The Principal Curriculum Leadership Research In Higher Vocational Curriculum Reform Of Our Country

Nowadays, with China’s economy rapid development, the demand for higher vocational and technical talents is increasing. So our government has paid more and more attention on the development of higher vocational and technical schools. The16th central government document required to vigorously improve higher vocational students’professional quality and comprehensive vocational ability, and the document also required to reform courses in higher vocational and technical schools in order to make the courses meet the needs of the higher vocational students and the whole society. A principal is the soul of a school. Principals of the higher vocational and technical schools play the principals’curriculum leadership including some aspects---understanding of curriculum reform、supervising the curriculum reform implementation and providing effective recommendations to the curriculum reform teams. These aspects have a decisive influence on thoroughly implementing the requirements of the curriculum reform, or even a combining the feature of the higher vocational schools to complete the curriculum reform. This research focuses on the issue---how to play the curriculum leadership of higher vocational and technical school principals in the process of the curriculum reform. In this paper, the concept of curriculum leadership of higher vocational and technical school principals and its development stage are elaborated in detail, and according to the analysis of the interviews, good performances and problems that higher vocational and technical school principals played in the process of the curriculum reform are showed and analyzed. And at the end of the paper, concludes with recommendations are provided to improve the curriculum leadership of higher vocational and technical school principals in China.This research suggests that the reform of the vocational courses is achieved through the construction of vocational courses, vocational course construction including four phases---curriculum planning, curriculum design, curriculum implementation and curriculum evaluation. In other words, the reform of vocational courses is embodied in the four phases of the vocational courses construction. Through the integrated use of the transformational curriculum leadership and the transactional curriculum leadership strategy, higher vocational and technical school principals play different curriculum leadership roles to achieve the curriculum reform. But in the process of the curriculum reform, there is a contradiction between the transformational curriculum leadership and the transactional curriculum leadership when the principals use the curriculum leadership of higher vocational and technical school principals. In the four phases of the vocational courses construction, it’s very crucial that how to deal with the contradiction between the transformational curriculum leadership and the transactional curriculum leadership. This is beneficial to fully play curriculum leadership of higher vocational and technical school principals and complete the deepening reform of the vocational courses. That is also the highlight of this research. This paper is divided into five parts to discuss the issue---how to play the curriculum leadership of higher vocational and technical school principals in the process of the curriculum reform. Through depth interviews, the author captured the overall analysis and then the specific vocational school analysis. First, a director of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission is interviewed in order to understand the overall progress of the vocational courses reform in Shanghai and the requirements of the Shanghai Board of Education for higher vocational and technical school principals in Shanghai and its view about the present situation that higher vocational and technical school principals created with curriculum leadership. Then, three higher vocational school principals who are more successful than other higher vocational school principals in Shanghai in term of the curriculum reform are carried out depth interviews. Through the interviews, the author try to comprehensively understand the view of these relatively successful school principals about four problems---how to treat the current development of higher vocational and technical school and vocational courses、how to look at the curriculum leadership of higher vocational and technical school principals、 how to play the curriculum leadership of the higher vocational and technical school principals in the process of vocational courses reform and the advantages and disadvantages of the curriculum leadership of the higher vocational and technical school principals in the process of vocational courses reform. And then based on the content of the in-depth interviews, the author deeply analyzed the good performance and problems of the three school principals, as well as their causes in the course of the principals playing their curriculum leadership. Finally, according to the preceding analysis, six suggestions are provided to improve the domestic curriculum leadership of higher vocational and technical school principals:first, higher vocational and technical school principals should establish a strong awareness of curriculum leadership; second, the higher vocational and technical school principals should continuously improve the professional knowledge of curriculum leadership; third, the higher vocational and technical school principals should respond to the different needs from different groups; four, the higher vocational and technical school principals should comprehensively use the transformational leadership and transactional leadership strategies to effectively carry out the curriculum reform; five, according to the different backgrounds and different stages the construction phase, the higher vocational and technical school principals should play the different roles of curriculum leadership and finish different tasks; six, the higher vocational and technical school principals should establish open school culture. Ultimately, this research could help to improve domestic curriculum leadership of higher vocational and technical school principals in order to deepen the curriculum reform and make vocational courses more responsive to the needs of the market and vocational students.