Research On The Measurement Model For School Specialization

The specialization of basic education schools plays an important role in promoting student's personality development,educational quality improvement and educational balanced development,which is the trend of the reform and development of basic education worldwide,the strategic choice of basic education in China as well.“the National Mid and Long-term Reform and Development Plan(2010-2020)” clearly emphasized on school specialization and diversification.However,although school specialization has been proposed officially since the beginning of 1990 s,people still have not really realized its importance,and have very unconsistent understanding its development and evaluation,also there are big gaps between the understanding of school specialization home and abroad,many problems such as formalization,superficialization and utilitarianism are existing.Meanwhile,for the measurement of school specialization,scientific,reliable and operable tools and standards are lack,and there are many problems like emphasizing on qualitative evaluation but ignoring quantitative evaluation,emphasizing on evaluation results but ignoring evaluation process.This study argues that measurement is the key point of promoting scientific and orderly school specialization,which can make basic education schools form a relatively scientific and unified understanding of what is school specialization,how to conduct school specialization,and how to evaluate school specialization,and make regions and schools diagnose and see the level of school specialization.Therefore,there are important practical meanings and theoretical values for constructing the measurement model for school specialization.The project “Construction and Application of Measurement Model for School Specialization” was sponsored by National Social Science Fund in 2016,which also proved the importance of this research field in humanities and social science research.This study worked out the research framework,based on drawing on lessons from many other measurement model constructing methods in humanities and social science,that was defining the concept of school specialization firstly,then constructing the measurement index system for school specialization,developing measurement scale for school specialization,and developing measurement model for school specialization,applying and verifying the scale and model lastly.Combining qualitative research methods and quantitative research methods,literature research,questionnaire survey,interview,and some data analysis methods like exploratory factor analysis,structural equation model,variance analysis,regression analysis,etc.were comprehensively used,especially 146 experts were surveyed and interviewed,4726 subjects who were administrators and teachers from basic education schools participated in the questionnaire surveys.The main processes and conclusions included the following four parts.First of all,reconstructing the concept of school specialization.This was the difficulty point of the research.Combining the perspectives of comparison,organization and experts,the study analyzed the similarities and differences in the understanding of school specialization between China and western countries,examined the operation process of the system of school specialization,analyzed the views on the concept of school specialization from 52 experts including heads of the provincial level administrative department of education,researchers from colleges and educational research institutes,and principles from basic education schools,all of whom were famous nationwide.On that basis,we believed that the essence of school specialization was the basic strategy of school improvement and the process which schools develop their own special features or advantages in special fields,according to their adapting to internal reality and external environment.School Specialization takes school quality improvement as the essential objective,takes specialized curriculum system as key pillar,takes school culture as the value premise and deposition form,takes organization and management in the aspects of principles leadership,teachers development,system operation as basic assurance.Secondly,developing measurement index system for school specialization.Based on the understanding of the essence of school specialization,we identified the principles and methods for developing measurement index system for school specialization,comprehensively using top-down and bottom-up approaches,combining the theoretical research and experts survey we made before in the process of developing the concept of school specialization,we constructed the measurement framework for school specialization,then solicited opinions of 45 famous experts,at last determined the measurement index system including three dimensions and seven indicators.The three dimensions were adaptability of the mind system to internal reality and external environment,the consistency between the practice and mind system,and superiority ofthe effects.And the seven indicators were schooling philosophy,orientation and target,curriculum system,organization and management,student development,teacher development and school development.Thirdly,developing the measurement scale and model for school specialization.This was the key point of the research.We developed the measurement scale for school specialization based on the concept and index system of school specialization;revised the scale through soliciting comments and suggestions from experts;got the measurement scale and model which were structurally stable,with three tests and exploratory factor analysis;got the final measurement scale and model for school specialization with two confirmatory factor analysis.The measurement scale for school specialization included 52 items,among which 15 items in the dimension of adaptability,21 items in the dimension of consistency,14 items in the dimension of quality,and other two lie-detection items whose scores were not included in the total score.The scale met the psychometrical criterion.Combining the experts ' opinions we collected later,the measurement model for school specialization was expressed as a linear equation: S=0.89A+0.94C+0.90 Q,then it was transferred to S=0.33A+0.34C+0.33 Q,A=0.50P+0.50D;C=0.60C1+0.40M;Q=0.36S1+0.33F+0.32S2,with normalization.S referred to the level of school specialization,A referred to adaptability,C referred to consistency,Q referred to quality,P referred to schooling philosophy,D referred to direction and target,C1 referred to curriculum system,M referred to organization and management,S1 referred to student development,F referred to teachers development,S2 referred to school development.Fourthly,applying and verifying the measurement model for school specialization.This study applied and verified the measurement model with the principle of combining point and whole.The first was wholly analyzing the level of school specialization and the group variance on several variables;the second was diagnosing the status of specialization of case schools,including one primary school,one secondary school and one high school.The result of data analysis which was from scale survey and model transferring stated that,the levels of specialization of case schools were good,the average score was 4.1406,there was significant variance between middle school and primary school,the level of school specialization of primary school was higher than middle school,also there were significant variances among the variables school history,students' achievement,urban-rural,and specialism type.We diagnosed the case schools with measurement scale and model for school specialization effectively.In addition,itsuggested that there was positive correlation between school specialization level and students' achievement,and students' achievement can be predicted by school specialization level significantly.The research conclusion was consistent with research findings from Western countries.The innovation of this study were as following: it was the leading research in the field of measuring school specialization,which developed the measurement scale,index system and scale for school specialization,in the case that there was no school specialization especially quantitative measurement in China;it reconstructed the concept of school specialization and proposed some creative views on school specialization,combining different kinds of perspectives and combining qualitative research methods and quantitative research methods;it presented quantitatively the level of school specialization,in the case that people still estimated the level of school specialization subjectively,which provided abundant information for regions and school.In conclusion,this study made systematic research on school specialization with measurement model as the breakthrough point,which could provide theoretical and technical support for the practice,evaluation and policy of school specialization.However,as the tentative exploratory of developing measurement model for school specialization,the accuracy and generalizability of the scale and model and the breadth and depth of model application needed to be improved,for some reasons such as the limitation of survey cases.And the research has not developed the norm of the level of school specialization,due to space and energy limitations.In the future researches,we will improve the measurement index system,scale and model for school specialization,go further with constructing and applying the norm,criterion and index of school specialization,explore deeply and systematically the related theoretical issues of school specialization.