1. Introduction. 1.1 Background and Motivation Academic motivations. A global topic in the context of Chinese education

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2 1. Introduction A global topic in the context of Chinese education 1.1 Background and Motivation In this section, some reasons will be presented concerning why the topic School Effectiveness in China was chosen as the major research focus in my doctoral study. I will firstly introduce the academic importance of school effectiveness research, particularly in the Chinese context of education. The policy implications of school effectiveness research in China are also presented combined with the introduction of some recent education reforms in China Academic motivations School effectiveness research (SER) has a history of nearly half a century if the Coleman Report is seen as the starting point of this field of study. The core question that school effectiveness research tries to answer can be simply summarized as: What makes a good school? It focuses on the factors at school and class levels which can promote desired student outcomes, such as cognitive achievement. In addition, scientific properties of school effects, such as consistency, stability and differential school effects have also been intensively investigated in school effectiveness research. In the past five decades, numerous studies on school effectiveness research have been undertaken in economically advanced countries, particularly in the U.S., the U.K., the Netherlands, and Australia. Both theoretical modelling of school effectiveness and empirical investigations of effective factors have been booming in educational research. Evidence provided by these studies, whether they were labelled school effectiveness or not, has a far-reaching impact on changes of educational policies at school, regional and even national levels. In comparison with the extensive attention that has been given to school effectiveness in industrialized countries, school effectiveness research is still in its infant stage in China. As Sun (2007, P.3) argued, Educational effectiveness research in China is 30 years behind the western countries. This situation is particularly apparent in the area of quantitative empirical research. Wang & Chen (2010) reviewed 82 articles with the topic school effectiveness which were 1

3 published in mainland China between 1994 and They found that only 12 of them are empirical studies. The majority of these publications are theoryoriented or just introductions of school effectiveness research in western countries. In addition, in the writing process of this dissertation, one of the major problems the author met is the lack of empirical literature in China. Given the fact that quantitative approach is one of the key features of school effectiveness research methodology (Sammons, 2007), it is a pity that we do not have enough reliable empirical evidence on school effectiveness in China, a country which has the largest number of pupils in the world and the best performance in international student assessment (e.g. PISA). Thus, empirical studies on school effectiveness in China are urgently needed. As a literature review in the 2011 meeting of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (Reynolds, Sammons, De Fraine, Townsend & Van Damme, 2011) pointed out, The arrival of societies such as China, India, Brazil and Russia at precisely the time to embrace education effectiveness research, since there is much dissatisfaction within these societies with the results of their educational systems, and the clear recognition that their industrialization generated by rapid urbanization and the application of limited capital needs to be replaced by more technologically advanced, educationally more intensive production, necessitating improved outcomes from their school systems. School effectiveness research, like many other areas of educational research in China, is currently undergoing a paradigm shift : from systematic logic thoughts or ideas to observable empirical evidence. However, this shift cannot be realized in a short time. There still exists the predominance of personal reflections in Chinese educational research. A comparative study of educational research shows that 89 percent of studies in one of the most prestigious journals2 in China are just personal intuitions/reflections, while this percentage is 3.4 in the United States (Zhao, Zhang, Yang, Kirkland, Han & Zhang, 2008). The large difference in paradigm and methodology of educational research between Chinese scholars and those from the advanced countries makes it difficult for the former to participate in the international debate on school effectiveness. Personal reflections can neither help build solid theory on school effectiveness nor support evidence-based educational policy in China. In addition, the knowledge base of school effectiveness is mainly based on research evidence in western industrialized countries. It is not clear whether it can be generalized in the Chinese context. The education system in China has been influenced by the long 1 The first article introducing the concept of school effectiveness in mainland China was published in 1994 by Sun & Hong. 2 The Chinese journal is Jiao Yu Yan Jiu (Educational Research). The American one is the American Education Research Journal. 2

4 tradition of Confucian philosophy, as well as the Soviet-style centralization at different levels of governance. It is believed that some features of Chinese education are not shared by western countries. Pan (2007) argued that some effective processes do not work well in China and they are harder to be implemented because of the indigenous culture. As Scheerens (2001) noted, school effectiveness studies in developing countries can make a specific contribution to the international debate. From the perspective of an educational researcher, empirical studies on school effectiveness in China are urgently needed. Therefore, this doctoral study aims to provide empirical evidence on school effectiveness in the context of Chinese education Practical considerations Apart from the need for empirical studies in terms of academic importance, recent changes in educational policies in China call for more reliable empirical evidence from school effectiveness research. Although some researchers argue that educational effectiveness research is lost in translation into practice to some degree (Harris, Chapman, Muijs & Reynolds, 2011), I believe that the prospect will be good in China because the practitioners and policy makers in this country rely more on research evidence now than ever before. Firstly, quality has become the key word of recent educational reforms in China. As a developing country confronted with a large number of illiterate and semi-illiterate population, priority in education policies of China has been to universalize 9-year compulsory education since So the main policy instruments are, among others, building more schools and training more teachers to increase provision, as well as supplying free compulsory education for all pupils to improve the accessibility to schooling. Quantity (enrolment rate) was the central theme in educational development in China. It is only recently that the core task of educational reform in China shifted from ensuring quantity to improving quality4. Providing high-quality education was listed as one of the strategic medium- and long-term goals of educational reform and development until A consensus has been reached now among different stakeholders to im- 3 The Resolution of Central Committee of Chinese Communist Party on the Reform of Educational System, This trend can also be found internationally due to the recent problematic economic situation: an increasing emphasis on educational quality rather than the quantity of resources. 5 National Guidelines for Medium- and Long-Term Educational Reform and Development ( ),

5 prove the quality of schooling. From the very beginning, school effectiveness research was closely related to quality of schooling. For instance, academic achievement, well being, achievement motivation and societal development of students are the main school outcomes which have been studied. Resource input and educational process variables are at the center of interest. Also, how to assess and evaluate the quality of schools in an accurate and fair way is one of the main areas of school effectiveness research. It is believed that the study of school effectiveness can provide more evidence for improving educational quality. Secondly, equity is becoming a policy priority of reform of compulsory education in China. One aim of recent educational reform is to achieve equity in education and to ensure every child and teenager has the opportunity to receive good schooling. Like in many social contexts, Chinese pupils from disadvantaged family backgrounds are at higher risk to experience underachievement, such as children of migrant workers. Interestingly, in the history of school effectiveness research, special attention was paid to those factors at class and school levels that promote the progress of students with low socio-economic status. For example, in Effective Schools for the Urban Poor, a milestone of school effectiveness research, Edmonds (1979) pointed out that strong leadership and a climate of expectation that students will learn are the key effective factors for schools with low-achieving intakes. Since the early 1990s, differential school effects for students with different baseline attainment, gender or ethnic groups have been extensively discussed (e.g. Sammons, Nuttal & Cuttance, 1993; Strand, 2010). Unlike macro sociological studies in education, school effectiveness research can focus on equity issues within schools or even classrooms. The equity issue at school or class levels has rarely been addressed in China. School effectiveness research can presumably make a contribution to the national debate on equity in education. Apart from the emphasis on quality and equity, many other policy changes call for empirical evidence from school effectiveness research. One example is the curriculum reform. China has implemented a systemic national curriculum reform since The reform aims to change the overemphasis on knowledge dissemination of teachers in classrooms and the so-called examination-oriented education. The outcome of this reform needs to be evaluated, no matter at the national or local level. School effectiveness research can make a contribution due to its outcome-oriented perspective. Another example is the reform of balanced development of compulsory education. The newly issued Compulsory Education Law in 2006 stipulated that governments should promote balanced development of compulsory education. The large gap between schools makes parental school choice behaviours widespread and this has led to the Matthew 4

6 Effect in school development: the gap between schools becomes larger than before. The implementation of value-added school effectiveness evaluation may help invert the ongoing deteriorating situation. 1.2 Research Questions The major purpose of this thesis is to provide empirical evidence of School effectiveness research based on data from China. The empirical analysis in this study is based on the theoretical foundations of school effectiveness introduced in Chapter 2 and the past empirical studies reviewed in Chapter 4. School effectiveness is a multi-disciplinary research field, where economists, educational psychologists, sociologists, psychometricians, and researchers on organizational behaviours have participated. They focus on the effectiveness factors at the different levels of a school system from different perspectives. For instance, economists pay special attention to the school-level resource input and its relationship with educational outcomes. They also show great interest in applying the findings of school effects research in school/teacher evaluation and educational accountability. School leadership is the central theme of organization researchers. Educational psychologists emphasize the importance of teaching method, class climate and other education processes. Their expertise is mainly at the classroom level. As an educational economist, I try to explore the educational effectiveness in China at both levels in this thesis: school level and classroom level6. At the school level, I focus on the effect of school material and human resources. At the class level, my attention is focused on some important education processes. Furthermore, scientific properties of school effects (size, consistency, stability and differentialness) will be investigated in depth. It should be mentioned here that the following questions are not restricted to a specific discipline. I only give a short description of research questions in this section. The details of research questions are presented in Chapter 6 to 8. Question 1: To what extent does the student achievement in the HSEE (High School Entrance Examination) vary at school, class and student level? How much of the variation in HSEE achievement is attributable to the student intake characteristics? Which school-level input and classroom process variables can well predict the student HSEE achievement? Is there any evidence that some schools are differentially effective in promoting the HSEE achievement for different groups of students? 6 It does not mean that the factors above the school level are not important. In fact, the organization of education is intensively guided by the national level (see Sun, 2003 p.6). 5

7 Question 2: How large is the between school difference in school effectiveness based on test score and value added (covariate-adjusted test score)? To what extent are test score and value added measures of school effectiveness different? Are test score and value added measures of school effectiveness consistent across different subjects? Which measure of effectiveness is more sensible from the perspective of teachers? Question 3: What are the conceptual differences of some commonly used value-added models and their specifications? Are estimated yearly value-added school effects consistent across models? Are estimated annual value-added school effects stable from grade to grade? 1.3 Structure of Dissertation This dissertation comprises nine chapters, which are organized as follows: Chapter 1 introduces the research background, explaining the academic and practical reasons why I choose school effectiveness as the topic of doctoral study. Research questions are also briefly presented. Chapter 2 is the theoretical part, introducing the knowledge base for School effectiveness research. This chapter also gives the definitions of key terms used in the study. Chapter 3 presents a short description of Chinese educational contexts, particularly the structure of basic education system and lower secondary schools. The focus is on some unique features in Chinese schools that are different from the western ones. Chapter 4 is the literature review. In this chapter I focus on the literature on empirical school effectiveness research conducted in China. The specific literature review on each research question will be presented in Chapter 6 to 8. Chapter 5 presents the research design and methodology. I present the single-cohort longitudinal design which is applied in this study. I also introduce multi-level modelling. Data collection process is presented in detail. Chapters 6 to 8 is the main part of this dissertation. They relate to research question 1 to 3. Each chapter can be viewed as an independent article. In each chapter, there might be some overlapping content with chapter 5, the methodological parts. Chapter 9 summarizes the major findings in the empirical analysis. The author also presents some practical implications of these findings. In addition, limitations of the study and future research agenda are discussed. 6