Study On The System Of Quality Assurance In TVET Teacher Education In China

At the very centre of quality technical and vocational education and training lies an effectiveinteraction between teachers/trainers and learners. In fact, an overall improvement in vocational skillsfor employability and citizenship can only be realized if there is an improvement in the quality,effectiveness and relevance of teaching. Many, both in the developed and developing worlds, areincreasing the emphasis they place on improving the capacity of technical and vocational education andtraining (TVET) systems, in recognition of the important role TVET plays in equipping individuals withrelevant skills and knowledge for the job market. TVET can also better enable individuals to participatein social, economic and technological innovation processes. Therefore, embedding TVET into regionaland national innovation structures is of crucial importance to the economic performance and socialdevelopment of countries.Secondary vocational education doesn’t require students to master very advanced theory, whereasknowledge to be learned and equipment to be used should be updated with time and scientificdevelopment. Against the background of the expanding scale of secondary vocational education,teachers of secondary vocational schools usually have to shoulder heavy teaching tasks and have no timefor renewing knowledge. Therefore, the knowledge of some professional teachers is becoming obsolete.Considering this situation, the Vocational Education Department of Ministry of Education and the StateCouncil Academic Degree Committee Office decided to carry out programs aiming at updatingknowledge and providing life-long education for teachers in vocational schools. One of these programsis to promote teachers in secondary vocational schools to pursue their master’s degree. Theimplementation of this program is beneficial to the training of young and middle-aged backboneteachers and academic leaders of vocational education, to the construction of high-level teaching cohortas well as to the sound development of national vocational education cause.The cultivating program for secondary vocational school teachers to take in-service master’s degreeis a new mode of teacher training in China. As a newborn mechanism, it is still in the exploratory stage.Through years of system construction and practice, some major achievements have been made, andsignificant experience has been obtained; however, the training system still needs to be improved andsome urgent conflicts and problems remain to be solved. Therefore, we should borrow the advancedexperience of training vocational school teachers for master’s degree in other countries, and meanwhileconnect with the specific situation in China to enhance the construction and improvement of theprogram. We shall increase our efforts to improve and innovate of training model, to do more researchon cultivating features, and to improve quality evaluation and control. All in all, we need to explore newideas and summarize new experiences in practice and to enhance the training quality to promote theprogram into the track of standardization, systemization and scientification. With these efforts, it ishopeful that a contingent of double-technique teachers of vocational education can be built, which ishighly capable, innovative and well-structured, and which covers all principal disciplines of vocationaleducation in China. It will surely play a significant role in reform and development of Chinesevocational education.The UNESCO office in Beijing and the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical andVocational Education and Training in Bonn (Germany), in partnership with the Chinese NationalCommission for UNESCO and the Chinese Ministry o f Education, organized an international meetingto develop strategies to increase innovation and excellence in TVET teacher education. The meeting washeld in Hangzhou, China, from8–10November2004The meeting gave considerable time to discussing ways of improving the quality of TVET professionals through advanced study. Specifically, the meetingconsidered the idea of a master-level programme in TVET. a detailed description of the internationalframework has been developed which is readily available, including an outline of the structure of such aprogramme, information on the suggested modules to be taught and organizational arrangements toachieve successful implantation.Based on international experience in higher education, a solid quality assurance system is a key toenhance the TVET teacher education. Here five critical elements of the quality assurance system ofTVET teacher education are mentioned, some suggestions on guiding Ideology， enrollment，recruitment，curriculum，teaching Methods，thesis appraisal，conferring degree are specifically detailed.