From External Accountability to Potential-Oriented Development: Quality Assurance System Building for Teacher Preparation in China

Abstract

Purpose: From the perspective of performance standards-based teacher education, this article aimed to address progress and challenges of China’s teacher preparation quality assurance system. Design/Approach/Methods: This review is based on policy review and case studies. Retrieving to the existing research literature, this research sorted out the policies related to the quality assurance system for university-based teacher preparation in China. Furthermore, this research selected teacher preparation programs from five cases of teacher education colleges of varied levels and used interviews to analyze their attitudes and measures. Findings: The analysis reveals that the quality system for university-based teacher preparation in China’s educational institutions has gone through two main stages: the building stage and the improvement stage. The internal policy tension in China’s teacher preparation quality assurance system is primarily centralized in the dissociation among and segmentation between the relevant standards for teacher education. There is a distinction between “soft” and “hard” policy standards, and reforming the teacher certification testing system also brings a test-oriented bias and a separation of evaluation from education. Institutions of higher education are expected to follow the path of potential-oriented development and concentrate on cooperative partnerships between local communities and schools so as to nurture innovative, professional future educators with high quality. Originality/Value: This article provides a comprehensive and detailed policy analysis as well as empirical evidence for the quality assurance system for university-based teacher preparation in China.