A Study On The Spatial Order Of Compulsory Education In China

Balanced development of compulsory education is one of the research topics of geography,pedagogy,sociology,politics,economics,etc.Among them,the regional balanced development of compulsory education is one of the research topics of geography,especially human geography.At present,compulsory education has made great achievements in all aspects in China,and facilitated the rapid development of society,economy and culture.However,location conditions,economic development level and the original development basis have combined to cause China's compulsory education has the problem of regional development imbalance in different spatial scales as before,including in provinces,cities,counties,districts,etc.At the provincial scale,the existing research mainly analyzes and evaluates the compulsory education development disparity in different provinces and regions as well as the contribution of compulsory education to the whole country,but there are few related discussions on the spatial association among different provinces and regions.In reality,the degree of similarity or difference of provincial compulsory education is related to the distance among regions.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the degree of spatial relevance and spatial dependence of compulsory education among provinces.This paper is an integral part of the project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China,“Study on the space-time structure,early warning and balanced development of compulsory education in China”.Follow Wu Chuanjun's “Theory of regional system of man-land relationship ”and Qian Xuesen's “Meta-Synthesis Approach of from qualitative to quantitative”and some other theories,and under the support of continuous data for many years,the research systemically studied the spatial order,time series and motivation mechanism of compulsory with various methods,including integrated paradigm of geographical research and spatial regression.The main work includes:(1)Establish the provincial database of China's compulsory education development by using the data of Education Statistics Yearbook of China,Education Statistics Funds Yearbook of China,Statistical Communiqué on Education Statistics,National Statistics Yearbook and population;(2)Construct a comprehensive index(i.e.index system)for the development of compulsory education in China's provinces by using entropy method to determine the indicators in six aspects of educational opportunities,financial resources,school running conditions,teacher strength,educational quality and education informatization.(3)Calculate and analyze the spatial disparity and time series of the total index and sub index of compulsory education by using the application of exploratory spatial statistical analysis method,to reveal the spatial dependence characteristics among the provincial units;(4)By using the method of spatial regression analysis,analyze the main influencing factors of the balanced development of China's compulsory education from the external factors such as natural environment,traffic situation,population,regional economy and family income.On this basis of the above research,the main conclusions are as follows:(1)The development level of China's compulsory education is gradually improving in general,there are more and more high development level provinces,and the radiate regions are becoming wider and wider,playing a leading and dragging role in the development of compulsory education in neighboring regional units.The number of medium-developed provinces has been decreasing year by year,leading to a ?hollow phenomenon?,while that of low-developed provinces has been increasing year by year increasing,resulting in a more severe polarization in the development of compulsory education between these two kinds of provincial regions.Through analyzing the three major economic zones,it is found that the eastern zone has always been at the national leading level in the aspects of financial resources,school running conditions and educational informatization,and has given full play to feed back the neighboring regions through its own regional and economic advantages,to some extent,promoting the common development of compulsory education neighboring regions,but in terms of educational opportunities,teacher strength and educational quality,the eastern zone is slightly behind the western zone.The western zone has shown a very strong momentum tendency,being excellent in the aspects of teacher strength and educational quality,and it is the zone with the most abundant teacher strength and the best educational quality in China.Beside,in addition to its school running conditions other compulsory education indexes of the western zone have exceeded the central zone.(2)The spatial pattern characteristics of the comprehensive index of compulsory education in provinces are obvious,and there is a high-high spatial agglomeration distribution pattern in the Yangtze River Delta region,with Shanghai as the agglomeration center.Shanghai not only has a high level of compulsory education development of its own,but also promotes the compulsory education development in the neighboring areas,but this agglomeration pattern disappears with the attenuation of distance,the number of provinces with the high-high spatial pattern characteristics is small.(3)The provincial sub indexes of compulsory education have quite differences in equilibrium.When the regional disparity of educational opportunities,teacher strength and educational quality in each province is small,the equilibrium will be good but when the scattered points of financial resources,school running conditions and education informatization are dispersed,and the provincial disparity is large,the equilibrium as well as the overall development level will be poor.(4)All the sub indexes of Provincial Compulsory Education are positive in spatial autocorrelation,showing significant spatial aggregation characteristics and have spatial homogeneity,showing similar spatial aggregation phenomenon.Among them,educational opportunities,teacher strength and educational quality show a high-high spatial pattern,and the number of provinces with this spatial pattern is large,mainly concentrated in southwest,northwest and South China.The financial resources show a low-low spatial pattern,the school running conditions and educational informatization show a mainly high-high and a high-low spatial pattern respectively.(5)Geographical and natural conditions,regional economic development level and residents' income are the main factors that affect the provincial spatial order of compulsory education in China.These external factors have the greatest impact on teacher strength,financial resources and school running conditions,and have the least influence on the spatial order of educational opportunities,educational quality and educational informatization.The paper has formed some innovations from the perspective of study: the degree of spatial correlation and dependence between the development of compulsory education has been systematically revealed in different provinces and regions.But there are still some problems that need to be explored in depth in the future.In terms of analytical scale,provincial scale is going to be refined from to city scale for future research;as for affecting factors,"Multiplicity" of affecting factors should be given due attention for future research,that is,the specific mechanism of different stages,types and scales of balanced development of compulsory education.