From Administrative Control To Professional Leading

With the rise of the knowledge age and continual advancing of social transformation, our life is undergoing a fundamental change. Correspondingly, education which is closely related to human's existence and life must experience a series of changes and transformation. Today, the focus of education is attempting to transform from commonality and quantity to individuality and quality. The important mission of education in the new era is to pay attention to human's uniqueness and individual's potential development. Teaching, as the main practice carrier of education, should also be transformed from knowledge-centric to students'development, emphasizing on individual's differences and creativity, and diverse teaching practice is a prerequisite to achieve this functional shift.Of course, no change in teaching practice is a spontaneous result. It depends not only on the initiative and creativity of teachers and principals, corresponding reforms in teaching management system, should also to be needed. The focal point of reform is from emphasis on standardized and uniform teaching to innovative and diverse teaching. The occurrence of changes in school teaching management is a result of many forces, including the transformation of teaching practice, the new curriculum reform as an important opportunity, decentralization of school management and the prominence of professional power. These forces make us re-examine the value orientation of school teaching management, no longer obsessed with control, but towards professional support, services, leading for teachers. External control-based management can only bring qualified teaching, but can not create a true high-quality teaching. High-quality teaching can only be achieved through arousing teachers'inner enthusiasm and awakening teachers'potential creativity. Therefore, the construction of a new instructional leadership and management which emphasizes on professional leading based on teaching's professionalism is a much-needed research issue. The basic character of teaching practice is an intrinsic foundation for teaching management reform. Teaching practice is a human's practical activity for human beings, which has a distinctive characteristic of wisdom, ethicality, emotion, and personality. Whether the cultivation of teaching wisdom, achievement of ethical purpose, or emotional interaction and communication in teaching process, they all must be built on teachers'individuality quality. Therefore, managers must advocate teachers'diverse choices, encourage them to practice their own ideas and concepts, and take great efforts to reduce all kinds of oneness and unity of thoughts and actions. Of course, the dual nature of teaching management is also the internal basis of control-based type to leading-based type. As to value orientation, it is a unity of achieving things and human development; as to content composition, it is a unity of routine management and innovative management; in practice, it is a unity of generality and individuality; as to the effect, it is a unity of technique and ethicality.The fundamental malpractice of traditional teaching management exists in its bureaucratic orientation, specifically, including rationalistic management philosophy, control-oriented management purpose, administrative management style, and formalistic management means. Bureaucracy-oriented teaching administration leads to deep-rooted sense of managerialism and control complex, even resulting in the phenomenon that executive power intervenes professional power. Traditional teaching management is based on hierarchical system, which emphasizes on subordination not innovation, unity not individuality, so it is a form of control-oriented management. If we blindly use control-based management, abnormal type of teaching practice will occur, such as dependent practice, operational practice, homogeneous practice and repetitive practice, as teaching professionalism is increasingly prominent, the basic trend of school teaching management reform is to explore control-based to leading-based instructional leadership and management system.The implementation of school teaching management reform not only requires us to make wise judgments on complex teaching reality, but also scrutinize thinking assumption behind behaviors, relocate boundaries and function of executive power, respect for the professional power, and reform the existing system and environment which prevents the release of teachers' professional potential. Managers should not only establish growing-person consciousness and management logic based on education, but also continually shape influences of moral and professional authority, simultaneously, exploring possible reform paths by means of organizational structure, rules and norms, and cultural development. Furthermore, try to find professional power outside schools to provide supports, help and guidance for teachers. However, the change process of teaching management doesn't proceed smoothly without a hitch, and it will encounter many difficulties and obstacles, which bring lots of challenges for managers'wisdom, ability and quality.Human is the most important element in teaching practice reform. We must associate structural change with thoughts and ideas changes, otherwise, the ultimate goal of change will be difficult to achieve. This requires building a corresponding instructional leadership power inside school, so as to support, serve and lead the improvement and development of teaching practice. Instructional leadership is a multi-agent behavior, which more emphasize senses of responsibility, creativity and cohesion of all the school members for the innovation and development of teaching practice. Principals'instructional leadership, subject leadership, individual teachers'leadership are three basic forms of instructional leadership power. Of course, the generation of instructional leadership power needs all kinds of support, involving reconstruction of power relations in schools, administrative power to support teaching, meanwhile, instructional leadership agents also needs to continually develop and improve themselves.Teaching practice is a productive-creative practice. Only relying on external norms, regulations and training can not bring real improvement of teaching quality, which ultimately depends on teachers'inner quest and pursue spirits. Only when teaching management transforms from control-based to leading-based, can teaching no longer be established and standardized, but demonstrating autonomous and innovative feature. Now, the most important is to encourage teachers to create their own teaching ideas, promoting diverse teaching innovation by means of rich thoughts.