Is the Teaching Research System a Model for the Institutionalization of Professional Learning Communities Around the World? The Chinese Perspective

The Chinese education system has a robust, systematic, institutionalized approach to ongoing teacher collaboration and networks (Liang, Lu, and Huang 2010; Sargent and Hannum 2009; Sargent 2015; Zhang and Pang 2016) which can inform the growing global interest in professional learning communities for teachers. Teacher collaboration and networking have been theorized as valuable for the promotion of teaching quality, the dissemination of educational reforms, the generation of knowledge of teaching practice, job-embedded problem solving, mentoring, peer feedback and evaluation, and teacher job satisfaction and retention (McLaughlin and Talbert 1993; Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1999; Lieberman 2000; Baker-Doyle 2011; Darling-Hammond et al. 2017). Education systems around the world vary in the degree to which they foster opportunities for teacher collaboration and networking as a part of teacher’s daily work (Darling-Hammond et al. 2017). Darling-Hammond et al. (2017) provide an overview of countries that they identify as having strong “teaching and learning systems.” One of the features of these high performing teaching and learning systems is the deliberate organization of the sharing of expertise among teachers and administrators across the system.

Professional learning communities as a key strategy to enhance teacher collaboration and networking are receiving international attention from researchers and policymakers in education systems around the world. Stoll et al. (2006) identified agreed upon characteristics that define a teacher professional learning community: “a group of people sharing and critically interrogating their practice in an ongoing, reflective, collaborative, inclusive, learning oriented, growth promoting way; operating as a collective enterprise” (Stoll et al. 2006, p. 223). Stoll et al. (2006) traced the origin of the concept of the professional learning community to Schön's (1983) notion of the “reflective practitioner”. They highlight the importance of both the practice orientation and learning orientation of professional learning communities. The key value of the activity of the teacher professional learning community is that it is firmly rooted in the daily practice of teacher’s work and in the concern with change and improvement.

Although the term professional learning communities is not used in China, researchers suggest that its principles have been practiced as the daily life of Chinese teachers in the form of the “teaching research system”. The Chinese teaching research system is an infrastructure established at the system level (including the school, district, county, and provincial level) across China, even in the remote areas. Activities that are focused on the improvement of teacher’s daily practice include the organization of open lessons, peer observation, collective lesson planning, and teacher action research at different levels. Even though the Chinese teaching research system is centralized and systematic at the national level, taking direction from national education policy, it is, at the same time, also a decentralized and flexible network that engages different stakeholders including scholarly practitioners, administrator’s, and teachers at the provincial, county, district, and school level in collaborative endeavors to innovate, reform, and monitor teaching at the classroom level.

China’s systematic approach to harnessing the power of teacher collaboration and networks may be the largest and most ambitious in the world. While there is a growing collection of scholarly literature on aspects of the Chinese “teaching research system” in Chinese, there is still limited literature in English on this important feature of the Chinese education system. In this special issue, we introduce, to the international scholarly community, the work of leading scholars in China about the Chinese teaching research system as a means to providing a platform for professional dialogue. The articles in this issue include both theoretical and empirical papers that present the cultural and historical origins, policy development at the level of the education system, the relationship between teaching research groups at the group level and teacher professional learning, as well as the major features of the Chinese teaching research system.

The opening article by Lingyuan Gu illustrates key features of Chinese-style teaching research. Gu argues that the teaching research is rooted in a well-established culture of observation and introspection, the beginnings of which could be dated to two thousand years ago in China. Drawing on a master teacher’s reflections on their teaching practice, Gu proposes a feedback model of teacher professional development in teaching research. He further states that, different from purely rational introspection, teachers form practice- and evidence-based action plans in the Chinese-style teaching research activities. Gu contends that over the last 60 years or so, China’s teaching research organizations, which exist at all stages of the education system, have developed into a formidable, multi-tiered network that reaches all educational spaces. Furthermore, he predicts that the introduction of online learning in recent years will certainly create even more space for innovation within the system of community learning for teachers.

In their article, “Chinese Teachers as Intellectuals,” Liyong Zhang, Jianjun Wang, and Licui Chen, emphasize the ancient Chinese traditions of intellectual study and learning that are harnessed in the teacher learning that occurs in the Chinese teaching research system. This article further deepens our understanding of the native Chinese roots of teacher collaborative learning. While the Chinese teaching research system is commonly regarded as a purely borrowed product from the Soviet Union (Hu 2005; Tsui and Wong 2009), Zhang, Wang, and Chen use historical accounts to show that teaching research type activities existed long before the establishment of New China. While acknowledging the influence of the Soviet model, they argue that Chinese teachers doing collective teaching research emerged out of the ancient cultural traditions of Chinese teachers as intellectuals. They also explore the nature of the teacher learning that occurs in the activities of the teaching research system distinguishing it from conventional notions of educational research and inquiry.

In the article that follows, Wei Liang, Litao Lu, and Hongyao Wang explore policy development in the administration of the teaching research system since the founding of New China. They divide the modern development of the teaching research system into six periods: initial creation period (1949–1956); development period (1957–1965); setback period (1966–1976); restoration period (1977–1984); standardization period (1985–1999); and, finally, improvement period (2000+). They suggest that the Chinese teaching research system was established, improved, and developed in response to the ongoing process of addressing issues and needs in primary and secondary education. In this article, the authors explore the ways in which the teaching research system has become an important and integral part of the Chinese approach to managing teaching and the core supporting mechanism for the implementation of recent educational reforms, the improvement of teaching quality, and the professionalization of teachers. The essential role of the teaching research system highly relies on the teaching researchers from the teaching research organizations at different levels as they are a group of teacher educators who possess rich teaching experiences, great leadership capacities, and sufficient understanding of educational theories and reforms. In line with the characteristics of effective professional learning communities, the teaching research work emerges out of the practical needs of teachers, rooted in teacher’s day to day problems encountered in the classroom and in the implementation of the curriculum and the challenges presented by advances in multimedia technology.

Yan Hu’s article describes in more detail the structure and actual day to day activities that make up the teaching research system. This article gives an international audience of educators a clearer picture of how the system works. She suggests that it was the shortage of qualified teachers, the challenges of curriculum reforms placed on teachers in the New China, and also the influences of the Soviet model that contributed to the establishment of the teaching research system. Hu also explains how the system develops and functions today. Furthermore, Hu outlines the unique contributions of the teaching research system to teacher learning. Firstly, the routine practice of teaching research fosters habits of learning in teachers throughout their career paths and thus promotes their professional development. Secondly, this design also causes teacher’s daily work to be rooted in research, raising the level of professionalism in teaching, and ensuring the basic quality of education. Thirdly, it has created supportive and collaborative working environments for teachers, which can be considered as "teacher professional learning communities." While recognizing the value of the Chinese teaching research system, in the face of the new era, Hu points out that there is still considerable room for the further improvement of teaching research organizations as professional learning communities.

While the previous articles were mostly conceptual, the article by Jia Zhang and Xin Zheng presents an empirical study investigating 972 teachers at 31 schools in Shanghai. Their study shows that the teachers generally exhibited relatively high levels of collaborative learning, with some variation between teachers by gender, subject, and educational attainment, as well as between schools based on their level, geographical location, size, and history. They use structural equation modeling to analyze the relationship between the environmental factors of school organizations and teacher collaborative learning, finding that supportive leadership, a collaborative atmosphere and an organizational structure that allows adequate space, and resources had a significant positive influence on teacher’s daily inquiry and collaboration, while cultural barriers, such as the degree of conservatism and deference to senior figures, had a significant negative influence on teacher’s daily inquiry and collaboration. Based on their findings, Zhang and Zheng argue that in addition to the institutional, cultural, and historical factors at the macro level, the contextual factors for schools and teachers at the micro level should also be paid attention to in order to promote teacher collaborative learning.

The articles in this volume present an “insider” perspective of the uniquely Chinese nature of the teaching research system, its cultural specificity, and key contextual features. First, the five articles point to the cultural specificity of the Chinese teaching research system and enrich our understanding of its sociocultural roots, development history, and also the essential features of its current implementation in China. Meanwhile, the role of the teaching research system in facilitating teacher professional learning is also influenced by the contextual factors at the school level.

Second, this special issue raises an important question regarding the translation of “jiaoyan”. Several different terms have been found in the literature, for instance, teaching research (Paine and Fang 2006; Fang 2017), teaching, and research (Sargent and Hannum 2009; Wang et al. 2017), and teaching study (OECD 2011). These terms are usually used without appropriate justification. The debate on the use of terms about teaching research in this special issue might help us rethink the nature of Chinese teachers' collective learning activities.

Third, it is noteworthy that scholars in China do not necessarily consider the Chinese teaching research system a perfect and ideal model of professional learning communities. In this volume, we can find the Chinese teaching research system is facing some challenges including administrative mandates over teachers, how to meet the changing demands on teacher's teaching practices, the difficulty of authentic collaboration among teachers, cultural barriers such as deference to senior figures and so on. This system of educational improvement is, thus, itself in need of ongoing development and improvement.

As such, this collection has implications both in terms of offering a model of networked teacher collaboration for countries around the world to learn from, and as a guide for an increasing number of international educators who are invited to provide feedback and support on educational endeavors in China. Thus, by providing this window into scholarship on the Chinese teaching and research system, we hope to provide channels of communication and understanding that can facilitate teacher and educator collaboration and networking on a global level.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Licui Chen

Licui Chen is affiliated with East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.

Tanja Sargent

Tanja Sargent is affiliated with Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.