How principals promote and understand teacher development under curriculum reform in China

This chapter outlines and analyses the accounts of three principals in Shanghai as they introduced teacher development strategies to support curriculum change. The context for their accounts is the wider curriculum reform and specifically the recent call for 'curriculum leadership'. Through connecting curriculum reform, teachers, principals and school-level teacher development strategies, we map the context within which principals are increasingly accountable for teacher development. Teacher professional development in China has traditionally engaged teachers actively in the construction and dissemination of pedagogical approaches through teaching and research activities. The interviews were designed to solicit principals' views about their teacher development strategies, the reasons underlying the selection of the strategies, their interpretation of curriculum reform, and their assumptions about teachers' motives, needs and capacities. It discusses the positive signs and perceivable gaps and explores principals' assumptions and interpretations of the curriculum reform, teachers, and their own roles in leading teacher development. Copyright © 2015 Q. Gu.