What are the ITDEQC and IEEQC projects?

Improving Teacher Development and Educational Quality in China (ITDEQC) and Improving Educational Evaluation and Quality in China (IEEQC) are two linked projects funded by UK Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC) and Department for International Development (DfID). Both projects are led by the Graduate School of Education (GSOE) University of Bristol (UOB), in collaboration with China National Institute for Educational Research (CNIER) in Beijing. The ITDEQC project is taking place from May 2010 to April 2013, and extends the IEEQC project launched in May 2008. The research seeks to promote the development of teacher and school quality as well as innovation in school evaluation and guidelines for implementation via bottom-up and top-down dialogues involving key stakeholders such as policy makers, LEA officers, teachers and students. Understanding educational and teacher quality and evaluation processes will also assist in achieving wider goals including social justice and cohesion and equal opportunities.

The aims of the IEEQC project

To enhance understanding of the complex nature of school effectiveness in China and examine how local context may play a key role in determining definitions of educational effectiveness & quality. We aim to provide new insights about the impact of student characteristics, and school context, and process factors on student attainment and progress at school using innovative quantitative methodology (multilevel modeling) and the relevance of these factors in the

The aims of the ITDEQC project

To extend the school effectiveness findings of IEEQC project by examining the trends over four years using comparable data. The project also aims to investigate the nature and extent of teachers’ professional development and learning in China as well as the relevance of professional learning communities in Chinese schools. The project seeks to provide quality data to enhance understanding of teacher development and learning and how these aspects relate to school effectiveness and improvement in China.

Improving Educational Quality

Improving education quality is a major goal of countries worldwide given the clear links drawn between better student access and outcomes, poverty reduction and stronger economic growth. In this context, school effectiveness research has stimulated and focused educational policy makers’ attention on the potential to raise overall levels of educational standards and student achievement. However, in China, raw measures of pupils’ academic outcomes and entrance levels to higher education are frequently viewed as the key indicators of school quality. As a result schools with disadvantaged intakes tend to be judged unfairly, while complacency is possible amongst schools with more able pupils and it is difficult to identify best practice. An alternative approach examines the relative progress of pupils during their time at school and this methodology - often referred to as value added - is widely regarded as providing more accurate measures of school effectiveness than the raw results. Currently, there is very little empirical research evidence on value added measures of school effectiveness in China and our research aims to fill this crucial gap. It is both essential and timely to examine the opportunities and potential for enhancing educational quality in China via innovative school evaluation methods and school effectiveness research, as well as via teacher development.

What Is Meant by Value Added?

The value added concept rests on the assumption that schools add ‘value’ to the achievement of their students. Value added approaches produce an estimate of the extra value that is added by schools to student attainment (or attitudes) over and above the progress or improvement that might be expected in a normative sense. Value added measures thus seek to establish whether students in some schools make relatively greater or less progress than those in other schools over a specific period of time. The most effective schools would be those where student progress exceeds expectation. However there are some limitations to value added methodology and approaches to school evaluation which need to be well understood.

What Is Meant by Professional Learning Community?

A professional learning community is an inclusive group of people, motivated by a shared learning vision, who support and work with each other, finding ways, inside and outside their immediate community, to enquire on their practice and together learn new and better approaches that will enhance all students’ learning.

Project Activities

·    Carrying out extensive surveys of the literature;

·    Collecting and analysing examination, prior attainment and other student, class and school background and context data senior secondary schools in 3 LEAs to explore school effects over 4 years;

w Collecting and analysing new qualitative case study data (interviews with key stakeholders) to explore (i) the way school effectiveness and  evaluation policy and practice has been applied and adapted in the Chinese context (IEEQC study) and (ii), teachers professional development and the  relevance of professional learning communities in Chinese schools to enhance student outcomes (ITDEQC study).

The project team

The Principal Investigator Prof. Sally Thomas and co-investigator Dr. Wen-Jung Peng are from the University of Bristol. Our Chinese collaborators Professor Huisheng Tian, Jianzhong Li, and other team members are from China National Institute for Education Research.

Collaboration and Dissemination

Throughout the projects, feedback and discussion will take place with project collaborators, LEA/school partners and expert advisors. UOB ethical guidelines and requirements will be followed in relation to all aspects of the research and dissemination including ensuring the confidentiality and anonymity of all individuals and schools participating in the research. We will be producing papers, and organising seminars . see website http://ieeqc.bristol.ac.uk/ for further details. Comments and requests for further information are always welcome.

For further information, please contact:

Prof Sally Thomas, IEEQC project

Tel:  (+44 0) 117 3314382

Email:  s.thomas@bristol.ac.uk

Website: http://ieeqc.bristol.ac.uk/

Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, 0 Berkeley Square

Bristol, BS8 1HH, UK