Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Educational Management, Volume 28, Issue 3.

A very warm welcome to this issue three of 2014 which is a special issue brought together by the guest editor Prof Dr Miantao Sun of the Research Institute of Educational Economics and Administration of Shenyang Normal University. The seven papers are written by Prof Dr Sun and distinguished colleagues from China viz Xianjun Liu from the Research Institute of Science and Education, Wuhan; Yingxiu Yang from the Faculty of Education in Northeast Normal University, Jilin, Changchun; Hengfu Wen from the Faculty of Education and Science, Harbin; Yule Jin of the Faculty of Education in Southwest University, Chongqing;Jocelyn Wong of the Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; and Cuiping Kang of the Institutional Research Centre, Shenyang Normal University.

In the first paper, Xianjun Liu argues that it is very significant that Chinese Universities give great importance to the characteristics of how their schools run, particularly since the implementation of an undergraduate evaluation system. The establishment of school-running characteristics requires timely and regular self-evaluation and societal evaluation to determine its progress, problems and direction of travel. The paper gives a number of examples of Chinese schools going down this route and describes Wenhua College's evaluation process.

Yingxiu Yang writes on the principal's transformational leadership in school improvement. The paper aims to contribute to the experience and ideas of transformational leadership, not only for the principal who wants to improve his or herself, but also for the school at a critical period of improvement. The paper describes the process in development and concludes that the principal's leadership is the key to prompt school development. The process itself consists of the embryonic stage, formative stage and mature stage.

Hengfu Wen submits a piece on the nature, characteristics and ten strategies of a learning organisation, using Senge's work as a basis. The ten effective strategies outlined in the paper are: leaders first, leadership transition and the learning leadership team; to promote learning and personal mastery; the double loop learning systems thinking and the improvement of mental models; to develop organisational capacity, learning teams and deep dialogue; to promote the practice of learning;to enhance the effectiveness of learning; to establish the “three in one” mode of work; to aim at sustainable development;to promote the whole assessment process; and to establish the leading group.

Chinese multi-cultural education is the subject chosen by Yule Jin. The paper aims to set a framework to reform multi-cultural education in China so as to construct a homogenous educational model. The model is proposed with four main characteristics– a “bottom up” mode; a bilingual education mode; a localisation building mode and a social action orientation mode.

Jocelyn Wong has developed a paper on teachers’ perceptions of writing publications in China. The study aims to examine how teachers in China regard the purpose of writing up research papers and the impact on their professional practice. It also investigates facilitating factors in preparing and writing publications. The findings show that teachers perceive the production of publications as serving both an instrumental purpose of career advancement and a developmental purpose of enhancing their individual professional competency, which in turn improves the quality of the teaching profession through knowledge transfer.

Cuiping Kang writes on the research trend of Higher Education in China during the previous ten years. The paper analyses 250 academic theses and reports in the field of Higher Education which shows that academic research and theoretical standards have been improved. Academic standards have been improved by degrees in higher pedagogy in the last ten years. Problems remain,however, in the papers and reports selected such as title, key words, proposing the issue and the research method and conclusions.

Prof Miantao Sun, Guest Editor, is responsible for the final paper on 30 years of educational management in China. His main conclusions are: that the relationship between disciplines should be clarified; the results of disciplinary research should be brought into full play; and the professional level of disciplinary research should be further improved.

Brian E. Roberts