Professional standards and performance evaluation for principals in China

Abstract

This article presents the results of an interpretive policy analysis of China’s Ministry of Education Standards (2013) for the professional practice of principals. In addition to revealing the evolution of the evaluation of principals in China and the processes by which this policy is formulated, a comparative analysis was conducted to compare it with the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Standards 2008 (ISLLC 2008). The analysis was conducted on the specific standards and indicators across the two documents. The results indicate the presence of both significant similarities and differences in performance expectations for principals: differences are explained by the cultural and national contexts within which school leaders work in both countries. In February 2013 the Ministry of Education in China issued for the first time the national Professional Standards for Compulsory Education School Principals, which provide the specific expectations of quality school leadership. The unprecedented interest in international benchmarking of student academic performance has led to the belief that there are common elements in education policy and school leadership practices. It is hoped that this research sheds new light onto the current thinking on the expectations and evaluation of principal leadership.

Keywords

Comparative study cross cultural comparison principal evaluation school leadership

Background

School leadership is increasingly recognized internationally as a vital factor with regard to improving school effectiveness, teaching quality and student achievement (Dinham et al., 2013; Leithwood and Mascall, 2008). As in the United States (USA) and other Western nations, school principals in the Asia–Pacific region are seen as critical for effective policy implementation (Walker and Ko, 2011). Research in the USA has indicated that principal leadership is a primary determining factor in school effectiveness, second only to the role of a student’s classroom teacher (Hallinger and Heck, 1996; Stronge et al., 2008). In addition, an effective principal, in contrast to an ineffective principal, can have a powerful differential impact on student achievement; in fact, as much as much as 16 percentile points from the beginning to the end of a school’s academic year (Branch et al., 2013).

While fostering and supporting student success are primary aspects of the role of a school leader, contemporary principals find themselves juggling competing tasks on a daily basis in order to satisfy demands from both internal and external stakeholders of educational organizations (Catano and Stronge, 2006). Thus these fundamental questions arise: What should school principals be expected to know and able to do?; and In the most simplistic terms, what is the job of the effective principal? Addressing these questions from a perspective of standards setting has become a widely accepted method for defining what is expected for a given position (in this case, performance standards for principals). In fact, for good or for bad, the application of standards to a host of educational issues (e.g., curricula, student performance, teacher and leader evaluation, and so on) has become ubiquitous in our profession. Standards have a measure of validity in that experts in the field of school leadership, drawing on past research and practice in school leadership, developed the standards that have been adopted by professional organizations and/or governmental organizations. While a standards-based approach appears to be a viable method for defining and guiding the work of principals, it has both the benefit and burden of providing an avenue for diverse stakeholders to drive improvement efforts along a variety of fronts such as licensure, certification, program approval, and candidate assessment (Murphy and Shipman, 1999). While performance offers both professionalizing promise and pitfalls, the development of professional standards for school leaders has taken on a worldwide focus. In recent years many countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, have issued professional standards for school principals. China is among the latest to join this cadre, with national principal standards being introduced formally in 2013.

The purpose of the study was to explore the development of the 2013 Ministry of Education (China) principal standards from a policy perspective. We investigated the process of development and the principles contained therein through a policy lens by using a cross-cultural comparative analysis with the United States as the basis of comparison. We chose the United States as the basis of comparison due to the twenty-year history in the USA of standards development (Canole and Young, 2013). The article is divided into two main parts. The first section provides an overview of the major changes in the educational system of China, to provide a context for analyzing the reforms in principal evaluation. The second section then focuses on the specific aspects of the new principal evaluation standards produced for China, with a particular focus on recent policy developments in this area and a comparison with the standards widely adopted in the United States. Specifically, in the second section we address two guiding questions:

What was the process for policy development of the 2013 China Ministry of Education principal standards?

What are the guiding content principles of the 2013 China principal standards as compared with the 2008 U.S. Educational Leadership Policy Standards: Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC)?

A comparative perspective allows researchers to explore similarities and differences, in order to capture general elements and particular features of policies for evaluation of principals in two different contexts. Moreover, the belief that there are general and common elements in contemporary, international education policy has resulted in increasing interest in cross-culturally sharing leadership theories and successful models of effective schools (Cravens, 2014). However, both the production and flow of such knowledge remains a mostly one-way affair, largely influenced by Western-based scholars, organizations and agencies, for a variety of reasons – such as the dominance of English as the global language (Walker and Dimmock, 2002; Walker et al., 2012). These existing production and dissemination flow characteristics may overlook knowledge gathered in other societies and, thus, limit our understanding of policy, research and practice regarding principal leadership in those societies.

Every public policy, including every education policy, exists in the context of its specific social environment, which is composed of a wide range of dimensions such as economic forces, ideological belief systems, the structure and traditions of the political system, and the culture of the wider society at large (Fowler, 2012). Anchored in this policy perspective, our study presents a historical overview of the development of Ministry of Education (MOE) 2013 standards and conducts a comparative analysis between MOE 2013 and ISLLC 2008, aiming to create a deeper understanding of the relationship between the policy environment and educational policy (particularly, the policy regarding evaluation of principals). Such an understanding should help researchers, policy makers, and educational leaders make sense of the changes of policy and conceptualize the broad directions of education policy. Comparative analysis can bring policy practices of different countries together to examine ‘the problems others face, the objectives they seek, the routes they try, the results they arrive at and the unintended results they produce …’ (Schwille et al., 2007: 10). Whilst policy cannot simply be transplanted from one national context to another, comparative examination of other countries’ practices can nevertheless result in lessons that have implications for policy development in the home context (Halls, 1990; Phillips and Ochs, 2004). Ball (1998) posited that one of the tensions that runs through all varieties of comparative policy analysis is the need to attend to the local particularities and the need to recognize general patterns and commonalities or convergence across localities. Such tension exists in this study.

Before turning our attention to the guiding questions we first provide a brief overview of the context for educational reform in China.

Context for reform of evaluation standards for principals in China

It is necessary to examine the context within which educational systems exist in order to gain an understanding of the expectations of schools, school systems and the educational leaders who work within these educational contexts. Without doubt the educational context in China plays a dynamic role in the evolution of the MOE’s process and outcomes regarding standards for principals. Indeed, compared to policy development in Western nationss such as the USA, this context for change differs dramatically in some attributes and, consequently, has different effects on how the role of principals is viewed and how principal professional standards are developed and applied.

Structural context of education in China

China has the greatest number of schools and principals of any nation in the world. Currently there are more than 310,000 primary and secondary schools (Hu, 2013). Each school has leaders at different career stages, involved in different development programs, with at least one principal and one vice-principal at each school. Thus there are at least 620,000 primary and secondary school principals in China. with the largest scale of educational provision in the world, China has a continuing and growing need for large numbers of high quality school principals.

In China, the national government is the employer and also retains tight control over the context within which different educational professions (e.g., teachers, principals) operate. Educational administrators (e.g., superintendents, school principals) have been considered to be rank-and-file civil-service governmental officials for at least the past several decades. Effectiveness in managing the school and ensuring education quality has been a vague concept, with loyalty in implementing government and party policies viewed as the primary area of concern. Professional educational leaders in China thus operate in a different context from their counterparts in countries such as the USA and UK where state involvement in employment and control is much more limited (Cravens et al., 2012).

Historical context for the evolution of principal evaluation in China

Over the past several decades, evaluation of principals in China has evolved rather dramatically. As with that of the USA and other Western educational systems, the current state-of-the-art includes a focus on reform in the evaluation of principals that reflects a rethinking of the critical roles and responsibilities of principals. However, this is where China and its Western counterparts take different roads, with clearly identifiable policy differences arising in terms of the role of the government in the evolution of the evaluation of principals. For decades, principals had government civil-service rankings, and they were appointed and evaluated according to the standards for government officials. Those who had political opinions different from the Communist Party could not be appointed. The belief that loyalty to and conformity with the hierarchical order of the society as fundamental virtues is deeply embedded in the Chinese value system, and this has a profound influence on how leaders in China think, operate and receive their appraisals (Cravens, 2014).

The processes by which school principals were appointed and evaluated, mainly based on political loyalty, lasted until the introduction of Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Reform and Opening-up Policy’ in 1979. The Chinese central government began to realize that professional quality was crucial to principals’ effectiveness, together with political loyalty. As a result, the central government launched a series of reforms to strengthen the training for principals of elementary and secondary schools. Commencing in the late 1980s, the Chinese government has issued numerous influential documents regulating school principals’ qualifications and job requirements.

In spite of the progress that China has achieved in principals’ evaluation over the most recent 20–30 years, the major guideline used for evaluation of principals at provincial, city, and township levels remains the 1992 Ministry of Education document, Draft Opinions on Enhancing the Development of School Principals in the Nation (Zhao and Wang, 2007). The ‘draft opinions’ in this document proposed four dimensions of assessing principal effectiveness: values (de), abilities (neng), diligence (qin), and achievement (ji). Because China issued its standards for the professional development of principals, various scholars (e.g., Jiang, 2013) have suggested that it is now time to use the MOE 2013 as guidelines to design a new evaluation system.

Context for educational reform in China

The guiding principle of K–12 education reform in China is called su zhi jiao yu, which is frequently translated as ‘quality education’ or ‘quality-oriented education’, and it provides a blueprint for promoting holistic student development, both academically and socially (Gu, 2010). Quality education became the hallmark of the nationwide educational reform in 1999 and was intended to be fully enacted in 2001. It is commonly believed that the quality education reformers have attempted to borrow from Western educational methodologies without committing themselves to the conceptual bases that underpin those Western educational systems. These reform ideas inevitably clash with traditionally embedded practices such as respect for authority, an emphasis on high-stakes examinations and an over-reliance on teacher-centered pedagogy (Walker et al., 2012). Many problems have emerged as a result.

At the policy level, national and provincial governmental bodies advocate reducing students’ excessive workload and changing completely the practice of evaluating the educational quality of primary and secondary schools purely on the basis of students’ test scores and the school’s percentage of students entering a higher level of schooling. At a recent conference, Limin Liu, the vice president of the Chinese Ministry of Education, emphasized the following key points.

First, the core of education reform is to improve the quality of education.

Second, the keys to the improvement of education are teachers and principals, who play a crucial role in the development of education, constituting the key factor for ensuring equity and quality in educational provision; thus, the idea of ‘educator-type principal’ should be promoted. This new term refers to a new type of principal who not only possesses knowledge of educational management, but also is an educational expert (e.g., instructional leader).

Third, school leaders, teachers, and parents should understand the new implications of improving education quality, paying attention to a student’s all-round holistic development rather than focusing only on test scores (Liu, 2013).

In spite of what policymakers advocate, much of the intended reform policy for well-rounded quality and equity is yet to be fully implemented (Gu, 2010). Test scores, especially those for the national college entrance examinations, remain the main benchmarks for school performance. If the nationwide entrance examination system remains intact, it is likely that it will be difficult for educational decision makers and principals, themselves, to implement many of the educational reform initiatives (Chu and Cravens, 2012).

Methodology for the study

We used a policy perspective to reveal the processes by which China formulated its MOE 2013 principals’ standards. To address the first research question, we summarized a line of previous inquiry that applied interpretative analysis to the research and policies of the evaluation of principals. A historical approach was used for the analysis, which involved a process of systematically examining a phenomenon from the past to gain a better understanding of the foundation of present institutions, practices, trends, beliefs and issues in education (Gall et al., 2007). The chief criterion for document selection was relevance with regard to principal evaluation policies in China. We collected material from both primary sources (e.g., policy documents issued by the Ministry of Education) and secondary sources (e.g., referenced publications such as journal articles). This descriptive and analytical approach illuminated the evolution of principal evaluation policies at specific historical times in China. We used content analysis to analyze the two documents, in order to compare the MOE 2013 and ISLLC 2008 principal standards. In addition, a corpus of previously published documents and studies was reviewed to illustrate the guiding principles that were used to guide the development of these standards.

Research question 1: What was the process for policy development of the 2013 China MOE principal standards?

The process for establishing standards is a critical part of the review because process addresses the validity of the standards. The process for establishing professional standards for principals unfolded in earnest in China in approximately 2010, some 20 years later than the similar movement in the United States. In terms of intent and policy perspective, China looked to other countries for the development of their standards while maintaining national cultural and contextual influences.

Rationale for development of principal professional standards in China

The Chinese MOE 2013 principal standards were developed for the following main reasons. First, the enactment of professional standards for principals is the global trend. As mentioned earlier, many countries have recently issued professional standards for school principals. Chu and Jia (2013) acknowledged that the Chinese MOE 2013 is the result of learning from other nations such as the USA, the UK and Australia. In this international context, China should have its own standards for principals (Hu, 2013).

The release of the principal professional standards, together with the newly released teacher professional standards (MOE, 2012), constitutes a comprehensive national education standard system.

Second, the development of the Chinese MOE 2013 demonstrates the need to implement some important educational policies such as The National Guidelines for Medium- and Long-Term Educational Reform and Development 2010–2020 (hereafter called The Guidelines) (MOE, 2010). The Guidelines, which were released in July, 2010, and which are regarded as a milestone in the history of education in China (Gu, 2010), set out a program for educational development in China from 2010 to 2020, with the primary goals of promoting equity and improving quality. According to The Guidelines, the MOE 2013 proposes ideas of professionalization of principals and ‘Educators Managing Schools’. It also proposes specific objectives for setting the qualification standards for principals, promoting individual professional growth and enhancing the management level of the principal.

Third, enactment of the MOE 2013 helps to facilitate the process of principal professionalization and solve practical educational problems. As The Guidelines state, despite the progress China has achieved over the past 30 years with regard to education reform, the Chinese education system was neither able to meet public and societal expectations nor could it satisfy the escalating national demand for talented workers. Currently, many problems exist, such as outmoded educational ideas, out-of-date curriculum content of little relevance to students’ life experiences and social reality, excessive workload of student academics, and a decline in students’ physical health (Zheng et al., 2013). It is believed that the key to solving these problems and improving education quality is the quality of teachers and principals.

However, there is an acute shortage in China of trained personnel who are innovative, practical, or possessing multiple qualifications or skills. Ai (2013) summarized specific problems regarding Chinese principals as follows: (a) the professional qualities of the principal cannot completely meet the objective requirements of education reforms and development; (b) the principal’s occupation orientation is not clear and professional awareness is lacking; and (c) principals frequently regard themselves as officials – they do not regard the principalship as a profession, nor do they regard principals as professionals who need high-quality competencies. In sum, professional educational leadership is still a new concept (Zhao and Wang, 2007). As a result, issuing and implementing the MOE 2013 becomes a top national priority. The MOE 2013 will be the basis of principal credentials, selection, performance evaluation and professional development. It is intended to enhance principal professionalization in China and promote the development of Chinese principles toward expert principals until the objective of ‘Educators Managing Schools’ is achieved.

The development of the Chinese MOE 2013 meets the need for a system of management and evaluation of school principals. Over the past decades, national and local Chinese educational departments have issued selected documents regulating school principals’ qualifications and job requirements. For example, in 1991 the Chinese MOE enacted The National School Principal Qualifications and Job Requirements (hereafter called The Requirements), which includes three criteria with regard to principal jobs: political qualities, job-related knowledge, and job abilities. Job abilities requires six further, specific abilities: formulation of plans for the school development, carrying out ideological work and moral education, guiding the school’s overall teaching and other professional work, collaboration with school faculty and community members, carrying out research, and possession of written and oral communication skills. The Requirements provides a basis for selection, appointment, evaluation and training of primary and secondary principals; however, these regulations are macro-level requirements without concrete expectations of professional behaviors and so they are difficult to implement in practice (Chen and Xu, 2010). This makes it necessary to develop a new set of standards and criteria for principals.

Stages in the development of China’s principal professional standards

The development of the Chinese MOE 2013 involved three phases (Ai, 2013; Chu and Jia, 2013; Hu, 2013): research and preparation, text drafting, and field consultation. In this section, we provide an overview of each phase.

Phase one: Research

In April 2008 the Chinese MOE commissioned the National Teacher Education Society to carry out a research project on professional standards for primary and secondary school principals. The team members were mostly from the Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences, East China Normal University and Shanghai Normal University. They conducted a comprehensive international review of professional standards for principals from three groups of countries and regions. The first group included Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan; the second group included the USA and European countries, among which the UK was the focus; and the third group included only Japan, because there are many documents available dealing with Japanese professional standards for principals (Chen et al., 2011).

In addition, the team conducted empirical investigations (surveys and in-depth interviews) involving some 20,000 primary and secondary school principals from 11 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities (e.g., Beijing, Shanghai, Jilin Province, and Guangdong Province). In order to conduct the international review and the empirical investigations, the China MOE divided the team into two groups and formed two separate frameworks of professional standards for principals, each having a different focus. Finally, the two frameworks were combined to form the final draft, which was submitted to the MOE.

Phase two: Policy text drafting

In February 2012 the Department of Teacher Education of the Chinese MOE refined the basic ideas, main contents and implementation suggestions arising from Phase one and formed a first draft policy text. From May 2012 the MOE held several conferences, inviting presidents of normal universities, educational experts, well-known school principals and agency representatives, including those in charge of training school principals, to solicit feedback and refine the policy text draft. As a result a further draft document, for comments, was produced.

Phase three: Extensive consultation

From July 2012 the Department of Teacher Education of the MOE sought opinions about the draft document of principal professional standards from the other related departments of the MOE, academics and local administrative departments of education across the nation. These departments submitted more than 300 separate suggestions for revisions. This was not a one-off exercise but, rather, an iterative process that took place throughout the development of the standards. Based on these processes, the Exposure Draft for public comments was developed and released in late December 2012. The MOE formally issued the MOE 2013 in February 2013.

The process in which the Ministry of Education engaged aligns with policy development recommendations. Table 1 provides a summary of the key findings and relevant literature supporting the specific processes used in China in the development of the standards.

Table 1.

Summary of key findings: principal standards development process in China.

Stage	Key finding
Research and preparation	A review of international standards for principals to include countries in the East Asian region, the United States, and Europe Empirical investigations on current practices in 11 provinces, municipalities, or regions Development of a standards document based on international review and empirical investigations.
Policy drafting	Draft of policy based on review and standards document developed in the research and preparation phase Review of draft by stakeholders and development of a draft for more extensive review
Extensive consultation	Draft policy sent out for review by departments in the Ministry of Education, academics at institutions of higher education, and practicing professionals

Research question 2: What are the guiding content principles of the 2013 China principal standards as compared with the 2008 US ISLLC standards?

Principles for principal standards in China

In an effort to establish standards having construct validity related supporting evidence, the developers of the standards in China focused on the principles that should underpin the development of principal standards. China looked to Western nations to establish these principles, while the USA looked to the changing roles of principals in US schools and how this changing role affects principal standards.

In the initial stages of the development of professional standards, Chinese scholars discussed what principles should be followed. Xu (2010), who was later involved in the development of the Chinese MOE 2013 Standards, proposed three principles upon which principal standards and evaluation must rest: A principal is an educational leader; a principal is a life-long learner; and a principal is an innovator. In addition, Zhang (2009) pointed out that China lacked relevant theoretical frameworks as well as practical experience and he thus proposed three guidelines for the development of Chinese principal standards based on the experience of the National Standards for Head Teachers of the UK, which was issued in 1997 and revised in 2004.

The methodological principle of ‘roles first and qualities second’, should be followed, which means that principal standards must be based on the roles that a principal should take and then stipulate the corresponding knowledge, abilities, dispositions and behaviors that the principal should have.

The standards should have extensive adaptability. As national standards they should be applied to different school stages (e.g., primary and middle schools) and various school environments (e.g., urban and rural schools). Uniformity and general requirements are the bases upon which local educational departments develop their flexible guidelines.

The national standards should be feasible and operable. The structure of the 1997 UK principal standards were too complicated to be used in practice and thus were revised in 2004. Zhang emphasized the need to avoid items that were too complicated and abstract.

While some scholars (e.g., Zhang, 2009) stated that China lacked relevant theoretical frameworks for the construction of Chinese principal standards, other scholars (e.g., Chu and Cravens, 2012) held that the theoretical foundation could be the theory of principal professionalization, which can be interpreted in two ways. For an administration team, the occupation represents all members’ efforts in reaching the following eight objectives for professional recognition: (a) extensive specialized training; (b) solid knowledge system; (c) clear and widely accepted code of ethics; (d) high standards of practice; (e) rigorous qualification requirements; (f) professional autonomy; (g) relatively high social esteem and income level; and (h) established professional organizations (Chu and Cravens, 2012: 188). For principals themselves, professional development can be interpreted as principals’ efforts to gain professional knowledge and skills, and aspirations for continuous personal growth and career advancement. Individual professional development is the foundation for collective occupational progression toward professionalization (Chu and Jia, 2013).

The official document of the Chinese MOE 2013 reflects the results of scholarly discussion regarding what principles should be used to develop professional standards for principals. The first part of the document is called ‘basic principles’, and includes five specific principles:

Morality first. A principal insists on socialist direction of running a school, carries out the education policy of the Communist Party of China, integrates the socialist core value system into the whole process of school education, performs the rights and obligations according to the law; a principal loves education and school management, and has a social sense of responsibility and a sense of the mission to serve the country and its people; a principal should be ethically moral, be impartial and honest, and care for teachers and students.

Talents cultivation orientation. A principal regards promoting the healthy growth of students as a starting point and foothold of all schoolwork.

Leading the development. First, a principal accepts the responsibility of leading the development of schools and teachers; second, a principal promotes all-round development of students and develops all aspects of a student’s personality.

Emphasis on abilities. A principal combines theories of educational management with practices to create good school cultures, help teachers develop their professional skills, and seeks effective ways for school and personal improvement.

Life-long learning. A principal takes learning as an inexhaustible driving force of improving his or her job quality, keeps pace with the times and grasps the trend of education reforms and development domestically and abroad (MOE, 2013).

Principles for principal standards in the United States

As with China, the school principal’s role in the USA has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. In addition to the largely managerial responsibilities of the past, contemporary US principals are expected to lead their schools with the ultimate goal of increasing student learning while helping staff to grow professionally. What was once a largely managerial role has evolved to reflect the necessity of both the dual – and often overlapping – concepts and practices of management and leadership. During the last few years there have been concerted efforts to improve the evaluation of school leaders through development of uniform standards specifying the essential knowledge and skills needed by effective principals. In addition, principal evaluation lies at the center of current education policy reform, which mirrors a rethinking of the critical roles and responsibilities of principals.

According to Joseph Murphy, chair of the Interstate School Leadership Licensure Consortium (ISLLC), further to the 1996 standards being first developed the nature of the principalship changed significantly, from primarily a managerial role to a combined role of management and leadership. The need to develop a set of standards to guide the work of school administrators evolved as the seeds of criticism began to take root in the thinking about educational administration. In the 1800s, the initial phase of school administration was based on ideas derived from philosophy and religion. Good principals were equated in status with good men with eternal wisdom and moral judgment. In the first half of 20th century, the thinking of school administration was re-energized and refined by new ideas coming from the corporate sector and the scientific management movement. The technical and mechanical aspects marked the new framework of school administration (e.g., management by objective, total quality management, benchmarking, and 360-degree evaluation). Following World War II a quest to unpack the functional knowledge base required by principals has emerged, to replace the ideas that school were best managed according to an empirical business model that relied on knowledge blocks of behavioral and social science (Murphy, 1998; 2003; 2005). In this context, Murphy and colleagues grounded their ISLLC work on an extensive review of the literature in effective school administration to codify administrative competencies and craft the standards.

The following principles set the direction and priorities during the development of the ISLLC 2008 standards (CCSSO, 2008a, p. 8).

Reflect the centrality of student learning;

Acknowledge the changing role of the school leader;

Recognize the collaborative nature of school leadership;

Improve the quality of the profession;

Inform performance-based systems of assessment and evaluation for school leaders;

Demonstrate integration and coherence; and

Advance access, opportunity, and empowerment for all members of the school community

In addition, four principles were used to develop the Performance Expectations and Indicators for Educational Leaders, the companion guidebook of ISLLC 2008 (CCSSO, 2008b, p. 12):

Performance-based and observable for varied uses, such as stakeholder discussions of policies, programs, assessments, and personnel evaluation;

Based on research that assists with selecting effective practices and interpreting and implementing them effectively in specific contexts;

Organized to engage users about major ideas and issues in responsibilities of education leaders (ehe expectations should not be a linear progression or checklist.); and

Educative and to be used for dialogue and to challenge current assumptions, deepen and share understanding, and lead to continued learning about what education leaders need to know and do.

Comparisons of the 2013 China MOE standards with the 2008 US ISLLC standards

To compare China MOE 2013 Standards and the 2008 US ISLLC Standards, we conducted a crosswalk between the two documents, revealing as a result interestingly underlying the similarities and differences. The ISLLC 2008 standards provide insight and high-level guidance about the responsibilities, functions and traits of school and district leaders. The United States was chosen as a basis for comparison due to its 20-year history in standards development which began in the mid-1990s (Canole and Young, 2013). In China, the educational system also tapped into evaluation of principals as a lever to promote school leadership and quality teaching and learning. In 2013, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued a guideline that mapped out six standards and 60 indicators to professionalize the school principalship.

In order to examine the similarities and differences between ISLLC 2008 and the Chinese MOE 2013 we conducted a two-tiered analysis. The first tier included a coarse grain analysis focusing on the text of the main standards, with both sets having six standards. The second tier analysis involved a more in-depth examination, or fine grain analysis, of the congruence at the indicator level. The general findings regarding the similarities and differences are as follows:

The two countries share more similarities at the standard level;

More differences exist at the indicator level; and

Some apparent similarities at the standard level have different connotations at the corresponding indicator level.

Similarities

Table 2 provides a general crosswalk between the six ISLLC 2008 standards and the six 2013 MOE standards. As Table 2 shows, it appears that in a general sense the MOE 2013 standards and the ISLLC 2008 standards share common expectations of principals. A major similarity is that both guidelines developed explicit professional standards for principals, which cover the domains of instructional leadership, organizational management, school culture, communication and community relations, and professionalism.

Table 2.

Crosswalk between ISLLC 2008 standards and MOE standards.

ISLLC 2008	MOE 2013
1. Facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by all stakeholders	1. Setting school development plan
2. Advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth	3. Engaging in curriculum and instructional leadership
	4. Facilitating teacher professional development
3. Ensuring management of the organization, operation, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment	2. Creating a nurturing school culture
	3. Optimizing internal organizational management
4. Collaborating with faculty and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources	6. Adjusting to external contexts
5. Acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner	NA
6. Understanding, responding to, and influencing the political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context	6. Adjusting to external contexts

One reason for the similarity is that the Chinese MOE 2013 is a result of learning from other countries including the USA (Ai, 2013). In addition to the general standards, both sets of guidelines provide a number of key skills for each standard for more detailed, specific and clear expectations for performance. The ISLLC 2008 identifies 31 ‘functions’ that principals are expected to accomplish within the set of six performance standards; the MOE guidelines outline key knowledge, skills and practices that principals should demonstrate for each standard. Both documents state explicitly that the proposed standards are meant to inform various levels of the educational leadership system, from preparation and induction to professional development and performance evaluation. This move toward professional standards is largely derived from the integration of two lines of inquiry – research on principal effectiveness and practice of principal evaluation – which have coexisted for decades. However, it was not until recently that both the burgeoning research on the characteristics of effective school leaders and the role principals play in raising student learning outcomes were used to inform the policies and practices of principal standards and evaluation.

From Table 2, it can be seen that there is no MOE standards match for ISLLC 2008 Standard 5; however, if the indicator level is considered, MOE Item 42 (‘A principal should be honest, fair, self-disciplined, and dedicated’) addresses the same content as ISLLC 2008 Standard 5.

Differences

A closer examination of the indicators of the two sets of guidelines revealed a variety of unique characteristics. First, the ISLLC 2008 indicators are more technical in nature than the MOE 2013. For example, words and phrases such as ‘assess’, ‘evaluate’, ‘monitor’, and ‘collect and use data’ appeared many times in the 31 functions indicating action. Although the comparison shows these technical functions have corresponding indicators in MOE 2013, the indicators in MOE 2013 do not have the connotations of systematic and scientific processes of identifying problems, collecting and analyzing data, and making decisions accordingly. This distinction appears to reflect the recent accountability policies in K-12 education in the USA, which have imposed more responsibility on the principals for quality instructional programs and student learning. This finding is consistent with the findings of the survey results of the 2009 and 2012 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Programmes for International Student Assessment (PISA). The PISA study indicated that principals in the USA are more likely to use assessment of students to group students for instructional purposes, to compare the school to district or national performance, to monitor the school’s progress from year to year, and to compare their school with other schools. In contrast, the principals in Shanghai (as one cohort of China principals) were found to be more inclined to use student assessments to make judgments about teachers’ effectiveness than the US principals (OECD, 2010; 2013).

Second, the MOE 2013 reflects steps being made by China’s central government toward loosening its control over curriculum and assessment. For instance, historically the government had complete control over the development and selection of textbooks. Under new guidelines intended to stimulate innovation and creativity, teachers at the provincial, local and school levels have more autonomy to develop and select textbooks. The MOE 2013 conforms with the intention of establishing a ‘quality-oriented’ rather than a ‘test-oriented’ system. Interestingly, within the MOE 2013 principal standards there are specific indicators for skills in promoting the development and implementation of school-based curriculum, reducing the burden of academic work, and protecting the time designated for PE, music, arts and other extracurricular activities (e.g., Indicator 27: ‘Effectively co-ordinate state, local, school curriculum, ensure the implementation of the national and local curriculum, and promote the development and implementation of school-based curriculum to provide students with a rich variety of learning resources’; and Indicator 28: ‘Implement the curriculum standards of compulsory education, reduce the heavy academic burden on students, do not increase the difficulty of the course indiscriminately, do not occupy hours reserved for sports, music, art and Young Pioneers activities, and ensure that students have one hour of sporting events per day on campus’). There are also specific expectations for principals to organize research activities targeted at innovative teaching and learning and establishing an evaluation system that uses multiple data sources rather than just student test results and promotion rate (e.g., Indicator 23: ‘Respect teachers’ experience and wisdom, and actively promote the reform and innovation of instruction’; and Indicator 30: ‘Organize school-based research activities for reforming instruction, establish and improve an education and teaching evaluation system that promotes overall development of students rather than one-sided pursuit of student test scores and graduation rates’). While the MOE 2013 provides autonomy for curriculum and assessment, the ISLLC standards reflect the well-entrenched standards-based education movement accompanied by state assessments. Although specific standards and assessments are not stated in the ISLLC standards, principals’ responsibilities for ensuring a high quality instructional program based on state standards together with the use of assessment data to improve the instructional program are reflected in Standard 2.

Third, our comparison indicated that the principal evaluation guidelines in China place more emphasis on, and are far more specific about, principals’ instructional leadership knowledge and skills. For instance, the MOE 2013 has specific skill indicators for organizing teachers for peer observation and lesson study, conducting school-based action research, and ensuring every teacher receives no less than 360 hours of professional development over the span of 5 years (e.g., Indicator 29: ‘Establish protocols for teacher peer observation and critique of lessons, conduct in-depth classroom observation, provide guidance on teacher’s instructional practices, and the hours of classroom observation per semester should not be less than the number set by the local education administrative department’; and Indicator 37: ‘Establish a sound system of teacher professional development, promote school-based research on classroom teaching, develop a mechanism that integrate teaching, research, and training, ensure each teacher receive no less than 360 hours of training over five years’). Prior research (e.g., Sun et al., 2012) found that principals in China are more likely to engage in core activities of instructional leadership (such as direct interactions with students about their learning, observing classrooms, and providing feedback to teachers) than their US peers. The fact that MOE 2013 designated one standard for ‘Leading Teacher Professional Development’ (Standard 4) highlights the emphasis on the principal’s role on instructional leadership.

Major differences between China’s MOE 2013 and the US ISLLC 2008 can be summarized thus:

The ISLLC 2008 standards are more technical in nature, focusing on education processes and systems for formative purposes while MOE 2013 focuses on summative purposes of education processes and systems;

The MOE 2013 provides for greater autonomy in instructional leadership related to curriculum and assessment while ISLLC 2008 maintains a well-entrenched focus on standards and accountability; and

The MOE 2013 provides specific guidance on instructional leadership knowledge and skills while the ISLLC 2008 provide overarching guidelines.

Similarities at the standard level having different connotations

Interestingly, the comparison revealed that some similarities at the standard level have different connotations at the corresponding indicator level. Table 3 provides some examples.

Table 3.

Examples of indicators unique to China.

ISLLC 2008	MOE 2013	Examples of indicators unique to China
Standard 2. Advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth	Standard 3. Engaging in curriculum and instructional leadership	Indicator 28: Reduce student overburdened academic workload, cannot arbitrarily increase the difficulty of curriculum difficulty, cannot use P.E., music and art class times for other uses, and ensure that students do one hour of physical exercise in school every day.
	Standard 4. Facilitating teacher professional development	Indicator 39: Reinforcement on Teachers’ Morality Construction. It is forbidden for teachers to have the corporal punishment or disguised corporal punishment on students. It is forbidden for teachers to have classes with extra pay.
Standard 3. Ensuring management of the organization, operation, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment	Standard 2. Creating a nurturing school culture	Indicator 11: Put moral education in schools in the first place of students’ all-round education; Indicator 13: Love Chinese traditional culture and attach great importance to its contemporary significance and educational value; Indicator 18: Organize elaborate campus festivals. Design traditional festivals and school-featured ceremonies for educative activities with specific themes; Indicator 20: Strengthen the school cultural construction, provide necessary support for activities organized by the school Communist Youth League, the school Young Pioneers and other school societies.
	Standard 5. Optimizing internal organizational management	Indicator 47: Listen carefully to opinions of the school general party branch concerning major school policy decisions and give full play to the political core function of the school general party branch; Indicator 49: Schools cannot collect any fees in violation of State regulations, nor can they seek profits by selling commodities, services, etc. to students or doing so in disguised form.

As can be seen in Table 3, at the standard level, ISLLC 2008 Standard 3 matches MOE Standards 2 and 5. However, there are indicators that are unique to Chinese principals such as the following:

Number 11: ‘Put moral education in schools in the first place of students’ all-round education’;

Number 13: ‘Love Chinese traditional culture and attach great importance to its contemporary significance and educational value’;

Number 18: ‘Organize elaborate campus festivals. Design traditional festivals and school-featured ceremonies for educative activities with specific themes’;

Number 20: ‘Strengthen the school cultural construction, provide necessary support for activities organized by the school Communist Youth League, the school Young Pioneers and other school societies;¹

Number 47: ‘Listen carefully to opinions of the school general party branch [referring to the Chinese Communist Party] concerning major school policy decisions and give full play to the political core function of the school general party branch’; and,

Number 49: ‘Schools cannot collect any fees in violation of State regulations, nor can they seek profits by selling commodities, services, etc, to students or doing so in disguised form’.

Similarly, ISLLC 2008 Standard 2 matches MOE Standards 3 and 4. However, there are indicators that are unique to Chinese principals such as the following:

Number 28: ‘Reduce student overburdened academic workload, cannot arbitrarily increase the difficulty of curriculum difficulty, cannot use PE, music and art class times for other uses, and ensure that students do one hour of physical exercise in school every day’; and

Number 39: ‘Reinforcement on Teachers’ Morality Construction. It is forbidden for teachers to have the corporal punishment or disguised corporal punishment on students. It is forbidden for teachers to have classes with extra pay.’

In sum, the unique Chinese contents of principal standards can be summarized as: (1) emphasis on morality, not only for individual principals (Number 42), but also for referring to the functions that a principal performs in moral education for students (Number 11) and in reinforcement of moral construction for teachers (Number 39); (2) emphasis on a principal’s function in addressing practical problems existing in China such as Numbers 28, 49 and 30; and (3) emphasis on the political core function of the Chinese Communist Party in school policy decisions (Number 47) and the role of the Communist Youth League and the Young Pioneers (Number 20).

Our comparisons indicated that some standards are universal across societies and some are unique to specific cultures. For example, one of the fundamental principles of MOE 2013 is the requirement to implement the educational policies of the Chinese Communist Party and develop the core values of socialism. This requirement arises from the cultural heritage of Confucianism according to which Chinese school leaders commonly consider it their obligation to serve the government and consider school as a place to nurture the talents needed for the prosperity of the state. Although the trend toward professionalization and a research-based conceptualization of the role of school leader may not be reversible, the deeply embedded traditional belief of loyalty and conformity with the hierarchical order of the political authorities retains profound implications in how Chinese school leaders think and function (Cravens, 2008).

Although both MOE Standard 3 and ISLLC 2008 Standard 2 emphasize instructional leadership (as shown in Table 2), the specific indicators have different foci and we need to understand their contextual meanings. For example, one indicator of MOE Standard 3 is ‘Establish an evaluation system that promotes students’ holistic development and do not only seek student test scores and the proportion of students entering the higher school’. Furthermore, indicators of ISLLC 2008 Standard 2 include ‘Develop assessment and accountability systems to monitor student progress’ and ‘Monitor and evaluate the impact of the instructional program’. These indicators emphasize an evaluation system and monitoring of students’ development, but they suggest different reform directions between China and the USA: China, at the policy level, is moving away from an extraordinarily heavy reliance on test scores; and the US, at the policy and practice level is moving toward reliance on standardized measures to monitor student progress and make high-stakes decisions regarding student evaluation as well as educator evaluation. This contextual understanding of leadership standards is important because it could help avoid misunderstandings when we discuss professional principal standards in different countries.

Discussion

In this study our objective was to analyze the Chinese 2013 principal professional standards and compare them to those of the US ISLLC 2008 in order to illuminate key aspects of MOE 2013 in China. Differences as well as similarities have been found in the two countries regarding professional standards for principals. The similarities may be the results of shared beliefs across national boundaries; and the differences might have their roots in national policy, historical events and cultural influences (Soh, 2014). Although we synthesized these documents in the previous sections, it may be helpful to highlight some insights in this section in order to offer a more in-depth understanding of the development of the standards and their subsequent implementation in practice.

The value of comparative analyses

The overall content in the Chinese principal professional standards reflects an open attitude to learn from other countries, as seen from the very beginning of this article. We would argue that this is a constructive way for a country to think globally, and other comparative researchers have advocated this approach (e.g., Alexander, 2000; Baker and Wiseman, 2007) during the continuing globalization movement. Our analyses of the two standards revealed that China may learn how to validate its standards as was the case development of principal standards in the USA. If we compare the processes for the development of the Chinese MOE 2013 to those of the ISLLC 2008 in the USA, we find that the development of Chinese standards has been significantly influenced by the national government’s will-power and national policy factors and, thus, the Chinese document has ‘top-level design’ (i.e., top-down) characteristics (Ai, 2013). In contrast, ISLLC 2008 was developed through the efforts of professional organizations that brought together experts in the field and state departments of education. While the national government did not play a role in the design and establishment of these standards, it subsequently has played a role in the adoption of evaluation systems for principals that have evidence of validity and reliability through US federal programs such as Race to the Top.

Policy implications for the USA and China

At the policy level, China and the USA seem to be moving in opposite directions with regard to linking student achievement scores to the appraisal of teachers’ and principal’s performance. We recommend that researchers and policy makers in both countries should think about this pattern carefully and consider the results and implications of these policies in both countries. The Chinese government documents call for an evaluation system in which students’ test scores are not the sole evaluation criterion. In reality, despite reforms initiated by the central government to downplay the role of standardized tests, student test scores remain important because of the cultural tradition of schools and teachers having their reputation based on the achievement of their students, and the reality of severe competition among students for promotion into better schools (Zeng, 2005). Furthermore, despite policy to de-emphasize student assessment, China continues to emphasize high stakes student testing, especially for placement in middle schools, senior high schools, and college admissions.

By comparison, in the USA, there is a recent tendency to use student academic progress and achievement, and include quantitative metrics, to evaluate teachers’ and principal’s performance and to hold teachers and principals accountable. In the current standards-based accountability movement, the focus has shifted from an evaluation system that measures the processes of education to an evaluation system that measures both the processes of education and the results of education (i.e., student outcomes).

Implementation considerations for China’s MOE 2013

In the literature related to change in education, researchers inevitably conclude that educational organizations develop policies and make plans for implementation but fall short on fidelity of implementation (Fullan, 2006; Hargreaves, 2007). For successful implementation of the requirements within the Chinese MOE 2013, we recommend the following four guidelines:

The current standards should be applied to principals and vice principals of K-9 schools and could be improved in the implementation process.

All levels of educational departments should use these standards as criteria to develop principals’ team construction and management, give full play to the leading and guiding roles of these standards, maintain rigorous standards of school principal qualifications, and improve the system of selection and appointment of school principals.

Higher education institutions and principal training agencies should use these standards as primary guidelines for principal cultivation and training, paying attention to professional features of principals, strengthen the construction of relevant disciplines and majors, and design sound principal cultivating training courses and reform teaching methods.

The standards should be set up as the basic norm of principal professional self-development. Principals should be actively engaged in self-evaluation and principal training to enhance their level of professional development.

Implications for principal evaluation systems

Academically, Chinese researchers have begun to discuss how to establish a new and more rigorous evaluation system based on the MOE 2013 standards (Chu and Jia, 2013; Hu, 2013). Similarly, researchers in the USA are interested in the implementation of principal evaluation systems in the United States which include measures of student academic progress and achievement. While China looks to move away from such a focus on test scores, the USA is moving toward this initiative: China and the USA are at different points in the evolution of principal standards and evaluation practices. The processes undertaken in both countries can be mutually instructive in developing and using standards in the implementation of principal evaluation systems.

Summary

As researchers in China and the United States who share interests in the development and implementation of principal standards and evaluation systems, we sought to gain a more in-depth understanding of China’s relatively new MOE 2013 standards for principals. We chose to compare the China MOE 2013 standards with the US-based ISLLC 2008 standards to establish a point of reference for an explication of the standards for principal evaluation in China. Our historical review and analysis revealed that China followed a systematic process for the development of the standards, relying on standards development processes in other countries, including the USA. In addition, our comparative analysis emphasized that instructional leadership is a focus for the evaluation of principals in both China and the USA. However, we noted the influence of the cultural context in the development and the final product of the principal evaluation standards in China. As two countries that are globally interdependent, comparing critical processes related to education, such as principal standards and evaluation, serves to illuminate key ideas and approaches that may be of benefit to both nations.

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

We wish to express our appreciation to the anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this manuscript. While reviewers’ comments typically benefit the quality of a manuscript, in this instance the reviewers’ collective recommendations resulted in a significant reframing of the article. We appreciate the thoughtful and attentive feedback as we worked to develop a quality contribution to the field of education.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the 2013 Humanities and Social Science Fund Project of the Ministry of Education of China (Project Approval Number 13YJA880051) entitled Research on Effects of Implementing Teacher Performance Pay and How to Establish an Indicator System of Teacher Performance Evaluation.

Note

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