Co-operation of School and Enterprise: the case of BITC Beijing

1. Co-operation of School and Enterprise: the case of BITC Beijing Ludger Deitmer, University of Bremen, ITB Lars Heinemann, University of Bremen, ITB Mingying Xu, BITC, Beijing

2. Content • Introduction: Chinese VET under change • BITC case • Research Design: Participative evaluation designs in China? • (self) evaluation method: ERC Tool • Results on Partnership • Reflection on this approach and perspectives

3. Increasing demand for skilled workers • Increased global competition influences the production processes in China • Move towards producers of high quality and tailor-made products (customer driven!) • advanced production concepts: demand for multi-skilled workers in flexible production • Lack of work-process orientation in teaching, learning processes and curricula

4. Improving VET system • Since 2002 vocational track as the third pillar besides general and higher education • No apprentice system but school-led alternance system: two year at VET college plus company year as internship • learning venue outside the school: learning and working in an enterprise by work placements • Improving developmental and reflexive compentencies at the side of VET teachers and company trainers • Our question: Will new formative forms of (self-) evaluation tools help to deliver better insights into main success criteria of good practise cooperation under learning venues?

5. BITC Case • Beijing Information Technology college • 920 teachers (500 full time and 420 part time) • 9500 students • High School: 6400 • 5 year High School: 3100 • Adult: 1843

6. Four training venues

7. Ausbildungort in Beijing‘ Süd-Nord-Achse Ausbildungort in Beijing‘ Ost-West-Achse Ausbildungort in Beijing‘ Ost-industrieregion Ausbildungort in Beijing‘ West-Region ☆ Ausbildungsorte von BITC

8. Building of training centers at the VET school as an answer to huge demand of skilled labour and VET tracks and an high profit industrial culture (outsourcing strategies have high time!) Zhaowei Beiguang Zhengdong Beijing Information Technology College Digital media centre Tool making ICT Service Fanglue IT circuit production software development Software company Vocational training centres as practise firms of production schools: governed by authorities, companies and VET schools Improving on the job training Outsourcing practical learning from the real work place

9. Theory-Practice Interaction? die Entwicklung der beruflichen Kompetenze Lernen Arbeiten 1Semester 3Semester 4Semester 5Semester 2Semester 6Semester

10. BITC own statement on weaknesses of the model: • School management enthusiasm high but more teachers need to be motivated: Where is the advantage for them? • 2) The teaching resources are still under development (teaching style; teaching design and curricula) and needs high work emphasize for the coming time: How can the quality of teacher training be improved? • This cooperation model, by building training centres on the school increases the cost for the VET schools. Many costs for developing a work process oriented learning culture at the school. By which method can enterprises be motivated to invest in such a cooperation model to balance costs better? • 4) Many students find it difficult to get a training place within the companies because the training places are still to limited and concentrated on some companies. How can the number of training placements be increased?

11. Methods and Research designs • Launching new methods on self evaluation on the stakeholders involved within these partnerships • ERC tool: (self-) evaluation of regional cooperation under VET school and local companies: Monitoring of project progress! • Focussed discussion under teachers, in company trainers or middle managers based on quality criteria • What works good or bad in our cooperation? How can we enhance our cooperation?

12. Four phases of an actors-oriented evaluation A. Preparation of the criteria system Set up support team Setting up and inviting a group for self evaluation exercise Agreement on performance criteria preparing practitioners D. Feedback mirroring back results self evaluation discussion, conclusion and Discussing further outlook Making summary B. Self Evaluation individual weighting and scoring of criteria min.- max. discussion reflective discussion C. Prepare feed back by support team Documenting discussion visualisation of the results: spider; bar& line Pointing out strength & weaknesses.

13. School and Company assess five main criteria plus 15 subcriteria • (1) Goals: clearness of aims of cooperation • (2) Organisation and Management: organizing the cooperation • (3) Development of the cooperation partnership: continous improvement, task distribution, • (4) Effects of the cooperation: student skill improvement; teachers competencies, enterprise benefits • (5) Dissemination of cooperation practise and further development: showing to other; communication with new partners

14. The new concept of (SE) evaluation • Effective participatory evaluation is to be understood as an self evaluation (SE) under practioners concerned: here local VET college and the companies they like to have an more close cooperate • Self Evaluation (SE) in cooperation partnerships could be understood as individual and collective reflection‘s of the practioners involved, their previous experiences with the cooperation history as well as ideas, wishes, for the future • SE enhances the ability of actors for self reflection of the participants and target setting for new strategies and solutions prospect • SE needs systemisation by key performance criteria; e.g. like clearness of goals for cooperation partners • SE builds an collective understanding of the cooperation achievements by listening to each other and by discussing that • SE results may lead to change and improvement of the cooperation partnership

15. Bar and line chart: Weighting and Judging of criteria transfer manag imple results aim

16. Results Weighting: What are the most important criteria for the indiviudal actor from school and enterprise? • Development of partnership (trust, continious improvement, cost benefit and efficient cooperation) and effects from cooperation (increasing competence of teacher, students and trust relationship) is seen as key important • Basic aims of this three years project seem to be clear under partners Assessment of Criteria: How good have the criteria been met by actors? • scoring results are much higher for the first two criteria, whereas the criteria 3 and 4 are seen much more critical • dissemination criterion is scored lowest and is not in the focus of the co-operation activities of both the school and company • Criteria 3 and 4 vary between 5 and 8 points on a scale from 1 to 10. Somehow quite satisfactory, but the opinions on how good the plan progresses differ quite considerably • teachers see the co-operation more critical (scoring figures around 5) as the external evaluators (around 6 to 7) as well as the companies (which are the group with the most positive scores by not less than 7 points)

17. Interpretation of the results based on documents • co-operation plan is not well understood amongst all teachers; • motivation is lacking while teachers see the extra efforts but possible benefits remain unclear • companies need to invite teachers for more visits into the companies to study the work places the students will have to work on and suggest also internships for the teachers • cost side problematic, because work-based learning approach is much more expensive than teaching by books or teacher instruction in the classroom as the preliminary orientation for teachers and students • It gets clear in the discussion that such a plan is cost-intensive while in every area new ways are taken which sometimes result into more work and time invested to find out the best way for the co-operation.

18. Chinese reflection on this evaluation approach: ERC Tool • very clear that the criteria used with the method must be well understood by all evaluators and that it may take time to discuss them • participants shall be guaranteed by the moderator that everybody can express his position and the reasons for his individual scoring • evaluation results shall be systematically analysed so all the different view points are taken into account to reach a deep understanding for the co-operation network of enterprises and school to be evaluated • conclusion: “By using ERC methodologies we as teachers moved from being an object of evaluation to a subject of evaluation”. • This participative evaluation method can support the motivation of all project stakeholders to introduce criteria carefully and that there is enough time to communicate about scoring results and the reasons behind the figures.

19. Still missing on the use of ERC tool • documentation of evaluation session shows that a lot of the suggestions for improvement and identification of malfunctioning elements are rather general • danger that with an extensive list of more general recommendations too little happens afterwards • not to forget the third step of the evaluation process of the ERC Tool: discussing of results and building conclusion for the near future • in such a way that stakeholders and evaluation participants can develop enhancements and define management activities as valuable steps to overcome the deficits and dysfunctions within the co-operation • Follow up activity definition process shall help to overcome shortcomings that were found during the diagnosis meeting.