A Case Study On The Current Situation,Difficulties And Countermeasures Of The Construction Of Specialty Groups In High-level Secondary Vocational Schools

With the industrial upgrading and the continuous adjustment of the economic structure,the development trend of the industrial clusters is increasingly obvious.As a result,the demand for the technical and skilled talents with multi post adaptability and high development potential in all fields is becoming increasingly urgent.In order to meet the needs of the economic and social development for high-quality,complex technical and skilled personnel,the country and ministries have issued a series of documents to promote the construction of the "Double High Plan" in higher vocational schools.As a kind of connection and response,different provinces and municipalities in China have successively started their constructions of high-level secondary vocational schools and specialty groups.From the internal perspective of education,the specialty groups’ constructions of vocational schools is independent and their barriers are high,which not only affects the training of compound technical talents,but also leads to repeated construction of teaching resources and low efficiency of the school running.Therefore,it is imperative to develop the specialty groups.Although the policy environment for the development of secondary vocational schools continues to be improved,the construction of specialty groups in high-level secondary vocational schools is still restricted by both internal and external multiple factors so that the construction work is facing some difficulties.What are they and what are their causes? What are the strategies to solve such difficulties? These are the three questions that this paper tries to answer.This paper adopts the method of multi case study and takes the project establishment units of high-level secondary vocational schools in Guangdong Province as the research samples.Through the public data sorting and analysis,and the interviews of the specialty groups’ leaders of28 project establishment units by telephone,17 hour recording has been formed,which is converted into 255,000 words to understand the specialty groups’ construction of high-level secondary vocational schools to a certain extent.As the construction task statements of the project units have involved detailed construction tasks and funding plans,all units are reluctant to disclose the task statements because of the confidential information.In order to make up for the deficiencies in the depth of the above case interviews,the author has conducted the in-depth analysis based on the case of the specialty groups’ construction in his own working school,aiming at comprehensively finding out the current situations and difficulties in the construction of the specialty groups of high-level secondary vocational schools from both breadth and depth,analyzing the causes of these difficulties and putting forward to feasible countermeasures and suggestions so that it is able to provide references for the construction of the specialty groups of secondary vocational schools in and outside the province and to provide samples and comparison objects for subsequent studies.The study found that the construction of specialty groups in high-level secondary vocational schools is facing five difficulties.First,the organizational objectives are not clear in the construction contents and acceptance criteria;Second,the organizational synergy is poor,including the weak ability of specialty groups in serving the development of regional industries and the lack of the joint construction and sharing foundation within specialty groups;Third,the construction of specialty groups is separated from the daily education and teaching work of schools.The orientation of specialty groups’ construction focuses on the employment and the integration of industry and education while the school work focuses on the improvement the rate of entering the higher-level schools and the study of literacy courses.Fourth,the organizational structure is unreasonable.46.4% of the specialty groups are managed by the cross specialty departments,and most group leaders are ministers or section leaders,which are not conducive to the construction work;Finally,the initiative of the organization members is not high,and the teachers,cooperative enterprises and relevant departments in the group are lack of the participation motivation.The analysis found that there are five causes of these difficulties.First,the competent department lacks professional guidance for the construction of specialty groups of high-level secondary vocational schools;The second is the short-term benefit orientation of the school.The forming of a specialty group is based on the development foundation of the school,rather than the industrial demand.At the same time,the concept of "more is better" leads to the involvement of the less relevant majors into a specialty group;The third is the dual paradox of the school running orientation of secondary vocational schools,that is,the construction of specialty groups is faced with the contradiction of employment orientation or the orientation of entering a higher-level school.The construction of specialty groups focuses on skills training,while students and their parents have strong aspirations for entering a higher-level school,the main way of which is the knowledge examination;Fourth,the organization management path is dependent and the construction unit still uses the old management mode to avoid troubles;Fifthly,there is a lack of organizational safeguard mechanism,including the lack of the construction units’ ability to provide enough incentives for the faculty and cooperative enterprises,and the competent departments’ insufficient understanding and lack of support.Based on the above findings,the sorting of the interviewees’ suggestions and the experience and practices of higher vocational colleges and economic fields and Barnard’s System Organization Theory,five countermeasures have been proposed.First,specify the organizational objectives of the specialty groups,including the connotation of the construction task and the quantity to be completed and the level to be achieved.It is suggested that the competent department establish an expert consulting team to answer questions from the construction unit;Second,establish a dynamic adjustment mechanism for specialty groups,including the establishment of specialty group evaluation,early warning and specialty mechanism of transferring out and in;The third is to promote the reform of vocational education college entrance examination,expand the way of skills entering higher education,and carry out the education and teaching work in an integrated way;The fourth is to optimize the organizational structure of specialty groups,including the establishment of a specialty group department and management team with school leaders as the group leaders,and the establishment of a "curriculum-project" matrix organizational structure;Fifth,establish and improve the safeguard mechanism and other countermeasures,including the classifying measures to improve the initiative of internal members,the multiple measures to enhance the participation enthusiasm of enterprises,the innovate measures to guarantee the investment in specialty group construction.