Is the Teaching Research System a Model for the Institutionalization of Professional Learning Communities Around the World? The Chinese Perspective

The Chinese education system has a robust, systematic, institutionalized approach to ongoing teacher collaboration and networks (Liang, Lu, and Huang 2010; Sargent and Hannum 2009; Sargent 2015; Zhang and Pang 2016) which can inform the growing global interest in professional learning communities for teachers. Teacher collaboration and networking have been theorized as valuable for the promotion of teaching quality, the dissemination of educational reforms, the generation of knowledge of teaching practice, job-embedded problem solving, mentoring, peer feedback and evaluation, and teacher job satisfaction and retention (McLaughlin and Talbert 1993; Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1999; Lieberman 2000; Baker-Doyle 2011; Darling-Hammond et al. 2017). Education systems around the world vary in the degree to which they foster opportunities for teacher collaboration and networking as a part of teacher’s daily work (Darling-Hammond et al. 2017). Darling-Hammond et al. (2017) provide an overview of countries that they identify as having strong “teaching and learning systems.” One of the features of these high performing teaching and learning systems is the deliberate organization of the sharing of expertise among teachers and administrators across the system. Professional learning communities as a key strategy to enhance teacher collaboration and networking are receiving international attention from researchers and policymakers in education systems around the world. Stoll et al. (2006) identified agreed upon characteristics that define a teacher professional learning community: “a group of people sharing and critically interrogating their practice in an ongoing, reflective, collaborative, inclusive, learning oriented, growth promoting way; operating as a collective enterprise” (Stoll et al. 2006, p. 223). Stoll et al. (2006) traced the origin of the concept of the professional learning community to Sch€ on’s (1983) notion of the “reflective practitioner”. They highlight the importance of both the practice orientation and learning orientation of professional learning communities. The key value of the activity of the teacher professional learning community is that it is firmly rooted in the daily practice of teacher’s work and in the concern with change and improvement. Although the term professional learning communities is not used in China, researchers suggest that its principles have been practiced as the daily life of Chinese teachers in the form of the “teaching research system”. The Chinese teaching research system is an infrastructure established at the system level (including the school, district, county, and