Enhancing Teaching Quality in Higher Education: A Case Study of a Regional University in China

Introduction

Enhancing university teaching has become a focus of higher education reform on the Chinese mainland. Recent policies have emphasized enhancing teaching quality through the Quality Assessment of Teaching in Undergraduate Programmes and by developing teacher communities to encourage teacher collaboration. Facilitating teacher collaboration within teacher communities is perceived to be an effective way of enhancing teaching quality.

The study referred to in this article was guided by three major questions:

These questions focus on the major challenges that have arisen following China’s recent initiatives to enhance teaching quality. Using qualitative methods, and with reference to the questions listed above, we conducted in-depth qualitative research at a sample university using purposive sampling. The sample university is a regional university which is operated and financially supported by the regional government. The resources it receives are significantly lower than those received by the first and second tier universities in mainland China. Twenty academics in four separate departments were interviewed. In-depth interviews with selected academics were conducted to illuminate the various opinions among departments with different status.

Major Issues in Communities of Practice

It has been observed that most of the teacher development that takes place in higher education occurs during informal and nonintentional learning among teachers (Knight et al., 2006; Viskovic, 2006). However, there have been very limited studies and a lack of solid academic discussion on teacher development in higher education. Although the ways in which teacher development takes place in higher education are not necessarily the same as in basic education, the academic discussion on teacher development in basic education may be relevant to the process of teacher development in higher education. Teacher development refers to improving the intimate understanding by individuals of the practice of their profession, which influences their professional practice. An inquiry structure that supports teachers seeking more effective ways of working with students is used in teacher communities when they are collaboratively developing professional knowledge relevant to their individual contexts (Borko et al., 2011). Hollins et al. (2004) posited that changes occur when the learning community focuses on changing teachers’ “habits of mind,” rather than their behavior and pedagogical content knowledge.

Several studies have focused on communities of practice to investigate teacher development in higher education (Malcolm & Zukas, 2008; Trowler & Knight, 2000). Viskovic (2006) claimed that tacit communities of practice for teacher development exist in higher education. Teacher development can be viewed as teachers learning (Bell & Gilbert, 1994). Staff development in higher education has stressed teacher learning (Blackwell & Blackmore, 2003). Trowler and Knight’s (2000) study found that the professional learning of university teachers should involve the negotiation of meaning and should be done in social settings. In a community of practice, learning takes place in a participatory framework and is mediated by the different perspectives of the co-participants. Learning should be understood with reference to the social milieu in which it is embedded (Wenger, 1998). Members are bound together to form a social entity which employs intense forms of collaboration to achieve collective work goals. It is always based on the situated negotiation and renegotiation of meaning (Lave & Wenger, 1991). However, the tacit sense of a university teacher community means that they tend to lack explicit processes for developing community practices. Things tend to happen sporadically and piecemeal, without long-term planning for continued learning and community development (Viskovic, 2006).

A joint enterprise has to be communally negotiated. This negotiation creates among participants relations of mutual accountability that become an integral part of their practice. Kuh’s (2016) study of a successful teacher community found that teachers’ initial reasons for joining the community had to do with social and emotional support. This was an autonomous group and teachers had the right to choose to participate. They had a desire to learn from each other and be a responsible participant. Teachers can define the purpose of the community, build trusting relationships, and be mindful of equity in participation.

Learning can take place not only with the support of more capable peers through social interaction, but also with the involvement of social and cultural tools. A shared repertoire refers to a repertoire of heterogeneous resources through which meaning is created. It includes all the concepts, routines, tools, ways of doing things, gestures, and symbols teachers use (Wenger, 1998). Kuh’s (2016) study stressed that during the discussion process, protocols provide a “common language,” structures, norms, and patterns of behavior that are an important part of a reflective practice. Using protocols to guide conversation has an impact on the group’s ability to maintain a focus on teaching and learning.

Little (2002) employed three aspects to help in investigating the process of negotiating meanings in a community of practice namely representation of practice, norms of interaction, and orientation toward practice. Representation of practice emphasizes the visibility of practices enabled through topics being taken up in conversation, by material artifacts at hand, or by lesson demonstrations. In Viskovic’s (2006) study, university teachers highlighted that most pedagogical knowledge is implicit. In a community of practice, the process of reification could help to make implicit knowledge more explicit. Reification involves aspects of human experience being consolidated into explicit and fixed forms. Reification refers to both the process and its product. The negotiation of meaning is a recovery process, with the constant potential for continuing, rediscovering, or reproducing the old in the new (Wenger, 1998).

Norms of interaction such as conversational conventions, participation structures, and the enacted norms of professional practice can open up or close off possibilities for inquiry into practice (Little, 2002). The professional development of university teachers through participation in learning conversations is valued (Tait, 2002). Members of communities of practice have pointed out that their interaction fosters a sense of togetherness, resonance, and security (Hou, 2015). Dalgarno and Colgan’s (2007) study indicated that the environment of a community of practice enables teachers to reflect collaboratively on teaching practices and patterns of interaction, and to express their own doubts as well as offer suggestions to their peers. Hargreaves (1999) found that communities of practice can provide an environment of development which side-steps bureaucratic structures. Therefore, Ng and Tan (2009) urged community members to move toward critical reflective learning. Members should embrace multidimensional roles: from pure learners to knowledge providers, knowledge constructors, inspirers, and reflective learners (Hou, 2015).

Communities of practice should not be romanticized, but should be oriented toward practice. They should also be aware that they can reproduce counterproductive patterns, injustices, prejudices, and abuses of all kinds. Sometimes, they are the very locus of reproduction (Little, 2002). Successful community of practice should develop a strong network among colleagues and be mindful of different stages of development. Members should look inward while maintaining relationships with others but also look outward to focus on institutional level issues. At the same time, the facilitators must be explicit in their goals (Kuh, 2016). Based on the above discussion, we employed the following analytical framework (Figure 1) to guide the study.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Joint enterprise.

Teacher development in higher education is still a contentious field about which different researchers have made various observations. Several questions arise. For example: How do university teachers perceive the nature of teacher collaboration in enhancing teaching quality? How do they perceive the process of developing teacher communities in the university? It was therefore hoped that an investigation into the nature and process of developing teacher communities at a Chinese university would help to enhance our understanding of the advantages of and obstacles to teacher development within a university. It was also hoped that our study would make a theoretical contribution to the academic discussion of teacher development and policy implications on teacher development in higher education.

Enhancing Teaching Quality in Higher Education in Mainland China

In 2011, the Ministry of Education (MOI) initiated the operational suggestions of the Quality Assessment of Teaching in Undergraduate Programme (QATUP), the aim of which was to enhance teaching quality in undergraduate programs. It turned out to be one of the major assessments of every university that took place every 6 years. In 2016, the QATUP developed a second stage assessment, an internal assessment which was added to the original external assessment. There are eight first rank indicators and 19 second rank indicators, which include detailed and complex measures of every aspect of university operations and teaching. After the assessment, each university is ranked A, B, C, or D (MOI, 2011). In the first stage of QATUP, most universities received rank A. In a society that is used to conforming to the state requirements, every university is very serious about the way it deals with QATUP.

To enhance teaching quality, the Ministry of Education employed various measures to encourage universities to emphasize the importance of teaching. The recent policy, “Suggestions on deepening the reform of teaching team development” initiated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP, 2018), emphasized the fact that the nation should enhance the quality of university teachers and develop high-quality and creative teaching teams. It also made it very clear that universities should place particular emphasis on raising teachers’ teaching ability. Consequently, each university should develop a platform for teacher development, organizing teacher development activities that will give them the opportunity to receive teaching instruction and to engage in teaching research, thus facilitating teaching reform and innovation. Each university should also develop teacher learning communities as well as mentor programs at department or faculty level to offer young teachers the opportunity to enhance their teaching abilities (CCP, 2018). Under the above policies, universities were given strong incentives to develop various measures to help monitor and enhance teaching quality.

Method

This study employed a qualitative research approach. The researchers conducted semistructured interviews to collect data at the sample university.

Guided Joint Enterprise and Shared Repertoire

First, it was apparent the aims of teacher collaboration are defined by the university. As University H was a teacher training university many years ago, particular emphasis was laid on ensuring the quality of teaching. In 2013, University H launched a Teacher Development Project. The key theme of this project was to encourage teacher collaboration as a way to improve teaching. Therefore, various kinds of teacher development activities, such as lesson observations, open lessons, and lesson competitions, were organized. Teachers were assigned by the university administration to participate in various kinds of teacher collaboration. The major purpose of the above activities was to change the individualization of teaching into teachers collaborating together to improve their teaching. A lecturer in the Faculty of Business Administration said “ It’s [the university administration’s] intention is to control you [teachers] tightly, and it places restrictions on many aspects [of a teacher’s teaching].” Therefore, the so-called collaboration among teachers in improving teaching quality was guided by the university and was emphasized more strongly after the launch of QATUP to ensure that they received good grades in QATUP. With regard to these long-standing practices of ensuring teaching quality, the informants reflected that other universities also operated similar practices to ensure the quality of their teaching.

Second, the teachers had to submit detailed records of their teaching, and there were detailed requirements concerning the format of these teaching records. The head of the Information Technology department said, “from the start of your lesson plans for teaching [every lecture] until the end of the record with the students’ final examination marks, the whole set of assessment measures [operated by the university] is complicated and detailed.” All the details, including the content the teacher was going to teach, the curriculum content in the assigned textbook the teacher would use, the additional content from external sources the teacher would add, and the format, which would be either a lecture or a discussion in each lecture, should be written down in the teacher’s lesson plan and then submitted to the academic office at university level for filing. An associate professor in the Information Technology department said,

our university is administration-oriented . . . Teaching approaches . . . and then a teacher’s behaviour . . . are . . . standardized . . . like . . . a military administration. You may say there [exists] the same mode [of teaching] because it comes from the power of the administrative orientation . . . Your [the teacher’s] teaching files . . . [and] teaching modes are all [should be] endorsed [by the academic office at the university]. A teacher doesn’t have [professional] authority . . . [in] teaching. [The university] is now operating detailed control.

Through the quality assurance mechanism for teaching, the university has developed strict requirements regarding standardizing teaching content, teaching approaches, and the format of various kinds of teaching files.

Third, there were detailed requirements regarding the content and format of examination papers. Teachers must use the same examination for their compulsory courses as those given to year one compulsory course students; this could be perceived as the university following the same guidelines as the QATUP assessment in its requirements and standards. In other words, it has a compulsory “shared repertoire.” Many of our informants complained that the required use of the same examination paper for year one compulsory courses seriously constrained the diversity of teaching content and teaching approaches used by individual teachers. In each examination paper, the university required that there should be four different types of examination questions namely filling in the blanks, multiple choice, judgment questions, and long questions, which required students to give detailed elaborations. Each paper should also include memorization questions, comprehensive questions, and application questions. The academic office also indicated that the long question section should include four to five items and that the other types of questions, such as filling in the blanks and multiple choice, should include 30 to 40 items. In the planning report on the examination paper, teachers should provide a table that clearly illustrates which knowledge points they are going to test by the different questions and how much of the content of each chapter in the textbook they are going to test in the examination paper. There was also a requirement that the replication of examination questions should not exceed 10% within 3 years. If the replication rate was over 20%, it would be marked down as a teaching accident, which would affect the teacher’s promotion and annual bonus.

With regard to marking the examination paper, teachers should give positive marks only, and make no deductions. Teachers were required to mark the long questions in the top right-hand corner of the paper and every short question had to be marked separately. After marking the examination paper, the university academic office operated a very careful checking procedure to see whether the teacher had marked the examination paper strictly according to the university format requirements, which were actually the QATUP requirements. A department head in the Faculty of Business Administration informed us that “the standardized approach, particularly the approach used in mainland China, is in fact not good.” He disagreed with this policy and made it clear that he thought that different teachers should have the right to select their own teaching content and use their own approaches to teach. Through the above measures, the university had developed detailed control over the content and format of examination papers as well as over the ways in which the papers were marked. Through organizing various teacher development activities and setting the requirements for teaching files and examination papers, the university closely monitored the guided “joint enterprises” and the compulsory “shared repertoire.”

Representation of Practice

First, participants reported that the academic office organized retired teachers to conduct lesson observations of every teacher in each term. The teachers were of the opinion that lesson observation by retired teachers motivated them to teach seriously when the lecture observer came. The lecture observer would not inform teachers before he or she attended their lectures, since the lecture observers had set quotas of lesson observations to fulfill. The lecture observer gave his or her feedback on the observed lecture and then sent a report back to the academic office. As the lecture observer may not have taught the same specialist subject as the observed teacher, in general, the teachers thought that the lecture observers could only give suggestions based on their own disciplines which may not apply to different lectures in other disciplines. One informant said that

whether the knowledge you taught is right or wrong, he could not give relevant suggestions on this aspect . . . I am a specialist in education. The lecture observer’s subject is Chinese Literature . . . He gave criticism on my lecture based on his knowledge of Chinese Literature . . . But education has its own principles . . . He may talk a lot on [the use of] wording and language . . . Therefore, we have different perspectives, [we should] have our own professional standpoint.

However, the lesson observation acted as an important artifact of reification for retired teachers to guide young teachers in how to teach. The hidden message seemed to be that young teachers had to be closely supervised in a spontaneous manner. Young teachers must be instructed by retired teachers and even reproduce the retired teacher’s teaching approaches, even if he or she was not from the same discipline.

Second, teachers were required to rotate in offering open lessons at department level and to give two open lessons each term. Open lessons offered young teachers the opportunity to demonstrate their teaching abilities. All the teachers within the department observed the first 45 min of the lesson (the complete lesson was an hour and a half long). The university usually arranged two consecutive sessions for a lecture, so the performing teacher had to teach the second session after the open lesson and therefore could not attend the commentary session after the open lesson. Generally, the other teachers and the department head would first mention the positive aspects of the open lesson and then give concrete comments on how the whole lesson could be improved. In the session we observed, some teachers indicated that the introduction to the open lesson may have been too long, and some pointed out that parts of the open lesson could have been elaborated on in more depth. After the commentary session, the department head assembled the teachers’ suggestions and produced a written report for the performing teacher. In the commentary session, the teachers within the department helped young teachers to improve their teaching by taking the artifact of reification—which in this case was the various things that had happened during the lesson—and discussing how they might have been dealt with better. However, as young teachers could not participate in the commentary session, the highly important inquiry process, by means of which experienced and young teachers could have worked together to reflect critically on the limitations of existing approaches and to generate new practices, was lacking.

Third, there was a teaching competition at university level each year and young teachers were encouraged to participate. Each faculty would nominate one young teacher to participate each year. The participating teacher would have to prepare a 20-min lesson, which was like a mini lecture, and was perceived to be a great challenge for competitors. The knowledge points selected should be simple so that the teacher could elaborate on them clearly in a very limited amount of time. Unlike the preparation for an open lesson in basic education at primary and secondary schools in China when all panel members help to polish the lesson, the participant teacher at a university prepares the open lesson by himself/herself. In the absence of any assistance or advice from other teachers, young university teachers have few opportunities to benefit from experienced teachers sharing their teaching approaches through the polishing process of an open lesson. Our informants stated that after the mini lecture, there was no commentary session, because it was a competition. If participant teachers asked the judges about the strengths and weaknesses of their open lessons, then the judges would inform them which were the weakest points which had lost them the most marks. One participant teacher informed us that she had taught for only 17 min when the required time was 20 min, so she had lost points as a result of her weakness in controlling the timing. There was also a standard evaluation form for the competition lecture which was designed by the university academic office and had been used for many years; the teachers had learned from the evaluation form what the expected approaches were and what constituted a good lecture. In the absence of any discussion, the lesson competition acted as a kind of socialization process by means of which young teachers learned how to align their teaching approach with the expected standard of lecture as defined by the university.

Norms of Interaction and Orientation Toward Practice

First, it was found that the university operated detailed monitoring measures to ensure teaching quality. An associate dean of the Faculty of Education considered that the quality control of teaching should be quantified.

Why did our university initiate the development of a teaching and learning atmosphere? . . . Now a teacher’s attention is no longer on the classroom and on nurturing students . . . This policy orientation [which emphasizes research output] is really bad . . . The [quality control in teaching] is really very detailed [at our university]. They [the university] think that they should ensure the quality of the process [in teaching] . . . Whether teachers use red pen to mark the examination papers . . . Whether teachers count the wrong number of marks [in examination papers] . . . There should be careful checking [conducted by the academic office at the university] . . . The university thinks that teachers don’t have self-awareness, so they [teachers] need to be controlled in detail.

After the teachers had marked the examination papers, the retired teachers sent by the academic office would check carefully whether the teachers had marked according to the required formats designated by the university and QATUP. If the retired teacher found that there was a paper on which an incorrect mark appeared, then it was marked as a teaching accident by the teacher who had marked that paper. That teacher would then no longer have the opportunity to be considered for promotion and he or she would lose his or her annual bonus, which represents 30% of a teacher’s salary, because of the teaching accident.

At the end of term, three online questionnaires were used to evaluate a teacher’s teaching quality namely a questionnaire completed by students, a questionnaire completed by teachers within the department, and a questionnaire completed by the department head. The students’ questionnaire was particularly complex, in that there was a very detailed assessment form for them to evaluate the teacher’s teaching content, to assess whether the teaching progress was aligned with the lesson plan, to evaluate the design of the lesson and to evaluate the quality of the teaching. Some students were also assigned to be hidden student observers who conducted lecture observations throughout the duration of the course without ever revealing their observer identities. The teachers never found out who the hidden student observers were. At the end of term, the hidden student observers were invited to an evaluation session at which they stated whether the teachers had been late or absent during the term, whether the teaching content and the progress of the teaching had followed the teacher’s original teaching plan, and whether the students appreciated the teacher’s teaching approaches. All these questionnaire evaluations would act as feedback for the teachers at the end of term. As the evaluation was closely related to the teachers’ annual bonus, teachers were quite serious about dealing with these three types of end-of-term teaching assessment.

Second, the various teaching quality assurance measures implied that young teachers should be instructed by experienced teachers, even though young teachers may not agree with experienced teachers’ suggestions. In general, lesson observers and experienced teachers had much more influential voices than young teachers. With regard to the comments made by lesson observers who were retired teachers, the performing teachers were of the view that sometimes their lectures were appreciated by the lesson observers, but sometimes not, since most of the lesson observers commented on the lessons from the point of view of their own disciplines. As a result, the lesson observer and the performing teacher had different perceptions of the lecture. One informant told us, “If I disagree with the views of the lesson observer . . . I will have [certain kinds of] reservation . . . I will never dispute his views directly, but I will definitely not make changes to my lectures.”

With regard to the comments on the open lesson at department level, generally the informants reflected that the voices of the experienced teachers and professors in the commentary session were more influential. The young teachers would never disagree with the experienced teachers in public. They felt pressurized when expressing their ideas on the commentary session for the open lesson. They thought through their ideas very clearly and rehearsed expressions in their minds several times before openly expressing their views. Although there were many occasions when young teachers received comments from lesson observers at the university, from other teachers within the department and from the department head, they emphasized that students’ feedback was the most significant. Young teachers felt that students’ feedback reflected the authentic problems of their lectures, which motivated them to reflect seriously.

As the performing teachers considered that they were the ones who understood the needs of their lectures most clearly, they were quite selective about adopting other teachers’ suggestions. One informant gave the example that she adopted other teachers’ suggestions about introducing the reform experiences of other nations into her lecture, but did not take up the advice that she should upgrade the level of her teaching content. She thought that her lecture was for a general course offered to students from the whole university; therefore, the lecture should be set at a level which all students would find very easy to understand. Performing teachers considered that they should accept or reject other teachers’ suggestions based on their own professional judgment, the authentic teaching context, and personal attributes.

Third, there were the problems related to one-sided suggestions and the absence of the performing teacher. After the lesson observation, the lesson observer gave comments through asking the performing teacher a few questions. The young teacher seldom argued with the lesson observer even if he or she had reservations about the lesson observer’s suggestions. The practice by which teachers within the department commented on the open lesson without the performing teacher’s elaboration and exchange was a university tradition with a very long history. Moreover, after the lesson competition at university level there was no discussion session at all. Detailed documents on each teacher’s teaching performance in the above three activities (lesson observations by lesson observer, open lesson and lesson competition) were kept in the university’s academic office.

The informants reported that some lesson observers gave particularly tough comments. One example was given of the commentary session after an open lesson at university level. An informant remembered that the lesson observer gave seriously negative comments on an open lesson. The lesson observer judged that the open lesson was a failure and gave concrete examples. The performing teacher must undoubtedly have been very frustrated. Our informant said,

the lesson observer spoke first. He decided on the tone [of criticizing this open lesson] . . . Although some of the other teachers may have had other opinions, [his comments] on the nature of the open lesson had already had a great impact . . . My personal view was that the open lesson may not have been successful . . . but [I did] not . . . [agree with] the lesson observer’s comments that it was a total failure. . . . we only observe the first 45 minutes [of the lesson] . . . [maybe] we should also observe the next 45 minutes . . . [The teacher] may introduce the main theme in the second lesson . . . Other teachers didn’t dispute the [views of the] lesson observer . . . but his comments were too definite.

As the lesson observers were employed and arranged by the university’s academic office, they may have perceived themselves as having more authority than they actually had and as playing a key role in helping to improve the teaching of young teachers. Frequent observation, detailed monitoring, and one-sided comments seemed to be the key norms in ensuring the quality of teaching at University H. The orientation of practice tended to be detailed control, one-sided instruction, and a lack of professional dialogue.

Discussion

We found that University H had “arranged joint enterprises,” that a “standardized repertoire” was used, and that detailed control was exercised over teaching performance. After the launch of QATUP, University H developed even more detailed controls over teaching content and assessment. The strict requirements to produce a standardized examination paper, in other words, one that conformed to the QATUP requirements, had created the need for a “standardized share repertoire,” which itself was a form of control over teaching content. To obtain good results in the QATUP assessment, University H put pressure on its teachers to conform strictly to the QATUP marking format. Through the detailed monitoring of every step of teaching, which includes lesson preparation, the process of teaching and learning, as well as examinations, the university attempts to compensate for the neglect of teaching due to the overemphasis on enhancing research outputs in Chinese higher education policies. Unlike Wenger’s (1998) expectation, it is consequently difficult to claim that University H has developed a community of practice for teacher collaboration.

The rationale of patriarchal governance in the university has hindered the development of a community of practice. Restricted by this rationale, core members have not had sufficient space for critical reflection on the development of authentic teacher collaboration. Open lessons, lesson competitions, and lesson observations have acted as major representations of practice through which young teachers accept instructions from the experienced teachers. The lesson observers attended teachers’ lectures without giving them prior notice. This reflected the fact that the university considered that the teachers’ teaching should be closely supervised and should be examined spontaneously. At department level, young teachers received experienced teachers’ suggestions after the commentary session on their open lessons. Through the lesson competition at university level, young teachers learned the standard of teaching expected of them by the university. However, this is not the process of reification with its constant potential for continuing and rediscovering the old to generate the new, as proposed by Wenger (1998), that we expected to find. Without the voices of young teachers, the continuous negotiation and renegotiation of meaning could not emerge. Restricted by the existing governance structure, the assigned teacher communities were unable to side-step bureaucratic structures or act as a test-bed for restructuring existing practices (Hargreaves, 1999).

The young teachers in our case study employed a strategy of passive resistance to the arranged collaboration. The norms of interaction in the teacher collaboration organized by the university were one-sided instruction and the absence of the voices of the young teachers being observed. In the lesson observations, in the open lessons at department level and in the lesson competitions at university level, the comments and suggestions regarding the lesson were simply imposed on the teachers under observation. In the open lessons at department level, the teacher who had been observed was not even permitted to attend the commentary session to explain his or her views or to engage in an equal dialogue with the other teachers in the department or the department heads. The young teachers in our study did not have any opportunity to become involved in the process of reflection, dialogue and inquiry (Hargreaves, 1999), or to collectively reinvent experienced teachers’ practices and challenge their assumptions (Dalgarno & Colgan, 2007); it was therefore impossible for a sense of belonging and togetherness to develop (Hou, 2015). In contrast to Knight et al.’s (2006) findings, in the case of University H, arranged collaboration was not really helping to further the development of higher education teachers. The fact that they could only act as passive learners and employ strategies of passive resistance also conflicts with Hou’s (2015) suggestions regarding the multiple roles of participants in a community. Although the young teachers seldom expressed their different views in public, they were highly selective regarding the suggestions of the experienced teachers; rather, they based their decisions on their students’ needs and abilities.