Chinese and Canadian Teachers’ Perspectives on Educational Policy Changes Technical Report of Results from the Survey of Canadian and Chinese Teachers’ Attitudes towards Policy Changes in their School Education Systems

Westbury, Ian; Huang, Xuefeng

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Description

Title

Chinese and Canadian Teachers’ Perspectives on Educational Policy Changes Technical Report of Results from the Survey of Canadian and Chinese Teachers’ Attitudes towards Policy Changes in their School Education Systems

Author(s)

• Westbury, Ian
• Huang, Xuefeng

Issue Date

2021-08-10

Keyword(s)

• Canada
• China
• Teachers' attitudes
• Education policy
• Comparative education
• Survey

Geographic Coverage

• China
• Canada (Ontario)

Abstract

This survey of Canadian and Chinese teachers perceptions of educational change is a component of the Canadian Social Science and Humanties Research Council-supported Reciprocal Learning Partnership Project (RLPP). The RLPP was built around a set of sister-schools in several Chinese cities and in Toronto and Windsor, Ontario as well a teacher-education project involving schools in Windsor and Chongqing. The goal was to secure an understanding of the differences and similarities in the attitudes of the sister-schools' respondents towards recent policy changes, and in particular internationalization, in their jurisdictions. A convenience sample of 407 teachers (Canada, N=149; China, N=258) from schools in Beijing (2 schools), Shanghai (2), Chongqing (5), Changchun (1), Anshan (1), and Windsor, Ontario (7) responded to the survey. The survey itself was built around a set of Likert scales probing the buzz-words associated with contemporary education policy-making. We found that, overall, there was considerable similarity of the responses of the two populations—with the modal response being between “Neutral” and “Agree.” However, within the limitations of this narrow band of responses we see two kinds of pattern in the findings. On the one hand, the Chinese teachers were, overall, more positive and less discriminating in their support for what their systems were doing than were their Canadian counterparts. On the other hand, when we compared each set of respondents’ priorities with their perceptions of the impact of their systems’ policy-making in the areas reflected in the questionnaire’s sets of buzzwords, the differences were striking. The Canadian respondents reported greater congruity between their priorities for the school and classroom and for sectorial and system policy-making and their perception of the impact of their system’s policy-making on these areas than did the Chinese respondents. We also asked the respondents to indicate their priorities for new policies and the areas of impact of their systems’ policy-making. Predictably both sets of respondents prioritized the buzzwords or slogans in the questions that referred to the transactional aspects of teachers’ work; Student engagement and Curriculum content and objectives along with Educational equity were the highest ranked buzzword.

Type of Resource

text

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Sponsor(s)/Grant Number(s)

Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

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