Teacher management from an age and generational perspective : a case study in a senior secondary school in Lanzhou City, Gansu Province, China

Abstract

Since its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has gone through tremendous change and development over the last seven decades. While many of the first one or two generations of Chinese in the PRC could barely keep themselves fed, today’s young Millennial generation grew up with almost everything the previous generations could only dream of. Growing up and living through almost completely different historical conditions, generation gaps in China’s schools and society in general have not been more dramatic. While research on issues related to age and generational diversity has been richly developed over the last few decades, especially since the beginning of the 1990s, the literature, however, has been dominantly centered on Western societies, especially the United States. Much less research has been conducted to examine the age and generational diversity management in China, especially in the educational context. Research that does focus on such cohort analysis in China from a leadership or management perspective has mainly been about issues in the private business sectors. Research into the issue within the educational context in China has been focusing much more on learning and teaching rather than the administrative side of the phenomenon. To fill in such a gap, an in-depth inductive case study was conducted in a senior secondary school in Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu Province in the People’s Republic of China. Through a combination of onsite observations and interviews (both focus group and individual ones), this study identified a collection of five different types of generational and age-related cohort conditions as well as their resulting cohort characteristics. Moreover, this study further sheds light on how the aforementioned cohort conditions and cohort characteristics can impact various dimensions of teacher management in the school context. This study provides valuable empirical insight on the age-related and generational cohort diversities in schools in China as well as the resulting implications for teacher management. Theoretically, this study contributes to the knowledge by expanding to the context of educational leadership and management in the Chinese education sector. In a more practical sense, the findings and discussions of this study can also help both scholars and practitioners in China and beyond gain more insights on the age and generational diversity in school management and leadership, and therefore can be equipped to make better-informed decisions so as to more effectively lead their teachers, both young and old.