Sampling

This section introduces the research samples, including the chosen region of Shanghai, the chosen institutions, and the chosen participants. This section also describes why and how I chose these samples.

4.5.1 Chosen Region – Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China. The city is one of four municipalities with the status of a province (the others are Beijing, Tianjin and Chongqing), with a total population of over 23.8 million, of whom 14.2 million are permanent residents, and 9.6 million are temporary (Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, 2013). In 2012, Shanghai’s GDP was US Dollar 13,525 per capita. While its population and land account for 1% and 0.06 % of the nation respectively, it contributes one-twentieth of China’s income (Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, 2013). Shanghai is a major financial centre and the busiest container port in the world. Located in Eastern China, Shanghai sits at the main mouth of the Yangtze River Delta. The municipality borders Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces to the west, and is bounded to the east by the East China Sea (See Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2 Location of Shanghai in China

Shanghai is administratively equal to a province and is divided into seventeen county-level divisions: sixteen districts and one county. Shanghai is divided into three parts (see figure

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4.3): Puxi, Pudong and Chongming Island. Eight districts make up Puxi (Huangpu West Bank), the older part of urban Shanghai on the west bank of the Huangpu River. These eight districts are collectively referred to as the core city of Shanghai: Huangpu District; Xuhui District; Changning District; Jing’an District; Putuo District; Zhabei District; Hongkou District; and Yangpu District. Pudong (Huangpu East Bank), the newer part of urban and suburban Shanghai on the east bank of the Huangpu River, is governed by Pudong New District. Seven of the districts cover suburbs, satellite towns, and rural areas further away from the urban core: Baoshan District; Minhang District; Jiading District; Jinshan District; Songjiang District; Qingpu District; and Fengxian District. Chongming Island, an island at the mouth of the Yangtze, is governed by Chongming County. As of 2012, these county-level divisions are further divided into the following 209 township- level divisions, which include 108 towns, 2 townships, and 99 sub-districts. Those are in turn divided into village-level divisions of 3,850 neighbourhood committees and 1,632 village committees (Shanghai Office of Local Chronicles, 2013).

Figure 4.3 Districts in Shanghai

Shanghai is a more feasible region for this study than other Chinese regions. Below are four reasons as to why I chose Shanghai as a case study.

Firstly, Shanghai is the largest city by population in China, and the largest city by population in the world. It has been a hot spot for economic development, and now has the highest GDP per capita of all Chinese cities (Mao and Liu, 2012). It has undergone the

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most recent reforms and is also a model for reforms in other places of China. Therefore it is able to offer the most up-to-date data.

Secondly, Shanghai has one of the best education systems in China. It is the first city in the country to implement 9-year compulsory education. The 2010 census shows that out of Shanghai’s total population, 22.0% had a college education. In 2009 and 2012, Shanghai twice took the top spot in the latest round of the most comprehensive assessment of the world’s state schools. According to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, Shanghai’s students, including migrant children, scored highest in every aspect (Maths, Reading and Science) in the world (OECD, 2010a; OECD, 2013). Shanghai has become an important reference for other places within the global education policy field (Sellar and Lingard, 2013; Sellar and Lingard, 2014). Sellar and Lingard claim that public-funded schools in Shanghai have the highest educational quality in the world. This implies that this quality is the result of high quality of the teachers which in turn is the result of the high quality of teacher education.

Thirdly, Shanghai is a major centre of higher education in China with over 30 universities and colleges. Some of China’s most prestigious universities which focus on teacher education and which have a sound teacher education system and quality are based in Shanghai, including East China Normal University (ECNU) and Shanghai Normal University (SHNU).

Finally, Shanghai is undertaking reforms and innovations in teacher education as a pilot for the country. Shanghai is the first city in mainland China to establish the system of Newly Qualified Teacher Registration, and a one-year Induction Scheme, as well as a number of professional development schools for school teachers, student teachers and probationer teachers (Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, 2011b).

4.5.2 Chosen Initial Teacher Education Institutions

Initial teacher education in Shanghai is currently conducted in six higher education institutions, i.e. ECNU, SHNU, Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), Xingjian College (XC), Tianhua College (TC) of SHNU and XCEH of SISU. They can be divided into different types of sector. The first four institutions are in the public sector and

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the last two are independent. The first three are universities and the second three are colleges. The first two are mostly in charge of the training of post-preschool teachers for Shanghai, and the last three are mainly responsible for the training of nursery teachers for Shanghai (See Table 4.1).

Title of Institution Description of the institution

East China Normal University (ECNU)

A national normal university and a comprehensive university.

The only national level normal university located in East China, and one of the four 985 universities in Shanghai.

Under direct auspices of the Ministry of Education. Sponsored by prestigious national projects 211 and 985.

Shanghai Normal University ( SHNU)

A local provincial level normal university and a comprehensive university that provides the majority of graduate school teachers for Shanghai city. A key university of Shanghai City, under the direct auspices of Shanghai.

Shanghai International Studies University

(SISU)

A comprehensive university that has successfully developed a diverse and distinctive mix of disciplines with language and literacy as its pillar. Under direct auspices of the Ministry of Education and Shanghai, sponsored by the prestigious national project 211.

Shanghai Xingjian College (XC)

A higher vocational college that trains teachers and future technical employees. Under the direct auspices of Zhabei District, Shanghai. The College possesses one major discipline – Pre-school Education.

Tianhua College of SHNU (TC)

An independent comprehensive college governed by Shanghai.

The College possesses three major disciplines—Pre-school, Primary and Arts Education.

Xianda College of Economics and Humanities of SISU (XCEH)

An independent comprehensive college governed by Shanghai. The College possesses two major disciplines—Pre-school Education (established in 2010) and Musicology.

Table 4.1 Institutions for initial teacher education in Shanghai

Four institutions from the six listed above were chosen for this study: ECNU, SHNU, XC and TC. Even though Shanghai International Studies University is a comprehensive university in Shanghai, teacher education in this university makes up only a small percentage of the university’s programmes. There are fewer than one hundred students (at most one third training to be school teachers), only one programme of teacher education, and fewer than ten teacher educators specialised in training English school teachers. This situation is not appropriate to represent the whole picture of teacher education in the

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universities in Shanghai. In the light of ECNU and SHNU being the main teacher education providers, I removed SISU from the research sample list. Likewise, the Education Department was newly established in SCEH at the time of selecting my sample, and the scale of the department is smaller than XC and TC, so XC and TC were chosen instead of SCEH. Brief features of the chosen four initial teacher education institutions are introduced, as follows.

East China Normal University (ECNU)

ECNU is a typical representative of the national level normal universities that are directed and sponsored by the Ministry of Education of China and serve each of the five geographical zones of China. There are only five top normal universities of this type.10

This type of university is responsible for both pre-service and in-service teacher education. Due to historical reasons, they are actually comprehensive universities but are entitled ‘normal universities’. Like other comprehensive universities, they have different subjects covering humanities, social sciences and natural science, but teacher education is still one of their main tasks.

Founded in Shanghai in October 1951, ECNU is one of the most prestigious universities in China and is sponsored by the national programmes, Project 211 and Project 985 (See Glossary, p. 221 and p.222, respectively). At present, the University has 21 schools and colleges, and 5 advanced research institutes, with 58 departments offering 70 undergraduate programs in humanities, education, science, engineering, economics, management, philosophy, psychology, law, history and art. Apart from these, the University also offers 26 doctoral programmes from the State Primary Disciplines, 38 Master’s programmes from the State Primary Disciplines, and one professional doctoral programme, 17 professional Master’s programs and 18 post-doctoral mobile research stations. As the first normal university founded in the country after the establishment of the PRC, ECNU has kept teacher training as one of its main features since its establishment. A large number of outstanding teachers and educationalists have been trained for the nation here (East China Normal University, 2014). Apart from the core teacher preparation by the College of

10 _{Including ECNU, which is located in East China; Beijing Normal University, which is located in North China;}

Northeast Normal University, which is located in Northeast China; Central China Normal University, which is located in Central China; Shaanxi Normal University, which is located in Northwest China, and Southwest University, which is located in Southwest China.

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Education, many departments train teachers in the specific subject. For example, mathematics teachers are trained by the Department of Mathematics in the College of Mathematics, and history teachers are trained by the Department of History in the College of History. As the University students come from different regions around the country and there are issues of Hukou (Shanghai’s Permanent Residential Status, see Glossary, p.220), some of them do not work in Shanghai. Due to this, ECNU is not the main teacher training base for Shanghai.

Shanghai Normal University (SHNU)

In contrast to ECNU, SHNU is the only provincial level normal university in Shanghai, even though SHNU has a similar system of teaching and research to ECNU. SHNU has 17 colleges and 104 research institutes. By September 2012, SHNU had trained over 150 thousand school teachers and leaders which is 70% of the number of teachers in Shanghai (Shanghai Normal University, 2014b). Like other provincial-level normal universities, SHNU has its own teacher education system, which is divided into different departments; for example, the department of English in the Foreign Language College trains English teachers for basic education. In the same way, political teachers are educated in the Department of History in the Social Science College. So it is a typical example of the province-level normal universities for regions across China.

Shanghai Xingjian College (XC)

Shanghai Xingjian College is the only higher vocational college for training nursery teachers under the sponsorship and management of the Zhabei District Government, Shanghai. The Pre-school Department is the only department for teacher training in the college, and in it there are 37 teacher educators who teach different subjects, such as pre- school theory, art education and teaching methods etc. The department has over ten years’ experience and has trained over 3,000 nursery teachers who work in the different districts around Shanghai. This accounts for over half of the number of nursery teachers in Shanghai (Shanghai Xingjian College, 2014).

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Shanghai Normal University Tianhua College (TC)

Tianhua College was jointly established by SHNU and Shanghai Tianhua Education and Culture Investment Company in 2005 with the approval of the Ministry of Education. As an independent college with a number of full-time undergraduate programmes, Tianhua College enrols students and confers undergraduate diplomas and degrees independently but the teaching and administrative work is carried out in accordance with the objectives of education and curricula determined by SHNU (Shanghai Normal University Tianhua College, 2014). Tianhua College has the only Department of Education which carries out three programmes: pre-school education, primary education and art education. These 3 to 4 years of training lead to undergraduate diplomas and degrees for their graduates, and most of them work in nurseries and primary schools.

ECNU and SHNU are universities that train the majority of school teachers for Shanghai, in particular primary and secondary school teachers. They typically represent national and regional levels of pre-service teacher training institution that are not only for initial teacher education, but provide some in-service teacher education for Shanghai. Shanghai Xingjian College and Tianhua College are examples which allow us to explore the teacher educators who train pre-school and primary school teachers in the college sector.

4.5.3 Chosen In-Service Teacher Education Institutions

As described in Chapter 2 (See p.29), in-service teacher training was mainly the responsibility of the teacher training schools in each district/county. Shanghai has 17 teacher training schools: 16 district teacher training schools and 1 county teacher training school, of which 8 are located in the core city and 9 are located in the suburbs. Each district/county has one teacher training school for managing, organising and training school teachers. As the regular work of a teacher training school is governed by the Institute of Teaching Research, which is an affiliated sector of SMEC, teacher training schools are actually sub-institutes of the Institute of Teaching Research. Teaching researchers, who work in teacher training schools, are responsible for training in-service school teachers, observing classes and giving feedback, writing examination papers and assessing the results for schools within their districts (See Glossary, p.223).

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The online survey invited responses from the different teacher training schools across Shanghai; thus all the teacher training schools in Shanghai were involved in this study. This allowed me to obtain abundant responses from all the teacher training schools and abundant quantitative results.

In terms of qualitative data collection, the participants who worked in Putuo and Songjiang (District) Teacher Training Schools were chosen as representatives of in-service teacher education institutions for this study. Putuo Teacher Training School (PTTS) is located in the area of the core city of Shanghai, and Songjiang Teacher Training School (STTS) is located in the suburb of the city. Therefore, I chose Putuo Teacher Training School as one of the eight teacher training schools located in the core city while I chose Songjiang Teacher Training School as one example of the nine teacher training schools in the suburbs of Shanghai. Another intention of choosing these samples was to understand whether there was a similar weight of professional development for in-service teacher educators across Shanghai.

I finally rejected the Shanghai Teacher Training Centre as an example of an in-service teacher education institution, even though I had collected data from this institution, as it is actually an organisation for training management of SMEC, rather than a teacher training organisation. There are only 24 staff in the Shanghai Teacher Training Centre, and only a few of them are involved in teacher education as teacher educators.