We are on the road to solving global problems
2024-08-20
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#Walking on the road of building a strong nation through education#
【Key words】education evaluation reform
■ Extraordinary answers·Educational stories
Education evaluation is a global problem. The CPC Central Committee and the State Council attach great importance to the reform of education evaluation. Especially since the 18th CPC National Congress, they have regarded the reform of education evaluation as a key link in promoting comprehensive education reform, strengthened top-level design, and carried out systematic deployment. Documents such as "Implementation Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Examination and Enrollment System", "Guiding Opinions on Further Promoting the Reform of the Examination and Enrollment System for High Schools", and "Overall Plan for Deepening the Reform of Education Evaluation in the New Era" have been issued one after another, continuously guiding the practice of education evaluation reform to go deeper and more practical.
As a researcher working in the field of education evaluation, I deeply understand that we are now on the road to solving global problems and have achieved phased results. Last year, the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences organized a "Great Survey on Education Power". I led a team to focus on "Digital Technology Empowering Education Evaluation Reform" and conducted a two-week investigation and research in Minhang District, Baoshan District, Shanghai, and Qingyang District, Chengdu. During the investigation, I also truly felt the changes in education evaluation.
First, the evaluation professional force has been significantly strengthened. How to reverse the unscientific education evaluation orientation, how to break the "Five Onlys", and how to "form an education evaluation system that is rich in contemporary characteristics, highlights Chinese characteristics, and reflects world standards" not only tests the education governance capabilities and levels of governments at all levels in my country, but also requires evaluation professional forces to empower. The Institute of Education Evaluation and Supervision of the Chinese Academy of Education Sciences, where I work, was renamed and carried out theoretical, policy, and practical research on evaluation under this background. During this period, Beijing also established a special education evaluation research institution. As of now, 28 provinces in the country have established provincial education quality monitoring institutions, and education quality monitoring institutions at the prefecture, city, district and county levels are also being intensively prepared. At the same time, relevant research results have also grown rapidly. According to incomplete statistics, when searching for "education evaluation" as the keyword in CNKI, nearly 9,000 papers were produced in the three full years from 2021 to 2023. Value-added evaluation, digital evaluation, teacher ethics evaluation, and academic quality monitoring have become hot words in the field of education evaluation research. Recently, educational evaluation has been formally established as a secondary discipline in education, which fully demonstrates the importance that the Party and the State attach to the cultivation of professional talents in the field of educational evaluation. This series of changes provides strong professional support for the practice of educational evaluation reform.
Second, a scientific evaluation concept is taking shape. My research department has the function of guiding practice, and often comes into contact with education administrative departments and schools at all levels. From what we have learned, the scientific evaluation concept of relevant education evaluation subjects is taking shape. First, the scientific education performance concept of local governments has been basically established. Party committees and governments at all levels attach great importance to the study and training of the "Overall Plan". Chongqing City took the lead in establishing the first municipal education evaluation reform advisory and guidance committee. As of the beginning of 2022, 40 experts have been organized to conduct 107 full-coverage lectures in all districts, counties and municipal universities in the city; benchmarking the "Overall Plan" to clarify the task list to promote reform, Henan Province has sorted out and decomposed 78 reform tasks in accordance with the "Overall Plan", studied and formulated two work lists for the implementation of the "Overall Plan" (the work list of the relevant provincial departments and the work list of each department of the department), clarified the time point, roadmap, and responsible persons; carried out special cleanups and continuously optimized the education ecology. Shaanxi Province has formulated a negative list in accordance with the "Ten Don'ts and One Strict Prohibition" requirements, cleaned up a total of 432 documents, and resolutely implemented the orders. Second, the school education evaluation system has been gradually improved. From the introduction of national quality standards for various types of schools to the effective implementation of the effectiveness of moral education as the fundamental standard for testing all school work, a mechanism for implementing the fundamental task of moral education at the school level has been initially established. Third, an atmosphere of teachers devoting themselves to educating students has been initially formed. Various places have explored the implementation mechanism of taking teachers' ethics as the first standard for teacher evaluation, the phenomenon of unethical teaching staff has been reduced, and the reform of teacher evaluation that emphasizes educational and teaching performance has been specifically implemented. Fourth, the "score-only" tendency of student evaluation has gradually reversed. The state has improved the content system of questions for the college entrance examination and the quality-oriented student examination evaluation mechanism has made positive progress; the diagnostic function of the evaluation has been highly valued by schools and teachers, and the application space for the results of students' comprehensive quality evaluation is broader.
Third, the shortcomings of evaluation methods have been gradually solved. For a long time, we have been good at conducting results evaluation and keen on comprehensive evaluation. We have not paid enough attention to value-added evaluation and process evaluation, and lack of practice. The "Overall Plan" clearly proposes to "explore value-added evaluation" and "strengthen process evaluation", and also emphasizes the importance of the application of information technology in evaluation. This is of great significance for scientifically and efficiently carrying out education evaluation reform and giving full play to the baton role, governance and traction role of evaluation, and has also caused a strong response in practice.
In the "Education Power Country Survey", we have two main findings. First, there has been substantial progress in the process evaluation enabled by information technology. In the traditional teaching environment, teachers' teaching and students' learning activities cannot be digitized, making process evaluation difficult to carry out. However, with the help of accompanying data collection technology, teachers can widely collect data such as students' key classroom performance, typical homework and staged development, so that process evaluation can be implemented in practice. Shanghai has launched an exploration of artificial intelligence empowering junior high school physics, chemistry, and biology experimental operation examinations. Through the full recording of students' experimental operations, intelligent analysis and automatic evaluation result generation, it provides diagnosis and feedback for schools to improve experimental teaching. Second, as a data-driven evaluation method, value-added evaluation has moved from concept to practice under the empowerment of digital technology. Qingyang District of Chengdu has established a database for tracking students' academic performance, school conditions, and educational talents in the district, and based on this, it conducts value-added evaluation to assess the quality of school teaching.
Of course, while we have made achievements, we must also fully realize that evaluation reform is a highly professional and complex systematic project. In the future, we must take a more prudent attitude, scientific methods, and professional strength to comprehensively promote the education evaluation reform in the new era, adhere to the principle of establishing before breaking and piloting first, and solve the evaluation problems one by one, so as to help realize the goal of a strong education country as soon as possible, and also provide a Chinese solution to solve global problems. (Zhang Ningjuan, Director and Researcher of the Institute of Education Evaluation and Supervision, Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences)
(Interview and compilation by our reporter Zhang Xin)
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2014
In 2014, the State Council issued the "Implementation Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Examination and Admissions System", launching the new college entrance examination.
2016
In 2016, the Ministry of Education issued the "Guiding Opinions on Further Promoting the Reform of the High School Examination and Admissions System", which aims to improve the comprehensive quality evaluation of students and explore an admissions model based on junior high school academic achievement test scores combined with comprehensive quality evaluation.
2020
In 2020, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the "Overall Plan for Deepening Education Evaluation Reform in the New Era", which made comprehensive arrangements to overcome the stubborn problems of the "Five Onlys" and systematically planned the overall blueprint for education evaluation reform in the next 15 years.
