Understanding the Outcomes for Chinese Headteachers' Leadership
educational setting. It aims to buttress the current nationwide education reform in China in order to advance the quality of education and eventually “raise the level of general education to achieve its goal of economic and social development” (Feng, 2003, p.205). Little doubt has been cast on the effectiveness of school leadership and management performance in determining the future of Chinese education. For this sake, Chinese headteachers and the development of their leadership are positioned as central to this study.
Leadership development: a global perspective and the local context
There is widespread consensus among practitioners, researchers and policy makers that professional training and development have an impact on participants by improving leaders’ knowledge, skills and dispositions (Pont, Nushe, and Moorman, 2008). Leadership, as a values-laden concept, is subject to social, political, cultural, and technological conditions (Sergiovanni, 1991). Different cultural contexts are likely to have distinctive influences on headteachers’ conceptions of leadership, which derive from the attitudes, values, and styles of one culture rather than another (Heck, 1996;Walker and Dimmock, 2002; Oplatka, 2004). Heck (1996) suggests that “there is still much to be learned about how leadership is expressed across the wider sphere of national-cultural boundaries” (p.75).
Caldwell et al. (2003, p.123) hold that “neither across the nation as a whole nor within a single system is there a coherent and comprehensive approach to the preparation and professional development of headteachers,” whereas Oplatka (2004, p.427) argues, “principalship as educational leadership is ideally constructed by Anglo-American scholars as embedded with moral, interpersonal, instructional and administrative dimensions.” These contradictory comments showcase researches on leadership are predominantly confined within the developed countries’ ideology, and the risks of a simplified
“borrow-and-take” approach by the developing countries, without sufficient attention to cultural differences and diversity, are growing ever higher. This is timely echoed in Walker’s latest comments conerning disconnections which continue to hinder the preparation and growth of successful school leaders (Walker and Qian, 2011) as there remains an inability of development programmes to cater to leadership across mutiple contexts (Walker, 2015, p.301).
It should be noted that school leadership does not operate in a vacuum. Earley (2004) claims that any analysis of leadership would initially need to acknowledge two central factors: the relationship between leadership, power and authority, and the interaction of people in groups. Ribbins (2007) argues that it is important to understand headteachers and their leadership in a contextualised perspective and in action.
That is, a researcher needs to focus on how headteachers conceive themselves in the context of what they do.
Chinese school leadership and training
In China, the central importance of school leadership is a long standing theme; as with other nations, the role of the headteacher is viewed by China’s educational policymakers the key to success in educational development (Feng, 2003). Although the Chinese government has made it one of its priorities to develop headteachers’ capacity in leadership skills, some inherent barriers are impeding headteachers from functioning properly and creatively. It is common to see school leadership vested in the headteacher or at the apex of the organisation, and leadership traditions tend to focus on hierarchy, directive leadership approaches, and the moral development of individual leaders (Bush and Qiang, 2002; Child, 1994; Wong 2001).
Chinese education is unquestionably affected by political institutions. Headteachers have generally been seen as loyal figures serving the Communist Party’s will (Feng, 2003). The rigid structure makes the headteacher simply a policy executer, and leadership requires no more than management and administration. In the bureaucratic system, school headteachers can hardly be expected to take any initiatives without getting consent from the higher-level authorities. Although in recent year, there has been a top-down decentralising movement aiming to empower leadership at the school level, autonomy is still without true significance to Chinese headteachers. As Wang et al. (1991) observe that Chinese headteachers are in a no-win situation: they are expected to be creative and produce results in what
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appears to be an overly rigid and restrictive organisational structure.
According to Feng (2003), the training of headteachers in China can be divided into five periods. In first period (1949—1957), it was centralised and on a small scale, aiming to “train a certain number of promising personnel for school administration to suit the planned educational development of the nation” (ibid.:205); a period of inactivity (1958—1979) followed with political chaos and turbulence, and the entire educational system was eradicated and ruined. The recovering period (1979—1989) witnessed the restoration of a comprehensive school system, and headteacher training was resumed accordingly, in line with reconstruction and modernisation. The development period (1990s) was a fruitful time in terms of national policies, and institutions established for headteacher training; and the new era (2000 onwards) is characterised by education reforms and the internationalisation movement.
Accompanied by the acceleration of internationalisation in Chinese education, there is an increasing call for drawing on the experiences of Western countries. Yuan Guiren, the current Minister of Education of China, was once reported as saying that "we wish to see more principals to visit foreign countries and bring more of the Western educational and leadership concepts back to China" (China Daily, 2010).
China’s steady rise as an economic power in recent years has made it financially realistic to support Chinese headteachers’ study abroad. Such experience for headteachers is seen as not merely part of their professional development but also a national strategy, actualised through specific policies which aims to build capacities and accelerate human capital required both by the central and provincial governments.
Research design and methodology
The study is best described as one where qualitative inquiry dominates and other research methods are used for triangulation. As Eacott (2010) suggests, “studies drawing from a diverse range of methods and designs are desirable, if not necessary” (p.277)
A small-scale study aiming to gain a deeper understanding of headteachers’ leadership during and after training is likely to be considered superficial and unconvincing. However, Morrison (2007) argues, “at the macro-level, they (small-scale researches) raise awareness about the extent of political manipulation in which research intentions and frameworks are bounded, and sound warnings at the micro-level, especially about what is ‘researchable’ and what is permitted or celebrated as research”
(p.13).
It is recognised that the impact of a leadership programme develops over time, and that significant changes in leadership practice are not likely to happen during the training period (Bush, 2008). So, intending to explore the real impact of the training on the headteachers, the author deliberately chose participants from five different cohorts through the years 2005 to 2012 who have had at least one year to exercise their learning and conduct changes after their training was accomplished. Additionally, focus was also given to British training experts and headteachers who had acted either as training facilitators or hosts to Chinese headteachers working in placements.
Ethical considerations were carefully taken into account. Part of the questionnaire used for research involved co-authorship. Written consent was gained from the primary author. For the pilot as well as the main surveys, the respondents were informed about the conditions of usage and promised that their feedback would be used only for research purposes.
Interview participants had been informed of the aim of the study and were orally consulted before interviews were carried out. Permission was sought before audio-recording the interviews, and any contents that might violate the privacy protection regulations would be amended or deleted on request.
Participants were informed about the use of direct quotations and the fact that a report would be written about the case study and its findings. Upon request, participants would be provided with a selection of the findings.
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Data Analysis
Calibrating the actual effects on Chinese headteachers’ attendance at CUSLDP is not without difficulty.
However, to provide a preliminary analysis of the impact of training on participants, a self-reported questionnaire survey was employed. It contains nine descriptors; for each descriptor there are five scales for the narrations indicating different levels of school leadership, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest.
Many respondents admitted that, before training, there was a lack of shared vision among staff in their schools, while after training, the result shows the opposite, since as many as eighty-four percent of the respondents acknowledged “values and vision shared by all members of the school”, and forty-three percent of them also believed that a shared vision is used to “inform a strategic planning process”.
Nearly half of the respondents described communications in school as “generally adequate”, but considered that contentious issues tended to be “ignored or deferred, and treated superficially” before training. This corresponds with what Walker and Dimmock (2005) claim, that “the Chinese tend to avoid open confrontation and assertiveness… teachers and principals tending to avoid open disagreement, with the leaders’ view invariably and apparently being accepted” (p.40) However, forty-one percent of the respondents felt that, after the training, “everyone is fully informed and feels involved in making decisions”, and twenty-night percent of the respondents reported that
“disagreement is dealt with openly and addressed head on through negotiation” in their schools.
Only thrity-seven percent of the respondents considered themselves to have been leaders who were
“aware of the need to respond appropriately, to manage my emotions and adapt my style” before training. Their statements indicate that, after training, the majority (sixty-night percent) of these headteachers have come to realise the impact they have on others and acknowledged that different styles of leadership can be employed to handle various situations.
Responses to pre-training situations suggested a less satisfactory and non-favourable ethos for securing success. The after training figures show the successful establishment of a positive and proactive climate in a school that encourages contribution of ideas.
The pre-training figures indicate that most of the respondents had provided continuous professional development opportunities (but perhaps not in the most suitable way) for their staff; however, the after training figures show that most emphases have been transferred to providing quality CPD opportunities and support to the staff with more effective performance management.
Forty-five percent of the respondents consider that they “use data to analyse situations and find tools which are useful to deal with problems” and “generally use time well”, and twenty-five percent of them reported that they “have a range of strategies to analyse situations and solve complex problems” and
“prioritise tasks to leave enough time” to address difficult problems. However, eighteen percent of the respondents still fell into the category of having relatively weak and less time-efficient management performance. In contrast to the pre-training figures, the after training figures indicate that personal capacity of sixty-three percent of the training participants has increased.
Indeed, Chinese headteachers give much attention to managing resources, while they also compete with each other for additional funding from the government. The after training picture indicated that resources are managed more effectively, and a highly efficient administrative team has been built.
The after training figure indicates that ninty-four percent of the respondents chose to make their staff accountable, acknowledge success and even challenge low performance. However, this does not mean that in daily management they will overlook the importance of the leadership built on maintaining a sound personal relationship with their colleagues.
After they realised that the school could not sustain and handle every problem alone, and that it is crucial to gain support from the community, particularly financial support, and also for issues like
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discipline and school-parent relations, they hence changed attitudes and learned to relate to the community. Respondents held a practical attitude before training. They aimed to gain benefits for their schools primarily through contacts with the community. In contrast, after training, fifty-night percent of the respondents expressed their willingness to “build links with a range of potential partners within and beyond the organisation” and emphasis on the social responsibility of the school in terms of commitment to cultural diversity and social justice.
The majority of the respondents maintained that school leadership as a concept is vested in the leader’s personal undertakings; only six percent and seventeen percent of the headteachers considered that their ideas on school leadership have been moved to a focus on group influence and on empowering others, respectively. In addition, seventy-two percent of the respondents considered that their abilities in leading, learning and teaching have been improved; this corresponds with what Sergiovanni (1991) argues, that “successful leadership and management are directed toward the improvement of teaching and learning for students”(p.16). Fifteen percent of the respondents held that they have become vision-oriented and think more strategically, and another 9 percent of them have achieved in creating a sound ethos and a better infrastructure in their schools.
The survey also showed that nearly half of the respondents believed that their students were treated with more respect, while thirty-five percent of the respondents considered that their students’ interests were better secured and developed, and another ninteen percent of the respondents reported their students had better achievements.
The statistics showed that nearly ninty percent of the respondents expressed willingness to help others to improve. Among those who would provide support to other headteachers, more than half of them have provided details on how to improve their counterparts in specified areas of leadership, such as management skills, leading teaching and learning, and employing different leadership styles. Another ninteen percent of the people preferred sharing their overseas experiences with others. Their answers also indicate that these headteachers mainly focus on passing the training content to others, rather than on transmitting knowledge through networking or using interactive methods like coaching and mentoring, which encourage lively communications and instant reflections between them and their counterparts in China.
The most important requirement for the improvement of leadership in education today is to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of transmitting experiences and knowledge among headteachers. The Chinese headteachers who have attended the CUSLDP need both awareness and concrete skills in order to be competent consultants or facilitators that will help to train their local counterparts. This requires the government to ensure that the training institutions provide related and needed instructions, as well as to establish a platform and a network among headteachers, which allow the trainees to bring what they have learned into play.
Understanding Chinese principals’ leadership through interviews
Through self-reflections and comparisons, the ten Chinese headteachers who were interviewed provided some in-depth understanding of how they perceive school leadership, the uniqueness of leadership in the Chinese context, and their British counterparts’ leadership.
Chinese headteachers are normally seen as good school managers but are usually short on sustained values and vision, and they are not very good at working with other headteachers and interacting with their staff, either. Moreover, they are also fettered by the education authorities, who prefer to exert strict and direct control on the schools through headteachers and leave them without full authority.
Considering that these are experienced headteachers, their feedback should be a wake-up call to the local government for further dissemination of power to a real school-based management system.
Equally worth recalling is the observation of one British headteacher during the course of training, as she commented, “they (the Chinese headteachers) seemed reluctant to learn collaboratively or engage with the practical elements or discussion.” Interestingly, labelled by Hofstede (1991) as a culture of
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collectivism which emphasises group, collective wisdom but individual heroism, the phenomenon seems less evident to these Chinese headteachers. Responding to the above comments, a Chinese headteacher said:
My understanding is, frankly speaking, that Chinese headteachers have different official rankings in line with their experiences, achievements and school scales. Those with higher ranking status might look down upon others. And competition between headteachers from the same area for better achievements is also accountable.
The lack of collaboration among Chinese headteachers was referred to as a drawback by several interviewees. And it is also observed that the Chinese headteachers gave more attention to learning from the British counterparts than from each other during the training.
One point the Chinese headteachers frequently stressed in their feedback is that they have learned from observing the British experts and headteachers through training and the school placements. They enthused about the experts’ professionalism, their interactive teaching style, and the British headteachers’ commitment to education guided by vision, enterprise and care for every child. However, they also noticed that the different contexts might result in different perceptions. For instance, one headteacher mentioned:
I was surprised at how little the British headteachers know about China and Chinese schools. I can tell that they are probably less familiar with the burdens we undertake. A seemingly uncomplicated matter in the UK can be very troublesome in China. Sometimes we think British headteachers have quite an easy time, but actually they don’t. Due to the different social structure and cultural norms, we as headteachers share some commonalities but also differ from each other.
To portray the Chinese headteachers’ leadership as seen in this cross-cultural training setting, the British experts and headteachers who had worked with them and acted as hosts on the placements were consulted. They commented positively on their Chinese colleagues in terms of managerial skills, job effectiveness and commitment to education. However, they also offered some advice on improving the leadership of the Chinese headteachers.
One British headteacher suggested, “perhaps an area for development might be to understand that, as headteachers, the job is too complex for one person, and that a key part of their role might be in developing the capacity of other teachers in the school to be leaders.” Similarly, one British expert said that “some Chinese headteachers seem to want to be involved in many of the minor details of their schools, whereas they should be thinking strategically and allowing others to be involved in these more minor decisions and tasks”. These two statements derive from a similar ideological base, that headteachers should know how to distribute their leadership and empower others to do what needs to be done.
In terms of Chinese leadership values, another British expert cited a saying from the Taoist Dao De Jingii, “Take it easy, and try not to be commanding. When the work is finished and the task is accomplished. With the best leaders, the people say, ‘we are like that, naturally.’” The saying emphasises how school leaders should be guiding and leading instead of ordering and commanding.
Paradoxically, one British expert followed by saying that “the interesting thing is, even though it is a Chinese saying, the Chinese leaders don’t follow it. They need to do more to prepare for the next few decades, especially where vision is concerned.”
Four Chinese professors with an average of nine years of headteacher training experience were consulted. They had taken part in the programme as either training facilitators or programme leaders.
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