Analysis of the Current Situation of Research Management in Middle School Education in Domestic China and Overseas ()
1. Introduction
The outline of the national medium- and long-term program for education reform and development (2010-2020) pointed out that the vast number of educational and scientific researchers should attach great importance to real problems of studying education reform and development. Conducting educational and scientific research activities is a positive response to the above policy. To ensure and improve the quality of basic education, educational research is the forerunner and educational research management is the method. Middle school educational research workers are an important part of the vast educational research team and the quality of basic education is related to the basic quality of future citizens. Middle school is an important turning point in basic education. Feasible and effective management of educational research is the necessary means and only way to improve the concept and teaching methods of middle school education, improve the overall quality of middle school teachers, and promote the development of the overall level of middle school education.
This thesis provides theoretical support for the construction and development of China’s localized management mode of high school education and scientific research by sorting out the current situation of research on the management of high school education and scientific research at home and abroad.
2. The Connotation of Educational Research Management in Middle School
Secondary school education of scientific research management is conducted by the relevant staff of the school, in order to promote the standardization and sensitization of school education scientific research, improve the quality and level of scientific research of school education and arouse the enthusiasm of the Chinese education workers to carry out the education of scientific research, through the coordination and service management, that to plan, organize, lead and control the education scientific research activities (Pan, 2005).
3. Research Status of Domestic China Middle School Education Research Management
Searching with the theme “Management of Middle School Education and Scientific Research”, the literature retrieval of the CNKI scholar database in the past 20 years shows that there are 12 pieces of relevant literature, including 10 journal papers, 1 master degree thesis, and 1 conference paper. It can be seen that domestic China research on the management of educational research in middle schools is extremely few, also indicating that there are serious deficiencies in the effective implementation and research of the management of educational research in middle schools in China.
Some domestic China scholars have found that the educational research management system of middle schools at all levels mainly has the following problems: 1) Defects in teaching and research management system; 2) Lack of teaching and research management institutions; 3) Lack of standardization in teaching and research management evaluation; 4) Lack of teaching and research funds; 5) Low quality of teaching and research management personnel; 6) narrow understanding of teaching and research; 7) Teaching research into exam-oriented research; 8) Insufficient utilization of expert resources; 9) Low efficiency of teaching and research management (Chen, 2005; Xu, 2006). In particular, there is a serious lack of awareness of the management of education and scientific research of middle school administrators (Shi & Xiao, 2014); Ordinary middle school teachers have little knowledge of scientific research and lack of standard application, poor teaching and research ability, lack of relevant ethics and morality (Guo, 2017); In terms of results, there are generally inferior scientific research achievements and ineffective transformation (Ren, 2016).
Some researchers have proposed some suggestions and strategies to the current situation of teaching and research management in middle schools. Fengjie Qiao (2003) firstly proposed the Triplet education and scientific research management mechanism including Guidance-Power-Constraint, and further proposed ideal state of change to promote the middle school teachers to “scholar”, “research”, “expert” teachers, but the reality of middle school teachers is far away; A middle school educational scientific research mode is put forward by Jilian Lan (2009), which is the integration of independent research and collective research and the integration of learning-practice-research, in order to construct the management system of educational scientific research; Some researchers propose to formulate effective educational research management system from the perspective of providing good external conditions for educational research (Zhang, 2008; Wei, 2011; Ran, 2018), however, there is a lack of practical and practical operation for the funding source and policy basis of external support conditions; As it is pointed out by Jueming Lan, and Chunya Shang (2011), due to historical and realistic factors, township middle school principals generally lack the concept and consciousness of education and scientific research management. It may be the most important strategy to improve awareness of education and scientific research management of township middle school principals at the government level to strengthen policy formulation and strengthening of government order.
In summary, domestic Chinese research on the management of secondary education research is relatively lacking, the overall research level is low, there are many limitations and deficiencies, mainly in the following aspects: 1) Most of the researchers come from higher normal colleges and universities, and few researchers are elementary educational administrative departments and middle school teachers. There is a phenomenon of separation between theory and practice in the research, and the research results cannot solve the practical problems in middle school education; 2) the research method is single and most of them are qualitative researches; 3) the depth of the research content is not enough, there are many repetitive studies and quite few pioneering studies.
4. The Current Situation of Research Management in Foreign Middle School Education
From the end of the 19th century, most foreign middle schools began to become places to carry out educational scientific research. Britain firstly carried out action research related to education throughout the country, and then gradually spread to continental Europe and the United States and other regions. The related effect is that many middle school teachers participate in educational research activities, and action research on educational activities has published a large number of research results. In fact, without the implementation of educational research management, it is impossible to realize the rise of educational research activities and the emergence of achievements in middle schools (Yu, 2004). Research on the management of scientific research in middle school education can be summarized into the following aspects:
Setting up full-time educational and scientific research organizations. To effectively organize and carry out educational and scientific research activities, the middle school established a full-time educational and scientific research institution, which is responsible for the management of educational and scientific research work of the school. For example, middle school societies in Japan set up a scientific research management organization similar to the teaching research association, in which each teacher undertakes the research work of relevant subjects separately, and the research results are jointly published to encourage teachers’ enthusiasm in educational research. British secondary schools will set up educational research management organizations such as “School Development Group” to guide and manage educational research activities (Zhao & Dong, 2004).
Adopting collective cooperation education and scientific research activities. Collective cooperation is a common mode of cooperation for middle school teachers and university teachers. This model makes the management of middle school education and scientific research achieve great development and success in Europe and The United States and other regions, and improves the scientific research benefits. On the one hand, it improves teachers’ educational and scientific research ability and, on the other hand, it improves the benefits brought by educational and scientific research activities (Suter, 2012).
The educational and scientific research activities of middle schools positively adapt to the characteristics of middle school education and develop corresponding methods and paradigms, which mainly have the following characteristics (Castillo & Hallinger, 2017): 1) According to the actual situation of the school, educational and scientific research activities are mostly aimed at solving practical and urgent problems. Most of them adopt the paradigm of applied research, and the research results are practical and operational. 2) Educational and scientific research activities are mainly carried out at the medium and micro level, that is, various activities are mainly carried out inside schools. 3) Educational research activities are mainly directed in the direction of action research. As the subject of research activities, teachers are also the object of research activities. In scientific research activities, teachers must use various research methods flexibly and appropriately to achieve research objectives.
The management of educational research in middle schools mostly adopts the combination of school-based management and cooperative management. School-based management refers to “managing oneself”, while cooperative management refers to recruiting external experts to guide and manage the research work of the university (Connolly, James, & Fertig, 2019). The so-called school-based management means that the educational and scientific research institutions of middle schools do not have the nature of power, but have the power to independently decide and deal with all their own problems. While maintaining its independence, the school-based management of middle schools cannot be done without the support of external institutions. In terms of education and scientific research, the education bureau and other government agencies, as external factors, will coordinate and deal with the interests of middle schools and other levels. At the same time, they will help middle schools in the collection and analysis of scientific research data and provide support to the relevant needs of middle schools. As another important external factor, within the framework of cooperative management mode, colleges and universities provide financial support and professional guidance for the educational and scientific research activities of middle schools, carry out various forms of educational and scientific research training for middle school teachers, and promote the development of the educational and scientific research ability of middle school teachers.
In general, through the research and analysis of foreign middle school education and scientific research management, it can be found that: 1) The level of middle school education and scientific research can improve the quality of middle school education; 2) Only when the scientific research management concept and method are improved, can the educational scientific research level of middle schools be improved; 3) Strengthening the cooperation between middle schools and universities and other external institutions will greatly promote the development of secondary education and scientific research management (Beycioglu, Ozer, & Ugurlu, 2010).
5. Countermeasures and Suggestions
There have been a lot of achievements in the research on the management of middle school education research abroad, but the research in domestic China is relative lacking, especially for the disadvantages of the research depth and application. Therefore, future research can try to introduce various management theories including knowledge management theory to carry out localized research, and the application research is more important. Specifically, applied research and quantitative research should be strengthened in research methods, combining with the actual situation of domestic middle schools to carry out research, in order to solve the practical problems in middle school education and teaching as the goal. For research forms, we should learn from foreign advanced experience and adopt the mode of cooperation between universities and middle schools to carry out educational research activities in middle schools.