The purpose of this study is to systematically showcase and evaluate how students’, schools’, and countries’ Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development levels influence students’ digital reading literacy by using the data of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 and the multi-level model approach. It is found that the ICT development at each level has a significant positive effect on students’ digital reading literacy, and there is a significant interactive moderating effect between different levels. The gap in ICT development levels between the countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and developed economies has a “Matthew effect” in widening the digital reading literacy gap in the short term, but in the long run, the faster growth of the countries participating in BRI in ICT development levels will narrow the gap and alleviate the effect. China should make use of its advantages in ICT development to engage in global education governance, facilitate the co-development in both the ICT development level and the digital reading literacy for the countries participating in BRI, and contribute to the development of global education by opening up a new way of development.
The introduced policy of “synchronized enrollment of public and private schools” has once again triggered the debate on the effectiveness of public and private schools. Based on the data of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 from four Chinese provinces and municipalities, this paper explores whether private schools gain a relative advantage in student academic performance through student “screening” or academic “meritocracy,” through a hierarchical linear model (HLM) and an empirical test of the propensity score matching (PSM). It has been found that the academic performance of students in private schools is significantly better than that in public schools. But with background, metacognitive ability, and learning hours of students in private schools controlled for, such academic performance is not significantly superior, suggesting that private schools rely heavily on student “screening” to achieve a relative advantage in student academic performance. This finding has also verified the scientific nature of the above policy.
The quantitative and qualitative supply of teachers has a significant influence on student academic performance. Based on the samples collected from four provinces and municipalities in China for the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018, this study analyzes the effects of the supply of teachers on the academic performance of 15-year-old students through a hierarchical linear model (HLM) as well as a quantile regression model. The study has found that the shortage of teachers and the proportion of teachers with a master’s degree significantly affect student academic performance, and the supply of teachers with higher degrees has a decreasing marginal benefit on student academic performance; its best marginal benefit on student academic performance is achieved when the proportion of teachers with a master’s degree reaches about 75%. For students in different academic performance subgroups, the marginal benefit of an increase in the proportion of teachers with a master’s degree in schools is higher for “top students” than for “students with learning difficulties.” In terms of the difference between urban and rural areas, the shortage of teachers in rural schools is more prominent than that in urban schools, and teachers with higher degrees tend to cluster in core cities. The marginal benefit of an increase in the proportion of teachers with a master’s degree is higher for improving student academic performance in rural areas. Therefore, it is recommended to design a policy of differentiated compensatory earnings for rural teachers, and efforts should be enhanced to promote programs for supporting high-quality teachers. In addition, the allocation of teachers should follow the principle of “differentiated equity,” and more differentiated teaching strategies should be adopted for students with different academic abilities.
This paper analyzes the performance of China’s anti-bullying efforts with the data on school bullying in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 and PISA 2018. It is found that China has fully demonstrated its high performance in anti-bullying actions with all three key performance indicators dropping dramatically, namely the prevalence of bullying, the index of exposure to bullying, and the percentage of frequently bullied students. Further, from the perspectives of personal characteristics and school features, two rounds of PISA data are adopted to make the longitudinal diachronic comparison and the cross-national horizontal comparison, followed by the analysis of the occurrence and development patterns of school bullying. Five suggestions are put forward for the deployment of China’s anti-bullying action plan.
The outstanding performance of students in four Chinese provinces and municipalities in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 is inextricably linked to local resource support, excellent education traditions, and ongoing curriculum and teaching reform. However, deepening education reform requires attention to existing challenges, including large inter school gaps, the shortage of teachers in urban and rural areas, as well as students’ heavy schoolwork burden and low level of well-being. Therefore, several policy suggestions are proposed accordingly: gaining insight into and developing higher quality and fairer education, pursuing effective actions of education reform, and exploring innovative pathways to address educational problems.
Teaching autonomy is an important power of teachers as professionals and also a key factor affecting instructional quality. Based on the relevant data of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018, this study analyzes teachers’ teaching autonomy and its effect on instructional quality. It finds that, firstly, as compared to those in the countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), teachers in Shanghai, China, have greater teaching autonomy, but there is still room for improvement in this regard. They have sufficient autonomy in determining the instructional content and disciplining students, but not in assessing students’ learning. Secondly, increasing the teaching autonomy in Shanghai can significantly improve instructional quality. Increasing their autonomy in assessing students’ learning has the greatest effect on improving instructional quality, while increasing the autonomy in choosing teaching methods has the least effect, which is culturally different from the situation in OECD countries. Thirdly, the influence of teaching autonomy on instructional quality is positively moderated by teaching efficacy, which means that teachers need to have the “ability” in addition to the “autonomy.” Based on this, suggestions are also made.