Problems And Solutions For Social Identity Of Professional Degree Postgraduate Education

Continuous efforts made to China's education reform of postgraduates with professional degrees have greatly contributed to the impetus transformation of postgraduate education,thus profoundly influencing the different social groups concerned.In the shift from the incremental development to the innovation of connotation building,it is expected to mitigate problems from the rational direction,apprehend the true aspects,demonstrate the development logic and deepen reform and innovation.In the context of China's professional postgraduate education that have been striding for 27 years,this paper sets out to construct a socially-acceptable theoretical framework and empirical model of professional degree postgraduate education in the tendency of deepening the comprehensive reform of postgraduate education for professional degree at all fronts.By virtue of tools utilities,the development status of professional postgraduate education is summarized in the fields of three interest-related groups,including full-time postgraduate with professional master's degree,tutor and employers.The existing problem and its cause are explored and elements affecting social identity are shed,before an operation mechanism and optimization strategies of enhancing the social identity of professional degree postgraduate education are laid down.To trace back to the professional degree,attempts are made to construe origins of matured and bettered postgraduate education for professional degree in the United States politically,economically and culturally in the ancient river of professional postgraduate education represented by America.“To self-examine” the exploration,starting and developing course of professional degree domestically,“backtrack and compare” the experience of professional postgraduate education in the United States.Problems dwelling in China's professional postgraduate education development are profoundly reflected: As stakeholders involved in professional graduate education increase,whether to sufficiently concern and to understand their real experiences and authentic assessments over the graduate education in the view of “human”.This study is scaffolded by the establishment of a socially-acknowledged theoretical framework of professional degree postgraduate education.In a bid to more rationalize the framework,it is theoretically underlaid by Social Identity Theory and Stakeholder Theory and combined with literature searches on social identity in the fields of sociology and social psychology,together with the content dimension extraction from qualitative interviews with the three interest-related groups.After a comprehensive analysis,an internal logic recognized by society for professional postgraduate education is concluded into: cognitive identity as endogenous power,emotional identity as driving force,and value identity as behavioral direction,all of which have constituted the structural dimension identified by the community for the education.Focusing on an empirical study made on the status quo of social identity in postgraduate education for professional degree,the paper uses different empirical methods for the three stakeholder groups.First all of,it is about the compilation of social identity gauge of groups consisting of full-time postgraduate with professional master's degree.Based on the construction of previous theoretical framework,it is to consult experts in fields affiliated,select samples for preliminary examination and make project analysis,confirmatory factor analysis and reliability and validity test of the predictions,thus confirming the reasonability of the model.It turns out the social identity of full-time postgraduate with master's degree as the multi-dimensional structures comprised of cognitive identity,emotional identity and value identity.All kinds of colleges and universities in different regions nationwide are being officially gauged and a statistical analysis is made on characteristics of social identity of the group,also on its traits.A research method mixing supplementary quantitative analysis with dominating qualitative analysis is used for empirically studying tutors of the full-time postgraduate.Also integrated with generic analysis and situational analysis,the evaluation of the group on the social identity of the professional-degree postgraduate education is obtained.And the empirical research on employers is made via questionnaire.Based on the empirical investigation results of social identity in the three groups,it can be concluded that: The social identity of postgraduate education for professional degree in China shall be further improved,with weak cognitive identity,less apathetic emotional identity and deviant value identity.The thesis is aimed at advancing strategies for improving the social identity of professional degree postgraduate education.From the perspective of being systematic and scientific,it points out the external social environment like politics,economy and culture,school security environment such as enrollment,training model,mentor team and quality assurance factors as well as individual factors like motivation of examination registration,study impetus and engagement by realistic analysis and qualitative presentation.All of them have affected the social identity of professional-degree postgraduate education inward and outward.Supported by the empirical research and the analysis of the influencing factors,the operating mechanism systematic and scientific is established: The four-in-one,namely concept guidance as “steering wheel”,system as “propeller”,market mechanism as “regulator” and interest mechanism as “driving force”,is designed to safeguard the enhancement of the social identity institutionally.Further echoing the problems existing in the social identity of the postgraduate education,strategies for specific implementation are raised: Firstly,to strengthen the cognitive identity as the ideological foundation and take the status cognition,attribute cognition and culture cognition as the promotion strategies;secondly,to cultivate the emotional identity as the bond spiritually and take emotional experience and community building as the advancement tactics;thirdly,to be fundamentally safeguarded by promoted value identity and consider improved suitability for economic industry,relevance to knowledge production pattern,satisfaction with the quality of talents training as well as participation of stakeholders as upgrade strategies.In the value identification,the utterance of social identity is emphatically indicated to eventually meet with the value realization of individual life.Consequently,education essentially to evoke the hunting of all individual life for life value as they should shall not be omitted while concerning about the external function and value realization of postgraduate education for professional degree.