Analysing On The Educational Researches For The Educational Policy-Making

Educational policy-making is a kind of practical action which has an important effect on education. Each education policy should be based on the serious procedure. And educational research is one of the most important works for it. Since 1978, the Chinese government highlighted that educational policy-making should be based on the educational research, though it is difficult to do that. This article is a case study on the reform on admission to junior high school in city R. The aim is to explore the characters of the educational research for the admission policy in China.It is different from western countries to analyze the educational research for the educational policy-making in China. The researchers in western countries focus on the interaction of the researchers and policy-makers or the model of the research utilization. But in China, the educational research is the developing field. So the article includes threefold research problems: Firstly, are there any educational researches for the educational policy-making? Secondary, if the first answer is'yes', do these researches measure up? Thirdly, if the first answer is'yes', are these researches utilized by the policy-makers?On the basic of the case, the article analysed this question on two dimensions: epistemology dimension and politics dimension.In the dimension of epistemology, it may well be asked: how did the researchers analyze the problem in this case? Did the questions reflect the really social problems? How did the researchers choose the research methods? Did the methods solve the problems effectively?As for the research questions, the researchers regarded this reform as the institutional reform in the education. So they focused on three questions: to search for another admission approaches to replace the examination one; to search for the approaches to carry out the reform; to search for the approaches to improve the level of the equilibrium between the different schools. With the development of the reform, researchers turned to other two questions: how teachers teach the uneven students in the same class; how the officials deal with the discussion of the value behind the reform.As for the research methods, the researchers tended to use the experience method. The education managers gained the indirect experience by collecting documents and visiting, and collected the direct experience by quasi-experiment and survey. And they communicate the experience by meeting. In practice, the experience method is contracted. So the validity and the reliability of the experience rest on the self-fulfill of the methodology and the ability of the researchers. Lack of the evaluation tool will bring some trouble.In the dimension of politics, it may well be asked: Who joined the research project for this admission reform? Is the composition of the researchers proper? How did the researchers communicate with each other? Is the communication model good for problem-solving?As for the composition of the researchers, researchers came from different career. The educational official paid dominating role in this case and the researchers of other careers were invited by the managers. The official has three advantages: abundance practice experience, convenience to get the information and the integration of the policy-making and educational research. But they also have three disadvantages: the limited energy, career position and lack of the evaluation on the study.As for the communication model, the precondition is disadvantage: the professional educational researchers attach to the official in policy and the educational research is still developing profession. Although the official in city R tried to invite the researchers to join in, the informal communication model is still a big problem.The research foundation should be evaluated by the validity of the problem-solving. Based on the case, the article tries to reconstruct the researches for the admission policy reform. In conclusion, the article calls for the policy-making based on the educational research.