Case Study On Leading Educators Who Run The Educational Institutions In Shanghai Since Reform And Opening

A group of Leading educators with local perspectives emerged right after China’s reform and opening, which led China education a new ear for development. They hold the diversity of managerial philosophy and practical forms; have reached great achievements with significantly positive influence. After analyzing the subjectivities, focus and time range, routes and angles of running educational institutions among the plenty cases, Duan Lipei, Lv Xingwei, Gu Lingyuan and Liu Jinghai have been identified as the main case study subjects for this research. Their managerial philosophy and practice are profound and significant; stand out among different types in different periods during the development history of Shanghai’s educational reforms.Principal Duan Lipei led an edge-cutting and continuous school reforms in Shanghai Yucai High School, which helped Yucai High School reach top rank in Shanghai’s schools; Yucai Experience became one of the best school reform models and had influenced the nationwide school reforms twice, in 1960s’ and 1980s’. Lv Xingwei led long-term holistic school reforms in tens of schools nationwide with diversified educational experiment and long-term research projects. He explored a new school-running model, Holistic Reform Model, which has significant and far-reaching influence on schools in Shanghai and nationwide. Gu Lingyuan’s abundant researches and experience on math instructional reforms brought successful school reforms and instructional quality rising up for schools in Qingpu District. Further he created the educational practical theory and teacher professional development model, known as Action Education, which was based on his Qingpu experience. This has great demonstration significance on dual-construction between educational theory and practice. Principal Liu Jinghai came up with theoretical thought about "Success Education ", also designed, organized and implemented "Success Education" experiments. He helped not only Zhabei No.8 school raised up from a low performance school to a recognized school; but also many other low performance schools to improve by this creative model, known as commissioned training (Wei tuo pei yang). Nowadays Success Education is getting promoting in other Asia countries and worldwide.After studying four cases, combining shanghai culture and Patterns of Culture, the dissertation found that the common characteristics among these modern Shanghai-style educators. They all have broad horizon, edge-cutting ideas and encourage to take actions. They all have flexible thinking pattern, open mind to carry the international exchange. They all highly devoted to fight for education equity and equal love for every students; to pursue the quality by the standards. They are all practical problem-oriented, focus on the reality of reform. Those Shanghai-style leading educators’ educational thoughts, ethos, school-running ideal and practice models are the most valuable treasure for education field in Shanghai, and the whole country.