With our research activities, we strive to understand the characteristics of effective practices in both the United States and China. Through both empirical and theoretical investigations, we explore effective schools from teaching, learning, leadership, curriculum, and community perspectives.
Educational Research Paradigms in the US and China
The Center is beginning a comparative study of the professional research in top educational research journals in both the US and China. This research will examine the articles in one major research journal from each country to compare the educational research in China and the United States. We will look specifically at the following three questions:
- Who is doing research?
- What are the major issues and concerns as represented in the research?
- What methodology is employed?
This comparative research will enable researchers, educators, and policy makers to acknowledge the major concerns and issues occurring in other countries and to better interpret the findings presented in other people’s research.
Studying China’s Key Schools and Regular Schools: Are Differing Educational Outcomes the Result of Differences in the Quality in Teaching and Learning?
The Center has initiated a research project, with collaboration of its sister center at Beijing Normal University, to study China’s elite Key Schools and compare them with the rest of China’s regular compulsory educational schools. The research will focus on the interplay of factors such as teaching staff, student characteristics, and entrance requirements with educational outcomes such as test scores and university admissions. Understanding the unique characteristics of China’s elite Key Schools will have implications for educational policy and practices.
Research Briefs on Effective Whole School Reform
The Center has produced a series of research briefs that provide an overview of each of the five dimensions in which effective schools excel. These five dimensions are: Teachers and Teaching, Learners and Learning, Leaders and Leading, Curriculum, and Family and Community. Each one page brief is designed to provide a quick overview of current findings in the area for policy makers and parishioners in both countries. As new research on these issues becomes available, the briefs will be updated to reflect the most current ideas and research.
Teacher Induction Practices Outside the United States
The Center has examined induction practices as described by western researchers and scholars. What do these investigators see when they examine teacher induction practices in Asian countries? We’ve reviewed western education literature about eastern teacher induction to examine how western educators have made sense of the following issues:
- How Asian teachers are prepared and recruited;
- How teachers in Asian countries find their way into particular schools and school districts;
- How districts in Asian countries find teachers for their most difficult and challenging schools;
By focusing on induction, we can examine various processes by which new teachers in Asian countries, often straight from university training programs, are brought into the fold of public education. This review and analysis focuses on the practices of China , Japan , and New Zealand , with a special emphasis on the latter two countries as model induction programs. For an alternative point of view, France is also included because of its unique induction system.
Leadership in Effective Schools Outside the United States
This review examines how American educational researchers investigate and understand issues associated with school leadership in other countries. Specifically, the research and literature review seeks to address three related questions: 1) What does the research literature tell us about how the US perceives educational leadership in other countries? 2) How are leaders (principals, school superintendents, etc.) inducted into their roles? 3) How do leaders use their social capital for professional improvement? By surveying a broad range of recent western literature on educational leadership, this review explores what US researchers think about educational leaders outside the US and how this perspective could inform our understanding of effective leadership. The goal of this review is to provide a set of background knowledge to address the issue of how American educational leaders might learn from the leadership of other countries.
Approaches to Student Assessment Practices Outside the United States
In the US , student assessment has become the engine driving education, from classroom reform to classroom practice, from education research to federal policy. Given America ’s increased reliance on assessment in the wake of No Child Left Behind, there is growing interest in emulating foreign assessment-based models of education in the United States . In this report, a review of significant literature that documents how US researchers perceive student assessment beyond US borders is presented.
Research on Teacher Professional Development in China
The Center draft with a working title of “ What Chinese Teacher Professional Development Can Tell the US . ” This draft describes the Chinese teacher professional development system and tries to identify features that are relevant to American teacher professional development efforts. The paper suggests that a sustainable and coherent professional development system should be established by shifting the focus of the current teacher professional development from individual teacher's improvement to building teacher learning communities.
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