacher certificates.The fourth is the problem of quality assurance mechanism,which include poor credibility of the collaborative linkage mechanism and the design and implementation problem of the regular registration system.In view of the above problems,corresponding solutions have been put forward by the research.The first is to reserve the policy space for flexible education requirement and work out reliable plan for reducing nationality restriction.The second is to expand the types of teachers’ certificates urgently needed by the society and optimize the integration channels of teachers’ certificates.The third is to introduce process assessment into the national examination and carry out evidence-based evaluation in educational practice.The fourth is to improve the supervision mechanism of professional certification of teachers and optimize the design of regular registration system.