Ordenanza que Sanciona el Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial del Cantón Cuenca: Determinaciones para el

Moving to the context in mainland China, PISA has also been becoming influential in domestic policymaking and educational practice, as claimed by educational policymakers. In the following, I will review the use and impact of PISA at national level as well as regional level in Chinese context.

3.3.1 The use and impact of PISA at China national level

Perhaps, because mainland China only has participated in PISA with student sample representing some regions rather than the whole country, it seems that China’s performance in PISA has not explicitly motivated policy actions at national level. Rather, China tends to use more of the framework and techniques of PISA for informing the assessment reform in terms of improving the contents and forms of assessment (Wang, 2007; 2009). During the participation in PISA, PISA national team in NEEA actively explore the feasibility of translating PISA concepts and techniques (especially those about item development, scoring, management and administration of large-scale assessments) into national education

examinations such as Gaokao (e.g. Wang and Tong, 2015; 2016). With the efforts made by colleagues in other departments in NEEA, PISA national team’s research outcomes have been starting to be applied in the practice of assessment. For example, inspired by PISA, real-life contexts across a range of subjects have been employed as the basis for developing materials in Gaokao (Wang and Tong, 2015). It is considered that, in the recent

Gaokao reform, the inclusion of the dimension “contexts” is in line with the assessment concept in PISA (Li et al., 2019). As to reading, PISA features

practical reading by considerably employing non-continuous texts. It is considered that PISA 2009, in which reading was the majority domain, has heated up domestic attention to developing and assessing students’ ability of reading non-continuous texts (Ye, 2017). In 2017, the Chinese examination in Gaokao involved the use of multiple texts of practical reading (Zhao, 2017).

At national level, PISA’s impact is not only limited to influencing the examinations developed by the NEEA. PISA framework has been an

important reference in the reform of national educational assessment. Over years, as I introduced in Section 2.3, quality in primary and secondary education was usually evaluated only based on students’ academic

achievement and schools’ progression rates. To reverse this practice which hinders students’ all-round development, in 2013, MOE issued the Opinions on promoting reforms of comprehensive evaluation of the quality in primary and secondary education (Jiaoyubu guanyu tuijin zhongxiaoxue jiaoyu zhiliang zonghe pingjia gaige de yijian) to reform the evaluation system for primary and secondary education (MOE, 2013a). As clearly stated by MOE, making reference to “some concepts of PISA” in addition to Shanghai’s experience of educational assessment reform, this policy suggests that assessment shall focus on student development as the measurement of educational quality, and collect data for identifying potential factors influencing educational quality (MOE, 2013b).

National Assessment of Education Quality (NAEQ) which started pilots from 2007 for monitoring basic education was formally launched by MOE in 2015. PISA, TIMSS, and USA’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are important references for its development (MOE, 2015). NAEQ is even referred to as “Chinese PISA” (Chai and Xiang, 2015), although it is national curriculum-based (Song, 2015), which is different from PISA. Tao Xin, the deputy director of National Assessment Centre for Education Quality, the authority taking charge of the development and administration of NAEQ, argues that NAEQ technical standards are highly aligned with those of PISA (Chai and Xiang, 2015). Song (2015) states that the development of NAEQ assessment instruments has embraced the concepts and measurement techniques of international standardised instruments such as PISA and TIMSS, with national features incorporated. Like PISA, NAEQ also focuses on assessing students’ ability to comprehensively applying knowledge to

solve problems, embeds real-life contexts, and uses common items to link different forms of booklets (Song, 2015).

Despite the appreciation of ILSAs (especially PISA) in the development of national educational assessments, reflective learning from ILSAs is

suggested. Although Limin Liu, then Deputy Minister of Education, admits that national assessment of basic education quality has learned from assessments developed by international organisations, he argues that neither TMISS nor PISA is totally appropriate for addressing the issues in Chinese context, and therefore their standards should not be copied directly to assess our education (MOE, 2012).

In terms of the interpretation and use of PISA results, it is admitted that the performance of Shanghai does not represent that of China, and performance in PISA could not reflect the whole education system, considering PISA’s target population and assessment domains (Zhang and Yan, 2015). Despite that, self-confidence in China’s own education system has been increased to some extent with Shanghai’s success in PISA (Zhang and Yan, 2015; Yu et al., 2017). China’s performance is used as evidence to support policymakers’

claims about the improvement of quality in education in China. On one of the conference series reporting the achievement during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), Guiren Yuan, then Minister of Education, reports that Shanghai was continuously placed top in PISA, which indicates the steadily increasing international influence of China’s education system (Dong, 2015). Yandong Liu (2017), then Vice-Premier, states that China (B-S-J-G)’s higher performance compared with the OECD average in PISA 2015 reflects the improvement of educational quality in China.

3.3.2 The use and impact of PISA at China regional level

Probably because in mainland China only some regions participated in PISA, PISA results tend to be used to evaluate quality in education and identify issues by regional policymakers.

Shanghai’s participation in PISA provides Shanghai an external scientific measurement of evaluating the quality in its compulsory education

(Education Supervision Office of Shanghai Municipal Government, 2013). PISA results have been used for informing evidence-based policymaking in Shanghai (Yin, 2014). Although Shanghai achieved highly in PISA 2009 and PISA 2012, issues in Shanghai students’ learning have been revealed as well (SHPISA, 2010; 2013). From PISA results, Shanghai has identified

heavy learning burden of students and the relative weaknesses in mathematics learning, for example, students were not familiar with describing and interpreting results in mathematical language (Zhang and Huang, 2016). Previously, domestic assessment results had shown that Shanghai students compared with their peers in other provinces had heavier learning burden, higher learning pressure and lower learning self-confidence, despite that they had relatively high academic performance (Ni, 2012).

These were further evidenced by PISA. Shanghai critically reflected on the cost for achieving the high performance, and pays more attention to related issues (Yin, 2014). In 2010, Shanghai was specified by the MOE as the pilot region for starting the reform on the assessment of students’ academic quality in primary and secondary education (MOE, 2013b). In this context, to address the concerned issues to secure “the healthy and happy growth of students”, MOE and Shanghai Municipal Government jointly promulgated “Shanghai Green Indicators for Academic Performance of Primary and Secondary School Students” (Green Indicators2_{) in 2011 (Yin et al., 2012).} Construction of the assessment system of Green Indicators is strongly inspired by the concepts, framework as well as the techniques of PISA (Ji and Wang, 2012).

Amongst all the regions or local areas in mainland China that participated in PISA, Fangshan District of Beijing is the only area which had been

continuously involved in three cycles of PISA from 2009 to 2015 with its locally-representative samples. Historically, as a traditional agriculture area of Beijing, Fangshan had relatively low living standards, and the quality of its education was not rated as high as that of peer districts in Beijing (Tao and Wang, 2014). After the turn of this century, Fangshan has had great

development in economy and urbanisation (Cao, 2014), which requires the improvement of its local education (Tao and Wang, 2014). In Fangshan, as claimed by local educational policymakers, PISA has been used as an external measure to evaluate students’ proficiency from an international perspective and examine its differences from that of students in other regions (Guo et al., 2015). It is also used “to promote the professional

development of teachers, improve curriculum, and guide education reform at

2 _{Green Indicators include ten aspects: Student Academic Level Index, Learning} Motivation Index, Academic Burden Index, Teacher-Student Relationship Index, Teaching Methods Index, Principal Leadership Index, ESCS (economic, social and cultural status) Influence on Academic Performance Index, Moral Behavior Index, Well-Being Index and Progress Index (Ni, 2012).

local level”, as Guo, the former director of Fangshan Education Commission, and his colleagues state (2015, p.9). Motivated by PISA, three experimental projects, each of which focuses on one domain assessed by PISA, were successively launched by Fangshan Education Commission to improve teaching and learning (Guo, et al., 2015). The reading project, which was first launched, aims to advocate students’ reading with policy support and provision of reading materials (Gao and Zhang, 2015). The following

mathematics project and the most recently-established science project aim to advance the reforms of teaching practices for promoting students’ literacy in mathematics and science (Liu, 2015; Wang, 2015; Zhang and Liang, 2015). I will return to these (i.e. the three PISA-motivated projects) in Chapter 5.

PISA’s impact has also moved beyond the regions which have formally participated in PISA. As documented in literature, it seems that in some other regions, PISA concepts are intentionally integrated into Zhongkao as well. For example, in one city of Zhejiang province, PISA-style items have been developed and used in mathematics examination of Zhongkao since 2010 (Yang, 2016), although Zhejiang had not formally participated in PISA until PISA 2018.

3.3.3 PISA facilitates China’s engagement in global communication of education policy

Due to Finland’s outstanding performance in PISA, admiration of Finnish education is no exception in mainland China. Batches of educational

policymakers and practitioners went to Finland to investigate the secret of its educational success (e.g. Jiang, 2015). According to literature, some ideas in Finnish educational practices, for example, flexible curriculum, have even been incorporated into the curriculum reform in China (Zhang, 2018).

Although both Shanghai and Finland are top performers in PISA, the ways they achieved high academic performance are not the same (Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences, 2012). In June 2012, to exchange the experience and challenges of education in China and in Finland, Shanghai Normal University, SHPISA, and Finland PISA National Centre jointly held the Sino-Finland PISA Conference “PISA results: experience and challenges in basic education” involving policymakers as well as researchers from both countries (Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences, 2012). In this

other were also explored and discussed (Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences, 2012).

Meanwhile, Shanghai’s performance in PISA have drawn the attention of policymakers of other countries so that its education system has become a new reference society (Sellar and Lingard, 2013a). Since 2014, Shanghai has been involved in the “Mathematics Teacher Exchange: China-England” programme funded and managed by the Department for Education of the UK (Boylan et al., 2016). By sending primary mathematics teachers from

England to Shanghai schools or hosting Shanghai teachers in the schools in England, this programme aims to learn from Shanghai mastery mathematics education and effectively apply that in England (Boylan et al., 2016).

Researchers (e.g. Chen, 2016) consider that English teachers’ views and comments on Shanghai teaching practices are significant for understanding and reflecting on Shanghai’s own education as well.

3.4

PISA results about factors accounting for students’