Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International
Education
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Developing a model of instructional leadership in
China
Allan Walker & Haiyan Qian
To cite this article: Allan Walker & Haiyan Qian (2020): Developing a model of instructional
leadership in China, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, DOI:
10.1080/03057925.2020.1747396
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2020.1747396
Published online: 19 May 2020.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2020.1747396
Developing a model of instructional leadership in China
Allan Walker
a
and Haiyan Qian
b
a
Faculty of Education and Human Development, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong;
Department of Education Policy and Leadership, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po,
Hong Kong
b
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS
This paper explores instructional leadership practices in China. It
has three interrelated purposes. The first purpose is to report data
which contributes insights into how Chinese principals understand
and enact instructional leadership. The second purpose is to examine how the societal context impacts the enactment of leadership
and the third is to suggest implications for international understandings of successful school principalship. The study adopted
a qualitative approach and interviewed 101 primary school principals across six regions in China. A model of instructional leadership
comprising six dimensions and a set of sub-dimensions emerged
from the data. The study also provides insights into how societal
context shapes how Chinese principals enact leadership. The paper
concludes with six propositions that attempt to capture the fluidity
and complexity of the working lives of school principals in China.
Instructional leadership;
China; societal context
Introduction
Demands confronting school leaders in many countries have shifted in line with changing societal and educational policy landscapes (OECD 2010, 2012). School leaders are
increasingly expected to support student and teacher learning, manage teaching and
curriculum, and facilitate educational change in their schools (Robinson, Lloyd, and
Rowe 2008). At the same time, there remains a clear consensus that school success
depends on effective leadership (OECD 2012). Research into the impact of leadership
on school effectiveness and improvement shows that successful principals make
a significant difference to student achievement, the quality of teaching and learning
and the shape of school cultures (Qian, Walker, and Li 2017). A number of scholars
argue that successful leaders use an ‘integrated’ leadership style, of which instructional
leadership forms an important component (e.g. Robinson, Lloyd, and Rowe 2008). The
literature also offers empirical evidence of the indirect effects of instructional leadership
on student outcomes, mostly through the culture principals set and the support they
provide teachers (Hallinger and Heck 1996; Qian, Walker, and Li 2017).
Since the mid-1990s, scholars have called for diversification of the educational leadership knowledge base (Walker, Hu, and Qian 2012; Hallinger and Chen 2015). The
CONTACT Haiyan Qian
hqian@eduhk.hk
Department of Education Policy and Leadership, The Education
University of Hong Kong, 10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, Hong Kong
© 2020 British Association for International and Comparative Education
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A. WALKER AND H. QIAN
bottom line of this work is that the context in which leaders work is important in
determining how they enact their leadership practices (e.g. Gurr 2015; Walker and
Qian 2018). This paper explores instructional leadership (IL) practices in China. It builds
on an initial model of IL developed in one province in China (see Qian, Walker, and Li
2017). In this article we attempt to substantiate and elaborate the model using qualitative
data from over 100 primary school principals in six Chinese provinces and to further
locate their leadership enactment within the Chinese societal context.
The paper therefore has three major, interrelated purposes. The first is to report data
which contributes insights into how Chinese principals understand and enact IL. Given
that participants were drawn intentionally from different Chinese provinces, findings
offer a reasonably holistic picture of what the principals do to shape teaching and
learning. The second purpose is to examine how the societal context impacts the
enactment of leadership. Research has shown that principals across different nations
use similar leadership practices, but the way they enact these varies from one context to
another (e.g. Leithwood et al. 2006; Day et al. 2010). The third purpose is to suggest some
implications for international understandings of successful school principalship. Given
China’s performance in international comparative exams such as the Programme for
International Student Assessment (PISA) (e.g. OECD 2010), insights drawn from
Chinese leadership practices may be informative to principals in other settings.
Specifically, the paper attempts to answer two questions: What constitutes the core
practices of instructional leadership in China? How do Chinese principals enact their
instructional leadership and in what ways is this enactment shaped by the societal context?
The next section outlines the theoretical development of IL and the relationship
between various contexts and leadership practices. The third section outlines the methodology, and the fourth section reports the research findings. The final section discusses
context-specific leadership practices and suggests some implications for international
understanding of successful school leadership.
Instructional leadership: international understanding and Chinese context
The term instructional leadership originated in the US in the 1980s (Hallinger and
Murphy 1985) and has since become firmly embedded in school leadership research,
discussion and policy.
International development of instructional leadership
Principal IL is recognised as an important factor for school development, teaching quality
and student achievement (Day et al. 2010). Despite broad agreement of the importance of
IL, there is little consensus on what it actually is (Horng and Loeb 2010). For example,
traditional IL literature emphasises successful leaders as being hands-on, engaged with
curriculum and pedagogical issues and often present in classrooms (Hallinger and Heck
1996). One of the most enduring models of traditional IL was developed by Hallinger and
Murphy (1985). On the other hand, a different view of IL emphasises organisational
management for instructional improvement rather than day-to-day teaching and learning. That is, instructional leaders prioritise selecting high-quality teachers and then
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support them with appropriate human and educative resources to nurture classroom
success (Horng and Loeb 2010).
Partly in recognition of such different views, IL has been recast in recent years in the
broadly labelled term ‘leadership for learning’ that subsumes features of instructional,
transformational and distributed leadership (Day et al. 2010). The expanded model
stresses the need for a distributed approach to leading instruction and consolidates the
links between leadership practices and student outcomes (Spillane and Diamond 2007).
Studies flowing from this broadening view suggest that principals adopt integrated
leadership approaches but that those who exhibit greater levels of instructional leadership
tend to be more effective (Day et al. 2010; Robinson, Lloyd, and Rowe 2008). In general,
principals adopt the following core leadership practices (Leithwood et al. 2006; Hopkins
et al. 2014) to improve teaching and learning:
●
Building vision and setting direction: to enable every learner to reach their potential,
and to translate vision into whole-school curriculum and high expectations
● Understanding and developing people: to create schools as professional learning
communities for teachers
● Redesigning the organisation: to involve in collaborative networks to build curriculum diversity, professional support, and extended services
● Managing the teaching and learning programme: to ensure a high degree of consistency and innovation in teaching practices to facilitate student learning
Scholars argue that while school leadership encapsulates a common set of practices, the
way leaders enact these varies across different socio-cultural and organisational contexts
(e.g. Gurr 2015). Any successful leadership practice is contextually contingent (Hallinger
2018). While we know many of the behaviours that may improve instruction, we know
much less about how leaders enact these behaviours on a daily basis (Neumerski 2012). It
is necessary therefore to not only examine what school leaders do, but also, how and why
they do it (Spillane and Diamond 2007).
Context for instructional leadership
The contexts in which leaders work shape the way they enact their leadership practices
(e.g. Hallinger and Chen 2015). In varying contexts, similar leadership concepts can be
interpreted and enacted differently (Qian, Walker, and Li 2017). Hallinger (2018)
describes six contextual features that may shape school instructional leadership.
Among them, the following contexts may underpin societal-level enactment of instructional leadership.
●
Institutional Context refers to both the education system and the state, regional and
district units
● National Cultural Context recognises the impact of national culture on educational
leadership
● Political Context refers to the political structures that shape the beliefs, attitudes and
normative practices of school leaders
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A. WALKER AND H. QIAN
Principals need to respond flexibly to the needs, opportunities and resources in their
social environment. Indigenous research in non-Western cultures therefore has
immense potential to contribute to universal theories by modifying, enriching or
supplementing Western theoretical concepts of leadership (Leung 2012). The next
section reviews the Chinese context and associated understanding of instructional
leadership.
Instructional leadership in China
In formal policy documents, it was not until the issue of Professional Standards for
Compulsory Education School Principals in 2013 (Ministry of Education 2013) that
instructional leadership was listed as one of a principals’ core professional responsibilities
in China (Liu et al. 2017). A number of recent empirical studies (e.g. Qian and Walker
2011, 2013; Zheng, Yin, and Li 2018) have unravelled some distinctive contexts within
which principals enact their jobs.
First, in contrast to western societies (e.g. the UK and US), the national government
has tight control over the context within which principals and teachers operate in
China. This presents a marked influence on how principals lead (Cravens, Liu, and
Grogan 2012). With the presence of the strong state, principals’ autonomy is circumscribed, and they are held accountable across a broad range of areas (Walker and Qian
2018).
Second, the structural settings in Chinese schools provide favourable preconditions
for principals to prioritise classroom teaching and learning (Zheng, Yin, and Li 2018).
Chinese schools are home to institutionalised ‘contrived curriculum and teaching
organisation(s)’ (Wang and Paine 2003, 75), namely, Teaching Research Groups
(TRGs, jiaoyanzu). Collaborative teacher learning activities, such as collective lesson
preparation (jiti beike), public lessons (gongkaike), peer observation and evaluation
(tingpingke) are embedded in teachers’ daily work (Zheng, Yin, and Li 2018). These
activities can also be seen as congruent with societal values of collectivism, where people
tend to place group above personal goals (Child 1994).
Third, ongoing curriculum reform poses new challenges for schools, principals and
teachers. The national curriculum reform launched in 2001 entailed a shift from
teacher- and text-centred to a more student-centred approach to learning and teaching
(Qian and Walker 2013). Whereas before the 1990s, schools in China focused mainly
on high student exam achievement, schools today are expected to promote studentcentred learning. Principals are pressured to move beyond monitoring academic
success to facilitating deeper learning through curriculum design (Walker and Qian
2018).
Chinese principals therefore face both new opportunities and challenges as they
navigate the hazy areas between traditional values and new educational demands.
These include tensions between the traditional exam-oriented culture and new
educational philosophies promoting holistic and individual development, and those
accompanying attempts to distribute leadership within a strong hierarchical educational system (Cravens, Liu, and Grogan 2012). This study seeks to explore how
Chinese principals enact their IL in a context fraught with such multiple
expectations.
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The study
The study adopted a qualitative approach with interviews as the major data collection
method. The study involved interviews with 101 primary school principals in selected
regions in China, including Shanghai (SH), Beijing (BJ), Guangdong (GD, South China),
Hubei (HB, central China), Liaoning (SY, Northeast China) and Guizhou (GZ, Southwest
China). We selected these sites because they represent different stages of economic and
educational development. We focused on primary school principals because they tend to
be more hands-on in instructional matters and face less pressure from high-stake college
entrance exams (Qian, Walker, and Li 2017).
Interviews were conducted by local scholars familiar with the purpose and mechanisms of the study, and with experience in research and particularly in-depth interviewing.
All teams used purposive and snowball sampling strategies. Participant selection intentionally maximised variation in school type, gender, education, work experience and
other attributes in the sample. We aimed to interview at least 10 principals in each site,
and set the maximum number at 25. The target was met in all provinces except Beijing
where it was only possible to interview 9 principals (the largest number of participants
interviewed was 24, in Liaoning). Given the smaller Beijing sample we considered
excluding relevant data from the study but decided against this given the rich variety
of participants it included, ranging from a ‘nationally famous’ principal from a traditional
elite school to an early-career principal leading a less established suburban school. Data
from a wide range of principals was seen to strengthen the trustworthiness of the whole
study in terms of its credibility and dependability. Although we acknowledge that overall
a more even spread across provinces may be preferable, given the methodology used and
that the purpose of the study was not to quantify the variance or otherwise of principal
leadership across different regions, we considered the uneven provincial samples
acceptable.
A common interview protocol was developed and adapted in different regions.
Interview questions focused on personal backgrounds, instructional improvement strategies and major difficulties encountered in their current schools. The interviews lasted
between one and two hours. All interviews were recorded and transcribed, initially in
Chinese.
Data analysis underwent through three stages:
Stage 1: refine the model of instructional leadership in China
The initial coding framework used key constructs of the initial model (Qian, Walker, and
Li 2017). This comprised six dimensions and 14 sub-dimensions based on interview data
from 22 principals in Guangdong. After applying this coding framework to all scripts, the
constant comparative method (Miles and Huberman 1994) was used to identify patterns
of more generic issues. At the end of the constant comparison, a refined model of IL was
generated (Figure 1). In general, the refined model expands and sharpens the original
with a larger, more diverse data package. For example, the initial model proposed
‘evaluating and monitoring instruction’ as a major dimension. However, the national
data indicated that in addition to evaluating and monitoring instruction, principals also
spent considerable time supervising teaching and optimising school conditions. We
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A. WALKER AND H. QIAN
Defining Purpose
and Direction
Managing and
Improving Teaching and
Learning
Nurturing Positive and
Collaborative Teacher
Culture
Developing and
Improving School
Curriculum
Fostering Professional
Development to
Enhance Teacher
Capacity
Promoting Connections
with External
Stakeholders
• Identify and develop school uniqueness
• Communicate and form consensus on school values
• Align school structure with the values
• Supervise and evaluate teaching
• Monitor student learning and development
• Optimize school conditions to improve teaching and learning
• Promote positive interperonsal relationship with and among teachers
• Adopt monetary and non-monetary incentives to motivate teachers
• Enrich teachers' well-being and extend care to their personal lives
• Align curriculum with instruction and assessment
• Design and develop school-based curriculum
• Support school-based teacher professional development
• Seek and utilize external resources to develop teachers
• Promote and coordinate school-based action research
• Build partnerships with peer schools
• Maintain good relationships with local governments
• Enhance parental invovlement and garner community support
Figure 1. Model of instructional leadership in China.
therefore combined these under the new dimension ‘managing and improving teaching
and learning’.
When the data from the different regions were pulled together, both convergent and
divergent patterns were identified. While recognising that divergences and convergences
cannot be exclusively separated, given that the major purpose of this paper is to develop
a Chinese IL model, we focus on the convergent patterns of leadership practice. While
doing this however we understand that principals’ leadership practice is influenced by
their work experience, the location of their schools, and the economic and educational
status of a given province. For example, we identified ‘Promote and coordinate schoolbased action research’ as an important sub-dimension of ‘Fostering Professional
Development to Enhance Teacher Capacity’. That is, almost all the participating schools
implemented and promoted some form of school-based research. However, schools in
wealthier provinces and located in larger cities tended to collaborate with local universities on joint research projects. Schools able to attract additional resources tended to be
headed by more senior principals with higher public reputations.
Given the volume and focus of this paper, the divergent leadership practices of
Chinese school principals will be reported at a later stage. This work will be built around
Table 1, which outlines the contextual factors which emerged from the data as influencing the more subtle enactment of IL.
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Table 1. Contextual factors contributing to divergences across data.
Contextual
factors
Sub-dimensions
Provincial-level Provincial-specific policies
School-level
Principal-level
Major influences
Specific curriculum, exam and evaluation policies, e.g. province-wide
introduction of new education concepts such as green classrooms.
Educational investment and Monetary investment and teacher learning opportunities available in
resources
the province, e.g. Economically better-off provinces provide more
overseas teacher learning opportunities.
Leadership approach of
The way local education bureaus approach schools and perceive the
local education bureaus
role of school principals, e.g. Economically backwards provinces
tend to adopt a more top-down approach and impose more
bureaucratic accountability.
Location (rural, urban,
This influences the major school concerns. E.g. Rural schools tend to
suburban)
worry about decreasing number of students and high teacher
turnover.
Status (elite, non-elite,
This influences the likelihood of attracting quality teachers and
struggling)
students. E.g. Elite schools tend to attract students from families of
high social-economic status.
Access to quality teaching
This includes whether the school itself has higher-status teachers and
resources
whether the school is affiliated to any cross-school network. E.g.
Schools as a member of a network can share quality teaching
resources within the network.
Work experience
The years of work experiences influence the way principals combine
and prioritise different instructional improvement strategies. E.g.
More experienced teachers seem to have intuition to differentiate
and prioritise the various government demands imposed on
schools.
Relationship with local
The degree of closeness of the relationship between principals and
education bureaus
local education bureaus influences the resources the school can
attract. E.g. Principals with better relationships with local education
bureaus can more easily win some additional investments for their
schools.
Professional authority as
To what extent the principal is perceived as a successful teacher
a teacher
influences how teachers perceive the principal. E.g. Principals with
recognised teaching expertise tend to be more highly respected and
trusted by teachers.
Stage 2: juxtapose the model with the core leadership practices
At this stage, we juxtaposed the new model with the four core leadership practices. The
performance of one core practice can be related to multiple dimensions in the model. For
example, both the dimensions of ‘nurturing positive and collaborative teacher culture’
and ‘fostering professional development to enhance teacher capacity’ involve practices of
‘understanding and developing people’. The relevant data was regrouped under the four
core practices; the Chinese ‘way’ of performing core practices emerged at the end of this
stage.
Stage 3: identify context-specific leadership enactment and relate to context
For each of the four core leadership practices, some context-specific interpretation and
enactment was identified. Principals’ narratives about why they enacted the practices in
the way they did were retrieved and related to different contextual factors. An example of
this is shown in Table 2.
To address the major research questions, the study attempts to connect leadership
practice, enactment and the context within which leadership is enacted. In other words,
the study did not just explore what leadership practices were commonly perceived to
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Table 2. Example of relating leadership enactment with context.
Practice
Enactment
Building vision and Identify and develop
setting directions
school uniqueness
(tese)
Why
Required by government edict
rather than the needs of the
school
Context
Cultural and political context –
hierarchy and strong state
Figure 2. Relationship between leadership practices, enactment and context.
contribute to instructional improvement, but also how they were enacted and why
principals enacted them in the way they did. The relationship is shown in Figure 2.
Findings
This section provides a brief overview of the model of IL in China and then extracts data
about how Chinese principals enact the core leadership practices in order to illuminate
the impact of societal context.
The model
The model that emerged from the data comprises six dimensions and a set of subdimensions (Figure 1).
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Dimension 1: defining purpose and direction
This category describes school-level planning and formulation of a shared vision.
●
Identify and develop school uniqueness. Given the needs for strategic positioning
in the community, and as required by government edict, principals actively seek
to identify and develop unique features or distinctive strengths of the school.
● Communicate and form consensus on school values. Upon defining the school
purpose and direction, principals communicate the philosophy and values to teachers, students and parents to seek consensus.
● Align school structure with the values. Principals emphasise restructuring school
administrative and accountability policies in alignment with the school values.
Within centralised guidelines, standards and policies, principals convey a clear
message of their expectations to teachers.
Dimension 2: managing and improving teaching and learning
Principals guide and supervise teachers to promote effective teaching. They monitor
learning and optimise school conditions to better facilitate teaching and learning.
●
Supervise and evaluate teaching. Principals adopt various strategies to supervise and
monitor teaching. The most common approach is through observing teaching and
providing feedbacks.
● Monitor student learning and development. Principals collect evidence to keep track
of student development. A more holistic assessment strategy is commonly adopted
to evaluate student learning.
● Optimise school conditions to improve teaching and learning. Principals make various arrangements to maximise the potential for a better teaching and learning
environment. They may attract resources to invest in school facilities, utilise and
improve technologies, and nurture good learning attitudes.
Dimension 3: nurturing positive and collaborative teacher culture
Principals seek to promote positive work dynamics, collaborative relationships, and
enjoyable and harmonious working environment in the school.
●
Promote positive interpersonal relationships with and among teachers. Principals
believe it is important to understand, value and develop each of the teachers.
Principals also promote a collaborative culture among teachers and facilitate mentoring and role modelling.
● Adopt monetary and non-monetary incentives to motivate teachers. Incentives come
in different forms including bonus, recognition, support, professional development
opportunity, honorary titles, etc.
● Enrich teachers’ well-being and extend care to their personal lives. Principals organise
various activities for teachers to promote their emotional and physical wellbeing and
work-life balance.
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Dimension 4: developing and improving school curriculum
Instead of replicating the full national curriculum, principals today need to design parts
of the school-based curriculum. They also need to ensure effective policy implementation, with proper assessment and monitoring strategies.
●
Align curriculum with instruction and assessment. Principals align curriculum with
the central government’s guidelines. They need to develop school curriculum
structure within the frameworks endorsed by the government.
● Design and develop school-based curriculum. Principals design school-based curriculum on the basis of the school’s distinctive features and specific student needs.
Various student activities are organised.
Dimension 5: fostering professional development to enhance teacher capacity
Principals provide a wide range of development opportunities to continuously develop
teachers. They seek to nurture a learning community and publicly recognise the importance of teachers’ professional growth.
●
Support school-based teacher professional development. Schools organise various
types of school-based teacher development programmes, which are classroombased and peer-supported. These usually involve lesson observation, providing
feedbacks and refining teaching materials.
● Seek and utilise external resources to develop teachers. Principals tend to maximise
external resources to facilitate teachers’ growth, including inviting educational
experts and master teachers to provide hands-on support for teachers and sending
teachers to attend workshops.
● Promote and coordinate school-based action research. It is a national policy directive
that each school conduct school-based research to improve teaching and learning.
Consequently, school principals provide support for teachers to lead or participate
in school research projects.
Dimension 6: promoting connections with external stakeholders
Principals are fully aware that external support from the local government and other
stakeholders such as peer schools, parents and community is important for the school to
win wider recognition.
●
Build partnerships with peer schools. Principals build partnerships with other
schools to broaden exchange opportunities for teachers and optimise resources
for students’ diversified learning. It is a policy directive to deliberately bring
together strong/weak and urban/rural schools to close the gaps between
schools.
● Maintain good relationships with local governments. Principals prioritise maintaining positive relationships with their supervisors. They tend to be highly responsive
to new government initiatives and guidelines. In return, they also expect extra
financial and policy support from their supervisors.
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Enhance parental involvement and garner community support. Principals stress that
it is important to enhance parents’ understanding of school development. Schools
focus on building the school’s reputation through word of mouth, quality teaching
and learning, and impressive student outcomes.
This model constitutes the core instructional leadership practices of Chinese school
principals as they play out within the dual contexts of new reform initiatives and
traditional expectations. The next section will juxtapose this model with the four core
leadership practices (Leithwood et al. 2006) to consider how societal context shapes the
way principals enact their leadership.
Enactment of leadership practices in China
The broadly similar core leadership practices are uniquely defined by the actions that
leaders perceive as necessary to ‘respond to specific student, teacher and community
needs’ (Urick and Bowers 2014, 99). This section teases out some examples of leadership
practices that appear to have specific contextual meanings.
Building vision and setting direction
The first dimension reports how principals build vision and set direction. In China, this
involves designing future plans and formulating a shared vision across the school. These
are similar to practices described in Western contexts, but two features seem particular to
the Chinese context. The first was that central policy mandates the identification and
development of school uniqueness (tese), and the second the intentional role-modelling
principals used to communicate and embed values and vision.
Principals in China are officially required to identify their school’s unique features or
distinctive strengths and design school development plans to capitalise on these.
However, at the same time, they are still required to follow central curriculum guidelines.
This served to restrict their autonomy to differentiate much beyond extracurricular
activities. As a result, uniqueness features commonly included areas such as art, sports,
reading or STEM. Once uniqueness was identified, principals worked towards embodying this in different facets of school life, including curriculum, school image and campus
design. For example, one Beijing principal talked about how her school embedded and
magnified its ‘museum’ feature.
We aim to make our school a museum. We have developed four school-based textbooks
around the theme of the museum. We have redesigned our building. The first floor displays
the lives on earth, the second floor about Chinese civilisation . . . We will further redecorate
our school hallway around this theme. (BJ_07)
Principals believed such unique features enriched school culture, so intentionally promoted broad stakeholder participation to identify and then develop school uniqueness.
When formulating consensus on school values and winning teachers’ support for an
expanded learning culture, many principals mentioned the importance of role modelling.
For example, almost all the principals reported that they regularly observed teaching and
inspected classrooms. They believed this practice demonstrated the value of classroom
teaching and student growth. One Shanghai principal explained that she observed the
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teaching of each of her teachers and followed up with the lower-performing teachers after
a two-week interval (SH_09). A Guangdong principal set a minimum number of 30
lesson observations for himself per semester (GZ_10).
Principals’ role modelling was also manifested in their belief that principals need to be
professional authorities. For example, a Beijing principal lacked subject teaching experience before she was promoted to the post, but was ‘determined to make up for it’:
In the first year after I became the principal, I read through all the Chinese and Mathematics
textbooks used from Year 1 to Year 6. I took detailed notes. I developed a holistic and indepth understanding of these subjects . . . Classroom teaching should be the major field
where a principal exerts his/her influence. If you do not have professional authority in
teaching, teachers will question your legitimacy (BJ_03).
Building vision and setting direction meant detecting, developing and magnifying the
school’s uniqueness. Although this flowed from a top-down policy requirement, principals strategically knitted it into different aspects of school life. Principals also strongly
emphasised their role as a learning and teaching expert so they could also raise expectations for teachers.
Understanding and developing people
One of the strongest patterns of Chinese IL practices was the robust focus on understanding and developing teachers. Some features seem particular to the Chinese context.
First, almost all schools developed routinised teacher development activities. These
included, for example, a dual-mentor system for new teachers where one mentor
supervised subject teaching and the other classroom management; a weekly subject
panel-wide or school-wide teacher development activity; regular peer-observation and
intensive feedback; public lessons and teaching contests. Most teacher development
strategies were deeply embedded in classroom teaching. A generally held belief was
that teachers could enhance their capacity by observing expert teachers’ teaching and
by getting feedback from peers. As one Guangdong principal explained, ‘If a teacher
needs to give a public lesson or attend a high-level teaching contest, the teacher may
repeat the teaching-feedback-revision cycle six or eight times. Teachers grow in this
process’ (GD_17).
Second, principals emphasised collegial relationships with teachers and worked to
build personal bonds with them and care for their wellbeing. In one Guangdong
principal’s words, a Chinese principal must play the role of a ‘parent’ in front of
teachers, but they also need to be ‘a parent who trusts teachers’ (GZ_02). Principals
attached importance to nurturing a secure and caring working environment for
teachers as they believed this would contribute to harmonious relationships within
schools. For example, noting that teachers had to arrive at school in the early morning,
a Hubei school provided free breakfast for teachers to ‘make them feel the warmth in
this big family’ (HB_07). In a Shanghai school, teachers received a personalised appreciative letter from the principal on Teacher’s Day. The principal said that ‘in some
letters I tell teachers that they can choose any one day off. In some letters I offer to be
their personal driver for a day . . . This is quite fun’ (SH_16). Principals believed
individualised care and interpersonal attachment helped build more collaborative and
trusting relationships.
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Third, Chinese principals relied heavily on teacher leaders to professionally influence
their peers. This strategy was built on the teacher expertise differentiation system in place
in China. The formal system differentiates and acknowledges different levels of teacher
expertise through channels such as teaching contests and public lessons. Teachers with
better teaching performance are granted a range of honorary titles such as ‘backbone
(gugan) teachers’ and ‘famous teachers’ (mingshi). These are not hollow titles, along with
recognition comes additional responsibility for them to support and mentor their peers.
For example, a Shanghai school had an annual ‘Backbone teacher teaching week’ and she
believed that backbone teachers need to ‘act as role models and extend their expertise to
other teachers’ (SH_13).
It seemed that principals had a broad repertoire of strategies to develop teachers. They
relied heavily on traditional routinised practices such as peer observation and mentoring,
and also extended their personal care to teachers to cultivate a positive culture.
Redesigning the organisation
Redesigning organisation in China often involved distributing leadership with team
members, forming school networks and actively seeking external support.
One feature apparent across the principal accounts was that principals expected
leadership team members to prioritise improving teaching and student learning.
Responsibility to improve teaching was distributed across the leadership team. For
example, in a Shanghai school, each leadership team member was responsible for one
grade level and one subject area. The principal herself was responsible for the Chinese
subject and also Grade 3 student development (SH_10). For schools in less developed
areas, the principals were also aware of the need to distribute responsibilities. As one
Guizhou principal reflected:
I think we need to have a more specific distribution. For example, under teaching we need to
further categorise it into everyday classroom management, school-based research, teacher
development, etc. I need to set some criteria and accountability policies for my leadership
team (GZ_04).
Another feature was the widely-adopted policy of forming school networks or consortiums which allowed principals to share or seek resources from partner schools.
Most networks are initiated or coordinated by local governments – the major purpose
is to group strong and weak schools to narrow achievement gaps between schools. For
example, most of the Beijing schools in our sample were in some form of school
consortium. One school was located in Pinggu, a rural district, and was paired with
a famous urban school. The principal herself was appointed as vice principal of the
famous school in the hope that she could learn leadership first-hand and take this back
to her school (BJ_01). In the Shanghai sample, we had four formerly privately-owned
migrant schools which enrolled exclusively migrant students. These schools generally
had poorer quality teaching, so were placed in a partnership with a better-quality public
school, usually in the same neighbourhood. The practice of forming networks has also
spread to less developed regions. A Guizhou principal said his school was a member of
a large consortium of 13 partner schools. The schools provide each other mutual
support as well as co-organising events such as Arts Festivals and sports meetings
(GZ_10).
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A. WALKER AND H. QIAN
Thus, within schools, principals actively redefined the roles and responsibilities of the
leadership team to direct focus to improving teaching and student learning. It is now
common practice to share resources across schools.
Managing the teaching and learning programme
The principals faced multiple tensions related by curriculum reform. They adopted
standardised quality assurance policies and promoted school-based research to enhance
teaching and learning.
The principals enacted their IL in a context colloquially described as ‘the west wind
meets the east wind’, that is, they were required to accommodate both imported reform
initiatives and traditional expectations (Qian, Walker, and Li 2017). A major challenge
for the principals was to implement contextually sensitive instructional improvement
strategies in line with curriculum reform expectations, but without alienating their
stakeholders who generally valued the exam-driven culture above all else. On the one
hand, principals reported that the new curriculum reform brought some positive change
to traditional teacher-centred classrooms. As one explained, ‘In today’s classrooms,
teachers can adopt more flexible rather than rigid approaches’ (HB_10). One Shenyang
principal observed:
You know, the teaching used to be the ‘chalk and talk’ approach. Teachers raised questions,
and students answered them. Nowadays, we let students talk more . . . This approach has
developed student capacity (SY_01).
On the other hand, however, principals worried that changes in pedagogy led to
‘surface change’ only (HB_03), or ‘old wine in new bottles’ (GZ_12). They were also
sceptical about whether ‘lively student activities would contribute to real student
learning’ (GD_01). Student learning in China has been traditionally evaluated
through student exam results alone. Principals thus constantly faced accountability
pressures around student exam performance, even though high-stake exams were
many years away for their students. For example, as one Hubei principal complained:
While we have been advocating Quality Education (suzhi jiaoyu) for many years, there may not
be fundamental change if the current college entrance examination (Gaokao) and senior school
entrance examination (Zhongkao) are not reformed . . . In Hubei, [our local governments] still
rank us after exams. The government actually stress the importance of tests scores. (HB_03)
One Shanghai principal said she still used student exam result as a major criterion to
evaluate teacher performance. She would, for example, compare the average scores of her
classes and teachers with district-level averages, if their results were five points lower, the
school might impose penalties on their teachers. The principal admitted this was
a district-wide norm (SH_16). In less developed regions, there seemed even more topdown pressure for better exam results. One Guizhou principal used the Chinese idiom ‘a
white complexion is powerful enough to hide many defects’ (yibai zhe baichou) to express
the message schools received from the local government, meaning that as long as the
school could produce high exam results then other evaluative criteria did not particularly
matter (GZ_05).
Recognising the importance of teaching, principals assumed a gate-keeper role to the
quality of teaching. The common understanding in China is that the teaching process has
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five major elements – lesson preparation, lesson delivery, teaching evaluation, student
assignments and support for students with learning difficulties. As a major method of
quality assurance, principals set school-wide minimum requirements for each of these.
A Shanghai principal explained that her school checked all the assignments and worksheets of each student once a semester (SH _04). A Hubei principal said that his school
had a set of institutionalised policies about the five elements. These policies were subjectbased and approved at the Teachers’ Representative Conference after wide discussion
(HB_01). Thus, teachers had a clear understanding of the quality of teaching expected.
Another noteworthy strategy widely used to improve teaching and learning was structured school-based research. This top-down requirement was designed to expand the
research function of teaching-research groups in order to strengthen school-level research
into teaching. Many principals mentioned their schools applied for or implemented different levels of research projects. A Shenyang school integrated curriculum reform with such
projects and focused on exploring a new model of effective classroom teaching. Her school
completed seven provincial-level and one national-level research project (SY_10).
Principals were aware of the need to enhance teachers’ research awareness and use
evidence-informed instructional improvement strategies. They admitted it was sometimes difficult to motivate teachers to do this. Different schools thus adopted various
strategies to motivate teachers. A Shanghai school allocated 100,000 yuan (about 15,000
USD) to fund research and encouraged teachers to apply for school-level research
projects (SH_14). A Guangdong school directly linked research performance with teacher assessment. Teachers received merits if they led research projects, delivered seminars or published papers (GD_13).
Although the leadership practices of ILs in China are similar to those of principals
elsewhere, a number of factors seem to differentiate them. The analysis indicated what
contextual factors helped distinguish how Chinese principals enacted some leadership
practices. The next section will further discuss the role of societal context and propose
some propositions for understanding IL in China.
Discussion
The study aimed to contribute to the knowledge base of educational leadership in China
(e.g. Walker and Qian 2018; Yin, Lee, and Wang 2013). This section further explores why
leadership appears to be enacted in certain ways.
The role of societal context
Hallinger (2018) suggests that three dimensions of societal context – institutional,
cultural and political – may impact the way leaders enact their leadership.
Institutional context
Our study shows, unsurprisingly, that a nation’s education system plays an important
role in shaping instructional leadership practices. Chinese schools share a set of common
organisational routines that differ from other societies. The major routines included
substantial time allocated in school timetables for intensive teacher development; classroom-based and peer-supported capacity building activities organised by teaching
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research groups; de-privatised teaching and opening classrooms to others; and regular
lesson observations or walk-throughs by principals. These practices repeat in an identifiable pattern (Sherer and Spillane 2011). They frame how principals interact with teachers
and how teachers interact with each other to define job expectations. In other words, the
Chinese education system expects primary principals to be instructionally-focused, and
teachers to be teaching and learning experts.
The fact that most Chinese schools share the same pattern of routines indicates a high
level of uniformity across schools. This is what the ‘uniqueness’ policy attempts to
address. However, our data indicates that in reality, principals lack genuine autonomy
to develop distinctive features if they move too far into academic domains – it remains
paramount that they satisfy national curriculum and examination requirements. As
a result, schools remain largely similar to each other.
National cultural context
Much (e.g. Child 1994; Farh and Cheng 2000) has been written about traditional Chinese
Confucian culture and its interrelated core values such as collectivism, harmony, respect
for hierarchy and authority and high expectations of moral fidelity. It is quite apparent
that these cultural values are widely ‘in use’ by Chinese principals. For example, they
often use the ‘family’ and ‘parent’ metaphor to refer to their schools and their role. As
a parent figure, principals feel an obligation to provide guidance and protection and to
nurture and care for staff (Farh and Cheng 2000). While the Western literature tends to
view paternalistic leadership in a negative light, research from the Chinese context
suggests that subordinates tend to willingly reciprocate the care and protection (Chen
et al. 2014). Principals also adopt a wide range of strategies to promote smooth and
positive relationships with and between teachers. Fostering harmonious relationships is
a deeply embedded Confucian value (Child 1994). Principals identify and reward senior
and competent teachers with high-status titles. Such actions usually meet with few
arguments from teachers because of the traditional respect for seniority in Chinese
culture. This respect also enables structured mentoring to be effectively embedded in
schools. In other words, Chinese principals quite naturally apply traditional cultural
values to facilitate their role as instructional leaders.
However, the influence of cultural values can have other effects. One of these is that
principals are also expected to be loyal and obedient to their supervisors, and to the preeminence of high-stake exams as the measure of school success. Principals receive
contradictory messages from local government in that they are charged to simultaneously
implement curriculum reforms which lead to changed classroom practice but continue to
excel in formal standardised examinations. As a result, principals have to learn to be
‘bilingual’, i.e. to publicly advocate curriculum reforms, but while maintaining a focus on
achieving good results in important public exams (Qian, Walker, and Li 2017).
Political context
An important feature of the political context of China is top-down, centralised government administration (Liang, Kidwai, and Zhang 2016). A strong government overseeing
policy-driven standards, setting high expectations and targeting resources allows for
initiatives to be introduced at scale in a relatively short time (Walker and Qian 2018).
This generally results in a high degree of coherence between policy and implementation
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in Chinese schools (Liang, Kidwai, and Zhang 2016). This is evidenced in this study, for
example, in the prevalence of school networking structures where high-performing
schools partner with struggling schools to improve the quality of leadership and pedagogy. This may be more difficult to achieve in a less centralised political context.
However, as with cultural values, there is another side to the story as principals work
within circumscribed autonomy combined with overwhelming responsibility. Achieving
‘success’ as a leader in the Chinese context requires first and foremost the recognition and
favour of the system and political superiors (Walker, Hu, and Qian 2012). Principals
admitted that they had expanding autonomy to make school plans, design school-based
curriculum and develop teachers, but that this needed to be done within pre-defined
government frameworks. Data collected from principals included complaints that they
could not refuse the top-down demands which arrived regularly on their desks, even if
they disagreed with them.
It is the interaction between these contextual nuances that frames the practices of
Chinese principals. For example, while principals capitalise on traditional values to play
a parenting role with teachers, the education system also provides teachers with meaningful professional status that puts then at the centre of the improvement process
(Tucker 2014). As a way to tie the main findings together we attempt to capture the
fluidity and complexity of the working lives of school principals in China in six
propositions.
Conclusion
This article provided a data-driven holistic picture of instructional leadership in Chinese
primary schools. A modified model of IL in China comprised of six dimensions and 17
sub-dimensions was constructed. The ways in which Chinese principals across different
regions perceived and enacted their instructional leadership were illustrated and compared with the four core leadership practices (Leithwood et al. 2006). The data showed
that Chinese principals perform the four leadership practices, but that the way they
enacted these is somewhat different from principals in Western contexts. Differences
include their use of paternalistic leadership to build trust and a reliance on organisational
routines to develop teacher capacity for holistic student development (Qian, Walker, and
Li 2017; Walker and Qian 2018). Enactment is shaped by a number of quite distinct
contextual factors. The following propositions capture the major features of IL in China
as shaped by this context.
Proposition 1
Chinese principals engage closely with teaching and learning and have detailed knowledge of classroom practice. In contrast with much western literature which suggests
that principals spend only a fraction of time on instructional issues (Murphy et al.
2016), Chinese principals dedicate much more substantial time to teaching and
learning and maintaining high levels of visibility in classrooms. Leaders’ knowledge
of teaching and learning informs the establishment and operation of active structures,
such as teacher collaboration, that are designed to support effective instruction
(Goddard et al. 2015).
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Proposition 2
A set of centrally-defined organisational routines in Chinese schools facilitates instructional
leadership, but principals still play a key role to operationalise and enrich these routines.
Routines are an important element of a school’s educational infrastructure (Cohen,
Spillane, and Peurach 2018) that support and coordinate instruction, maintain instructional quality and enable instructional improvement. Along with centrally-mandated
routines, principals’ adoption of newer practices, such as school-based research and
granting teachers honourable titles, has also seen the emergence of new organisational
routines in Chinese schools.
Proposition 3
While principals oversee school-wide instructional improvement activities, instructional
leadership is distributed across the school leadership team and expert teachers. The data
shows that a wide range of individuals, with or without formal titles, share leadership
responsibilities, such as monitoring instructional activities, modelling teaching and
mentoring peers. The distribution of leadership is normally designated top-down by
the principal and plugged into formal and/or informal hierarchies. Regardless of the
mode of distribution, as Tucker (2014) has observed, the system allows teachers (mainly
those recognised as backbone or famous teachers) to lead the process of improving
curriculum and teaching methods and to work together as a team.
Proposition 4
Among various instructional improvement strategies, Chinese principals place a high
priority on developing teacher capacity and creating a supportive teacher learning environment. Principals see quality teachers as the most valuable resource and provide
impressive support for teachers’ on-the-job learning. This finding supports Robinson
and her colleagues’ (2008) synthesis of international research which showed that leaders
promoting and participating in teacher professional development makes more of
a difference than any other aspect of leadership in terms of the link with student
outcomes.
Proposition 5
Chinese principals are increasingly expected to broker and shape partnerships or networks
across local communities; Principals from weaker network schools are expected to be
effective learners and change agents in their own schools. This systemwide policy trend
relies on leveraging the resources of better-performing schools to support lowerperforming schools. As such, it enables schools to run joint teacher development
activities and share human and teaching resources. However, this emerging ‘system
leadership’ trend (Higham, Hopkins, and Matthews 2009) also raises expectations for
principals to develop partnerships, to cooperate with their principal peers and to design
more school-specific instructional improvement strategies.
Proposition 6
Principals must meet the dual expectations of improved student exam results and holistic
student development; this presents them an enduring workplace tension. The most common way for principals to cope with the tensions flowing from the reform environment is
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to speak the educational languages of different systems (Qian, Walker, and Li 2017, 201).
In the long run it will continue to be a bedevilling task to strike a balance between the
traditional metrics of successful student learning and the imported education policies
that promote student-centredness and student holistic development.
Although the study broadened understanding of IL in China some inherent limitations remain. The first is that the study targeted primary school principals only. Chinese
secondary principals may face different pressures because their major task is to prepare
students for college entrance examinations. Thus, this study cannot be generalised
beyond the primary level. A second limitation is the uneven number of participants
from different regions. The number of interviews varied from 9 to 24 per site. Despite
implementing strategies for fuller participation across provinces we missed the mark in
Beijing. We acknowledge the unmatched sample size might impact the richness of data.
A third limitation is the reliance on self-reported principal interviews and not collecting
data from other school actors. As a result, we cannot claim any solid connections between
the participants’ claims and actual classroom practices. Although we acknowledge this
weakness, this study sought to identify the major IL strategies adopted by Chinese
principals according to their perceptions. Further studies are needed to determine if
these practices are visible in classroom.
Given these caveats, this research has broadened understanding of how principals in
China work to positively influence student learning through building teacher capacity. As
such, the research findings extend international understanding of successful school
leadership for instructional improvement.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Allan Walker
Haiyan Qian
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1191-0419
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5810-3577
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