Network governance in education : a case study of Shanghai, China

Abstract

This study explores network governance in education in China, using the phenomenon of school turnaround as a research window. With specific reference to three junior secondary schools and their corresponding networks in Shanghai, China, this qualitative empirical study examines the complexity of interactions between schools, local governments, and third-party actors (i.e., civil society organization, university, and quality school) in school turnaround through network governance. Data were collected from document analysis, 14 non-participant observations of intra-school and collaborative activities, and semi-structured interviews with 54 informants, including school leaders and teachers, education officials and third-party specialists in Shanghai, conducted mainly in 2017. This study has four major findings. First, it identifies three network governance patterns – government-led network, third-party-led network, and school-led network, with local government exercising network governance leadership in the first, third-party actor in the second, and school in the third. In each pattern, tripartite actors play different roles (local governments as dominator, accommodator, and facilitator; third-party actors as government representative, self-interested leader, and supportive partner; and schools as obedient follower, reserved implementer, and conscious striver) and adopt coping strategies to exercise different degrees of control and/or autonomy in their interactions. Second, while local governments retain ultimate power, they impose different degrees of control over the other two actors, resulting in different degrees of asymmetric power relationships among them in different networks. Third, third-party actors have essential power and responsibility, but exercise different degrees of control over schools in providing support, and hold different value orientations in response to local governments, which forms and influences third-party actors’ different degrees of asymmetric power relationships with schools and local governments, respectively. Fourth, schools implement external requirements and supports from local governments and third-party actors in different ways, which demonstrates schools’ different awareness of and capacity for utilizing autonomous space, and differently influences their different degrees of asymmetric power relationships with external actors. To interpret these findings, this study proposes a theoretical framework for understanding network governance as a differentiated leadership practice in which network actors exercise different powers and have asymmetric power relations, with the most powerful or influential actor in each network exercising leadership and the other two actors supporting this leadership through compliance and/or by providing space in network governance. Tripartite actors can alter their roles and coping strategies to exercise different degrees of control and/or autonomy to different extents across networks, which produces different types of asymmetric power relationships with different actors exercising leadership in different networks. In the process, the different configurations of the three network actors can produce different chemistries in the interactions between them. In these interactions, the incorporation of third-party actors helps bridge governments’ strength in administrative management and schools’ desire for professional guidance, and allows governments a flexibility in exercising administrative management in education service provision in different ways, thereby allowing each actor the chance to exercise leadership in network governance.