Experimentation

Local and provincial education authorities exert their power to shape policy by initiating experiments that later are disseminated provincially and nationally. In 1984, for example, a provincial official told me about one province's reforms in job assignment, which included movement toward more contractual arrangements in hiring recent graduates in teacher education. Because the reform was described as an "experiment," it did not require MOE approval.

This situation—played out in provincial, municipal, and institutional practices—illustrates the significance of local experimentation. Many times local and provincial officials and school administrators talked

[15] Instead of close supervision, according to a ministry official in 1984, special topics were chosen or a sampling of regional sites selected for investigation. University people, like MOE officials, were open about the lack of tight coupling. One university administrator in 1983 said that although the MOE "should come to understand our situation," they do not, because of the small staff.

about reforms they had initiated "as experiments"—in admissions to teacher education, curriculum, and professional standards. A commonly told story line runs like this: Some change in practice occurs that will serve the interests of local institutions, enterprises, or the local community's educational needs. An agreement is worked out, later noticed and encouraged by provincial or central officials, and finally widely implemented as a new development of the policy.

The process of experimentation, when it is successful, becomes one form of policy formation. The central bureaucracy, in fact, is organized to support that sort of persuasion-through-successful-experience. The teacher education and the teachers' conferences convened by the SEdC serve this function, as do the regularly featured stories of "successful" experiments of schools and local education authorities described by the education press, particularly Renmin Jiaoyu and Zhongguo Jiaoyubao . The value given to experimentation strengthens the negotiating position of local-level units. The recent distribution of rewards for reforms further encourages this.^[16] Speaking of the power of grass-roots experimentation, one provincial official explained in 1984, "In recent years the big reforms in teacher-training colleges have come mainly from the teacher-training college itself."