Initial Education Of Secondary Teachers In China And Spain: A Comparative Study Under An International Perspective

The achievement of full rates of enrolment in primary education in China and Spain has progressively led to national policies that include junior secondary education as basic and compulsory. This has gradually opened access to senior secondary education to the majority of the population. At present, the access of the masses to senior secondary education is assumed as the regular path for most students, though it is not part of compulsory education.This progression entails a large demand of teachers for both levels, and a pull between quality and quantity. Due to teacher shortages and lack of time to prepare them, teachers' initial education programmes have traditionally been of low quality and uneven standards, varying with each university. This dynamic of noxious feedback between teachers with low preparation, a high social demand for teachers and scarce structures of teacher education, has for years affected the importance that national policies placed on initial teacher education for secondary teachers, as well as the status of teachers and the professionalization of the role.Over the past few decades, besides dealing with this development and expansion, secondary teachers'initial education has had to confront numerous challenges in both countries. Teacher education programmes have had to adapt to modern technologies and to the changes within their own societies, to globalization, international organizations' agendas, quality assessments or countries' membership of supranational organizations hence needing to adhere to certain requirements and principles, and so forth. On one side, Spain became a member of the European Union and reformed its tertiary education to match the European Higher Education Area guidelines. On the other, China started opening up to the international field and modernized its whole education system.In addition, secondary teachers' initial education has had to reinvent itself and cope with a new labour paradigm where the transmission of knowledge is only a negligible part of teachers' responsibilities. In this setting, teaching professionals are bound to develop certain professional competencies necessary to manage a wider range of abilities, knowledge, tools and strategies. Nevertheless, official programmes and social and education needs often develop in uneven rhythms. The combination of these elements makes the topic of this dissertation a relevant issue in current national, supranational and international policies and agendas.In the complexity of this context, this research pursues three general objectives: General Objective 1:To understand and analyse, under a contextualized framework, the main elements of secondary teachers' initial education systems in two countries: China and Spain. General Objective 2:To detect convergences and divergences between Chinese and Spanish secondary teachers' initial education systems, as well as possible international trends and guidelines in secondary teachers' initial education. General Objective 3:To propose possible reforms in the Spanish model of teachers' initial education in the context of the international trends detected.In particular, the study was carried out using a comparative methodology to explore how each country plans their programmes in terms of institutions and paths, curriculum design, professional competencies, qualifications and student selection.Besides this, the research analyses both countries' tendencies, and triangulates the results with supranational and international quality guidelines.Qualitative and quantitative indicators, mainly from primary sources, were organized following the steps of the comparative education method (identification of the problem and hypotheses, delimitation of the research, description and interpretation, juxtaposition and comparison, and application). The organization of the comparison categories, parameters and indicators is shown in the methodology chapter.The thesis is organized in eight chapters revolving around the General Objectives, following a symmetrical structure between chapters, sections and subsections. The first chapter introduces the topic, justifies its significance and offers a general overview of the structure of die thesis. The second explains the methodological approach, establishing the hypotheses, research objectives and questions. The third analyses the main notions and key elements of the study, reviews relevant literature and links this study to teachers' status, professionalization and identity, intrinsic components of the teaching profession. This chapter also tackles the concept of quality from an international and supranational point of view.The fourth chapter describes the general context of each country, detailing the general educative system, secondary education system, role of families, students and teachers, and the academic relationship between the two countries. Chapter Five defines and applies the key concepts of the specific units of analysis. It starts with a historical introduction on teachers' initial education in both countries and examines contemporary dilemmas.Then, the study discusses secondary teachers'initial education, including a section on legislation and a section for each of the comparison categories in relation to secondary teachers'education (institutions and paths, curriculum design, professional competencies, qualifications and student selection). Finally, it includes a selection of international and supranational quality indicators regarding the problem of the study.Chapters Six and Seven present and contextualize the juxtaposition of the research when contrasting data from both national contexts and international plans.On one hand, Chapter Six tackles general settings and highlights the divergences and convergences in teachers' working conditions, not only in terms of salaries, but in tasks and time distribution, and the time students invest in education and their academic results. For example, some of the findings illustrate the great challenges for China to manage such a large territory and population, with lower salaries for its citizens and where salaries for its teachers principally depend on the geographical area. In contrast, Spain has higher average and minimum salaries, but a higher unemployment rate. Despite these difficulties both nations allocate a similar percentage of their GDP to education.On the other hand, Chapter Seven focuses on secondary teachers'initial education and mainly stress a high level of harmonization in Spain and high flexibility in China. Both countries show a tendency towards the increment of pedagogy credits in the curriculum and the conceptualization of teachers' initial education as a first step to further harmonizing their career development. Both countries give high relevance to teachers' competencies and in both nations, student selection is only linked to the students'academic results at a previous stage. The findings also demonstrate how most of the national policies in these two countries are aligned with international and supranational suggestions.The last chapter presents a summary of the findings in terms of conclusions, including a practical application with recommendations for Spain. After the conclusions and application is a section on the potentials and limits of the research as well as some proposals for further research agendas.The practical application of the findings is categorized in terms of the comparative categories of the research. For example, in institutions and paths the study recommends higher flexibility to open the career to different profiles but stresses the importance of keeping the degree in tertiary' education; in curriculum design, the proposals are on rethinking national guidelines, increasing the practicum and length of the degree, and the reorganization of subjects and fields; in professional competencies, for the sake of consistency between education legislation and teachers'professional careers, dimensions that could be encouraged are, for instance, lifelong learning, teachers'identity and social responsibility; in relation to teachers'qualification, the study proposals are to take into account other professional experience or reconsidering the possibility to grant a specialization in one of the two stages of secondary education; and in the last section, the selection of students for secondary teachers'initial education programmes, the proposals stress more comprehensive dynamics that could help to select appropriate candidates and to create a pool of teachers with a strong identity.