Creating a Culture Fostering Student Development

Among the professional standards for principals formulated by the Ministry of Education in 2013 and 2015, the “creating a culture fostering student development” was set as one of the six core practices of school leadership (MOE, 2013, 2015).


Putting Student Development First [YI-XUE-SHENG-FA-ZHAN-WEI-BEN]
The term Putting Student Development First [YI-XUE-SHENG-FA-ZHAN-WEI-BEN] was initially put forward after the old version of (GPE) was replaced by a new version of GPE in 1990s (the GPE as a term will be further explored in Chapter 5). The old version of GPE set out in 1960s placed particular emphasis that education must serve the proletarian politics. A typical example was that late Chinese paramount leader Mao Zedong said in 1964 in a conversation with his nephew, a student of Harbin Engineering University, "class struggle is your key subject.... How can you to be a university graduate without even knowing class struggle? " (Mao,1967, p. 22). It suggested that education is viewed as one of tools for class struggle at the time in China. Thereby students would be soldiers for class struggle. The students individual characteristic, in this context, was negligible as long as they had sufficient revolutionary quality. However, Chinese government decided to adopt the Reform and curriculum reform plan for the second phase of primary and secondary schools. 15 In the curriculum reform plan, the meaning of the PSDF was that the school education provision should be suitable for every student and the curriculum should meet various needs of different students to lay a solid foundation for the lifelong development of every student (Zhang, 2002). The MoE seemed to indorse the idea of PSDF in school education when it claimed to advocate "the personalized learning under the guidance of teachers "in its Compendium for Curriculum Reform of Basic Education (Trial ed.) published in 2001 (MOE, 2001). In practice, many principals embraced the idea soon and, in the light of their understanding, gave it rich concrete content. In a book, for example, recording the dialogue on school leadership between the book editor and 60 high performing school principals, the term PSDF was mentioned by more than half of the 60 principals as the overriding theme in their leadership practice, and most of them recognized the significance to building a culture fostering student development under the idea of PSDF. One of the 60 principals explained what PSDF was from the perspective of school leadership practice (Ma, et al., 2005, p. 246): The connotation of the term Putting Student Development First is to give first priority to every student well development and growth. A school should manage to provide students with the learning resources as abundant as possible and with the necessary time and space for their ample and independent development. In the process of learning, every student's personal interest, hobby, talent and personality can be brought into full play and developed. That is to say, student affairs regarding their development should be placed to the center stage of school practice, and all other school work should serve the development of every student.
To actualize the idea of PSDF, many schools have made efforts in setting flexible learning objectives for students with different academic level, rebuilding and enriching their school curriculum system, 16 establishing various student clubs for students with special talent, and

74
Creating a Culture Fostering Student Development changing the approach to teaching and learning to tailor education to meet the different needs of students and to assist every student's ample and independent development in the last 20 years. In short, the PSDF as a leadership idea has already had a great influence on the building of China's school culture. The PSDF as an orientation of school development, on the other hand, has exerted a substantial influence on the reform of school curriculum and the transformation of learning approach in China since the term was first officially used in 1998.

Collectivism [JI-TI-ZHU-YI]
Collectivism [JI-TI-ZHU-YI] is a term that has long existed in Western sociological, psychological or educational literature. However, the meaning of Collectivism, in China's context, is not exactly the same as that of in Western literature. The essence of the term Collectivism, in CPC's official terminology, is that the people's interests stand above everything else (The 19th National Congress of the CPC, 2017). The "people" means here "all public members" or "masses". Mao Zedong argued in 1957 "our People's Government is one that genuinely represents the people's interests; it is a government that serves the people." (Mao, 1966, p. 46) Mao's perspective that the people's interests stand above everything else was later developed into a statement that "individual interests must be subordinated to collective interests, the partial interests must be subordinated to overall interests, and immediate interests must be subordinated to long-term interests." (Zhao, 2014). Later, the Collectivism was written into the Article 24 of the Constitution of PRC as one of the civic attitudes advocated by the Constitution (National People's Congress,1982). However, it seemed that it would be not very appropriate to hold on the position that individual interests were absolutely neglected after the 14th National Congress of the CPC set out the transformation from the socialist planned economy system to socialist market economy system in 1992. The term Collectivism was understood as "both of the individual and collective interests should be taken into account, but when necessary, individual interests should be subordinated to collective interests (Zhao, 2014). At the moment, individual interests should be subordinated to collective interests is no longer a mandatory requirement, but placing the collective good before self-interest is still advocated. In China's school context, the sense of Collectivism is seen as one of moral principles fostering the culture of interdependence between school members as well as the basis of the harmony in school. With this respect, a veteran principal tends in his/her leadership practice to pay attention to protecting the personal interests of school staff while encouraging staff to take 3.2 Key Terms 75 consideration school interests consciously. In China's schools, the building of collectivist climate is usually exercised through various means in school life. One of the typical means to build collectivist culture is Building a Class-based Student Collective which is the term will be explored later in this chapter. "one of practical ways to strengthen teachers' Sense of Ownership is to explain the significance of school short-term and long-term plan to staff in detail in order to make school staff fully understand that the rise and fall of schools are closely related to themselves." (Fu, 2008  and goals for the collective, shared moral sense and code of conduct towards school life while every student has the opportunity to display his/her talent, develop his/her personalized character, and get the acceptance of collective members (Hu, 2007a;. The term BCBSC in some other context refers to a mandatory task that the form teachers must undertake and rest of subject teachers must involve in. The fundamental end of BCBSC, anyway, is to assist every student to well accomplish his/her socialization and promote every student's sound development and growth.

Building a Class-based Student Collective
Historically, the term BCBSC was originally borrowed from Soviet Union in 1950s during the BCBSC was one of most important means to educate children. He contended that the education exercised "in a collective, by the collective, and for the collective" was the best and most effective way to educate children (Zhao,1992, p. 590). Makarenko summed up the BCBSC as three essential propositions. First, the collectivity was the foundation of education. It seemed to him that a child's "disposition can well develop when he/she takes part in a well-organized, disciplined, tenacious collective life with a sense of great pride over time. (Makarenko,1956, p. 289). He believed that the foremost priority for school leadership was building of a collective.
Second, the collective was a means of education. Makarenko argued that a collective itself was the teacher for every individual in the collective. Thus, he called for teachers to educate individual 3.2 Key Terms 77 students through the collective (Zhao,1992, p. 591). Third, the building of student collective was one of the goals of education. Makarenko insisted that the key purpose of socialist education was to foster the collectivists for Soviet society. He claimed that the primary task of teachers, in the context of socialist society, was to cultivate a strong and conscious collective, and prepare the students with the sense of collectivism to enable them to understand that the collective and the state's interests must be placed unconditionally above the interests of individuals (Zuo & Zhang, 1984;Zhao,1992, p. 592 BCBSC is no longer to prepare communist soldiers with the sense of extreme collectivism but to promote every student's personalized development in a good collective climate. Or, in the words of an outstanding form teacher, the essential function of a class-based student collective "has transformed from fostering the individuals who absolutely submit to the collective to providing opportunities and resources for the all-round development of each student" (Lu, 2017, p. 4).
The BCBSC is highly valued in current China's school education. In CSTWCE2017-teachers, more than 78 % respondents strongly agreed that the BCBSC is great helpful to ensure the quality of learning and to promote students' healthy and sound development. Concomitantly, over 73% of respondents in CSSLM2017-principals strongly agreed that BCBSC is the primary task of the form teachers (see Appendix A). In school practice, a form teacher plays the roles of guide, coordinator, and facilitator for BCBSC. The form teacher of a class is normally selected from subject teachers who have good moral character and strong social skills. It is found, based on relevant literature review, that following three strategies have been most widely adopted by the form teachers in the process of BCBSC. The first strategy is to set up the shared norms of a class.
In exercising the strategy, a form teacher should not only make the students in his/her class understand and follow the rules and regulations of the school (e.g. the bell schedule, the framework for discipline), but also set up shared norms of their own class. In practice, the form 78 Creating a Culture Fostering Student Development teachers tend to guide students of their classes to set up the shared norms by creating certain situation to make student understand the importance of shared norms (Hu, 2007c;Gao, 2011). In one of practical cases, for example, a form teacher gave her students a special assignment to learn how to make classrooms clean and tidy in the new students' first week in a primary school. The form teacher divided the class into five groups and six students for each group. Each group turned on the duty to make and keep classrooms clean and tidy at one of weekdays. 17 The students of rest groups played the roles of observers and advisors to assist the group on duty to continually improve the way to accomplish the group task with high quality by cooperation among the group members. The form teacher held a class conference next week to encourage students to consider and discuss what matters in a cooperative work and what norms will be helpful for work collectively. It is deemed to be one of good ways to assist students setting up shared norms by their own. (Lu, 2017, pp. 32-33). The second strategy is to develop students' the sense of self-management and the capacity to shoulder responsibilities for the class. Conventionally, a student leadership team called "class committee" will be elected by all students of the class in the first months after new students initiate their school life. A class committee is usually composed of a captain and five or more committee members who take the responsibilities to coordinate the class activities regarding learning, sports, health, entertainment, and social practice. A form teacher usually encourages the class committee to organize student activities by itself and work with rest of students of the class to bring into full play the everybody's initiative and collective wisdom in defining the class vision and manifesting class spirit by their own class motto, badge, song, and classroom decoration, etc. The members of a class committee must be shifted according to the system of rotation after one school year so as to make more students have chance to serve the class collective and get the experience of class leadership (Hu, 2007c;. Moreover, to develop every student's leadership capacity, most form teachers always would like to create more "leadership position" for the students who seem to have little chance to be elected as the members of class committee. In a process of BCBSC, a form teacher can create more than 20 such leadership position as discipline supervisor, leader of morning exercises, manager of class-mini-library, weather forecaster, personal appearance reminder, and so on and so forth in Lu,2017, p. 28-30). The third strategy is to optimize interpersonal climate in the class-based student collective. By various themed activities as well as one on one communication, an experienced form teacher can always lead individual students to develop positive attitudes towards and develop student empathy for their peers with learning difficulties or encountering emotional frustration (Hu, 2007b;Gai, 2012). Anyway, what strategies the form teachers used in BCBSC depends on specific educational situation and individual form teachers personal experience and character because there are no standardized procedure and unified approach to Building a Class-based Student Collective. As a researcher said, there are no two identical classes in a school, Nor a perfect way of BCBSC. (Hu,2007a)

Flag Raising Ceremony [SHENG-QI-YI-SHI]
Flag Flag raising (all staff and students salute the flag while National Anthem is being played). 79   80 Creating a Culture Fostering Student Development

Key Terms
• Singing the National Anthem after completing the flag rising.
• Speeches under the National Flag (short and instructive speeches by the principal or middle managers).
In school practice, the Flag Raising Ceremony is not only a kind of patriotic education to enhance student sense of national identity, but also a means of reinforcing the school spirit by the "speeches under the National Flag". The main topics of the speeches are usually to review school progress made in the past week, to share the stories in the school that reflects the culture advocated by the school, and to praise specific behavior of certain students conformed to the code of conduct that embody the spirit of the school (Song, et al., 2010;Xu, et al., 2016).

Moral Modeling [YI-SHEN-ZUO-ZE]
Moral But if he himself is not upright, even though he gives orders, they will not be obeyed." (Waley, 1998, p.163) Similarly, some Western pioneers of modern education, such as John Locke in his book Some thoughts concerning education in 1693, also had almost similar expressions when they talked about the influence of educator's behavior on students (Yang, 2003 eing always the first one to bear hardship and the last one to enjoy comfort.

Regardless of personal gains and losses in performing his/her duty.
utting organizational or colleagues interests before his/her personal interests.
eing willing to forget his/her personal interests to ensure group/organizational interests.
eing willing to work with colleagues in a hard time.
ever taking other s products as his/her own, and o retaliation against colleagues.
They also found, based on the results of a range of questionnaire, that a leader s Moral Modeling had a significant positive impact on employee satisfaction as well as organizational commitment.
They believed that it reflected, in a way, the difference between Chinese and Western cultural that a principal should relied on not only administrative power, but also his/her personal moral standing and Moral Modeling to enable teachers to realize their potential at work (Xiang, 2010b).
It is often said that students behavior is a mirror of their teacher's behavior. Similarly, the teachers behavior also reflects their principal's behavior. He added (Xiang, 2010a). Another school principal believed based on his leadership experience that a principal Moral Modeling was helpful to building up prestige of the principal, making psychologically compatible between

Key Terms
teachers and the principal, and playing, under certain circumstances, the role of substitute for leadership (Wen, 1995). Certainly, the Chinese government has always advocated that leaders from all walks of life ought to set a good example by their own conduct. In the Professional Standards for Principals of Senior High School, for example, the Moral Modeling is set as one of professional requirements for the principals (MOE, 2015).
a teacher s Moral Modeling is also highly valued because a teacher, the form teacher in particular is seen as a leader in leading the class-based student collective, and the Moral Modeling is the foundation of teachers' prestige (Yang, 2003). Some related studies have also provided evidence for the importance of teachers Moral Modeling. For example, when students were asked in an interview that what was the moment that their teacher impressed them deeply, the answers were, Watching the sweat on the forehead of our teacher when he was cleaning up our classroom with us . After sprained my ankle, I was picked up from my home to school by my teacher every morning . Feeling the performance of our class was not good enough, the form teacher criticized herself openly in front of the whole class (Guo, 1998). Therefore, work with their students in classroom or other occasions in school. However, the teacher s Moral

Emotional Management [QING-GAN-GUAN-LI]
In  (Zou, 2002). A number of stories and cases of successful Chinese principals have really provided evidence for the aboveconcerning the essentials for Emotional Management (Wu, 2008;Xie, 2013;Lai, 2013;NTRFMO, 2014;. Furthermore, the value of substantive support in Emotional Management has been particularly affirmed in Chinese school leadership context. For example, when talking about Emotional Management, a high school principal who has served as principal in three schools in the past 20 years emphasized that the principal should put his/her staff s worries and frustrations in his/her mind and try to provide substantive support for solving the problems they face. It seems to be necessary for a principal who is concerned with Emotional Management to take the initiative to visit his/her staff in hospital to show concern for them, to attend the funeral of a teacher s spouse as a sign of sympathy, to attend the wedding of his/her staff to offer congratulations to the bridegroom and bride. (Shao, 2018). Similarly, the principal must defend the legitimate interests of his/her staff if their interests are violated (Wu, 2008). By doing so, a principal, in Chinese cultural context, will gain the praise and trust from his/her staff over time.

Key Terms
Heart to Heart Talk [TAN-XIN] is one of methods most commonly used in the practice of the Emotional Management. It refers to the one on one talk between a superior and a subordinate (e.g., a principal vs. a middle manager, a middle manager vs. lower manager, a lower manager vs. an ordinary teacher), which is mainly concerned with emotional needs of school staff. Sometimes, however, the principal can have a Heart to Heart Talk with an ordinary teacher directly if necessary. The Heart to Heart Talk is a kind of in-depth communication to exchange of views, to enhance mutual understanding and trust, to euphemistically convey the superior's advice for the subordinate, to express the concern and sympathy of the superior to the subordinate, or to express emotional support from the superior to the subordinate. Anyway, the purpose of the Heart to Heart Talk is not fixed, but rather depends on specific situations. Like the term Emotional Management, the Heart to Heart Talk is not a scholarly term, but initially developed and used in The role of Heart to Heart Talk in school leadership and management is, by and large, still out of the horizon of school leadership researchers in Chinese universities since there has been very little empirical research on this theme thus far. Nevertheless, Chinese school leadership practitioners do attach great importance to Heart to Heart Talk, and they view the Heart to Heart Talk as one of effective methods in their Emotional Management. In Intrview2018-Principal, 16 out of 17 interviewees said that the emotional management had been valued in their leadership practice. 15 out of 17 interviewees admitted that they used the Heart to Heart Talk and home visits (the term will be explored later) whenever necessary. (See Appendix B). In addition, some principals also discussed, in their written works about their Emotional Management experience, that how they employ the method of Heart to Heart Talk in leadership practice. From such written works by principals, the Heart to Heart Talk is most likely to be used when 1) a teacher violates rules and regulations of the school and faces an impending penalty; 2) the performance of a teacher is criticized by students or parents; 3) there is a fierce dispute between two teachers; 4) a teacher is suffering a frustration in his/her work; 5) a teacher has hard time in his/her personal life (e.g. the psychological trauma from marital problems, upset caused by a family accident, and the death of a closest family member) (Zhang, 1996, p. 188;Liu,2000, p. 506;Zou, 2002;Wu, 2008;Shao, 2018). Indeed, the written works by Chinese principals over 40 years includes a number of leadership stories about how school leadership, through using the method of Heart to Heart Talk, changes teachers negative attitudes towards 84 Creating a Culture Fostering Student Development Talk [TAN-XIN] their work, improves teachers performance, resolves the disputes between teachers, revives teachers enthusiasm after setbacks in their work, and gives teachers comfort and encouragement in their hard time. Moreover, some principals, in their written works, summed up four key words of successful Heart to Heart Talk in leadership: listening, empathy, flexibility and sincerity (Li, 2007;Lv, 2010;Liu, 2013). It is important to note that the Heart to Heart Talk not only happens between leadership and school staff, but also happens between teachers and students. Teachers, especially the form teachers often use Heart to Heart Talk as one of the methods they learned from their school leaders to meet their student emotional needs (Liu, 2007, p.65;Zhang, 2013, p.52, 96;Lu, 2017, p.122).

Home Visits [JIA-FANG]
Home Visits [JIA-FANG] is another method most commonly used in the practice of the Emotional Management. It usually refers to the school leaders to pay a visit to staff s home through which the positive influence of leadership can be extended beyond the workplace, and the staff and their family members can recognize that they are highly valued by school leadership. As one of methods in Emotional Management, it is most likely to be conducted when a teacher is suffering from serious illness or his/her family has hard time. In other cases, school leaders may have a Home Visit to convey congratulations to a teacher on the honor he/she obtained and praise, in front of his/her family members, his/her contributions to the school. A Home Visits is sometimes used alongside the Heart to Heart Talk since the Heart to Heart Talk conducted at a teacher s home often gets a more effective result than it conducted in school (Xie, 2003;Wu, 2008;. In general, the Home Visits are valued by school principals at the moment. In the survey of CSSLM2017-principals, 75.1 percent of the respondents (principals) STRONGLY AGREED with In staff management, it is important to have heart-to heart talk with staff, to try to comfort to staff, or to pay visits to their homes at right time. while 22.0 percent of the respondents AGREED with the item. Meanwhile, the home visits as a way of expressing leadership concern for teachers is also supported by most teachers.

Summary and Discussion
This chapter attempts to explore the key terms which are widely used by school leadership practitioners in creating a culture fostering student development The first term presented in this chapter is Putting Student Development First [YI-XUE-SHENG-FA-ZHAN-WEI-BEN] which is viewed as the overarching belief in building the school culture fostering student development and growth by most of Chin principals. Just as one of principals interpreted, the term means that a school should give first priority to every student well development, and ensure every student s personal interest, hobby, talent, and personality to be brought into full play and develop (Ma, et al.,2005, p. 246 Compared with first five terms presented in this chapter, perhaps the sixth and seventh terms seem more deserving of further discussion. As we know, some Western scholars have pointed out the significance of moral side of school leadership (cf. Sergiovanni, 1996, p.58;Sergiovanni and Starratt, 1998, pp. 45-48). When he discussed the source of authority for leadership, for example, Sergiovanni argued, we now rely almost exclusively on bureaucratic authority, psychological authority, and technical-rational authority. Important as these sources may be, they are not as powerful as moral authority as a basis for school leadership practice. (Sergiovanni,1992, p. XV).
When Sergiovanni illustrated the moral side of leadership, he listed the elements of moral leadership which consisted of the purposing, professional ideal, community norms, covenant, collegiality and leadership as stewardship, but the leaders' personal virtues are not included (Sergiovanni, 1992). However, the Chinese researchers, Li  some Western scholars also contended that the emotional side of school leadership should not be overlooked (Hallinger, 2003, p. 291 Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.