Leading the Curriculum and Instruction

In China, instructional leadership is not a theme that has only recently emerged. In fact, instructional leadership has long been placed in the center stage of China’s school leadership and management, and it has been regarded as a key factor to promote school improvement.


lead
The first is that instructional leadership is the key function of school leadership as teaching and learning is the core business of school education. The second is that successful instructional leadership must closely associate with the solid teaching-study in which the principal personally involves. In 2017, the author triangulated the beliefs with the information from the results of CSSLM2017-principals and CSTWCE2017-teachers. In the CSSLM2017-principals, 74.0 percent of the respondents (principals) STRONGLY AGREED with It is no doubt that a school should place teaching and learning at the centre of school work while 19.5 percent of the respondents AGREED with the item. And 68.3 percent of the respondents (principals) STRONGLY AGREED with The essential assurance of the success of instructional leadership is the building of good teaching-study groups and Lesson Preparation Group. while 28.2 percent of the respondents AGREED with the item. In the CSTWCE2017-teachers, 76.5 percent of the respondents (teachers) STRONGLY AGREED with Schools should be centered on teaching because even if moral education is mainly carried out through the vehicle of day-to-day classroom instruction while 17.6 percent of the respondents AGREED with the same item (see Appendix A). The information from the CSSLM2017-principals and CSTWCE2017-teachers largely confirms that most of Chinese principals and teachers hold the above-mentioned beliefs at the moment. Thus, a range of key terms closely associated with instructional leadership composes the first group of selected terms of this chapter, which includes Teaching-Study System and Open Lesson [GONG-KAI-KE]. However, given the requirement of curriculum leadership has been emerged since the Compendium for Curriculum Reform of Basic Education (trial edition) was issued by the MOE in 2001(MOE, 2001, the instructional leadership, at the moment, is no longer an exclusive leadership factor that can significantly effect on teaching and learning. Rather, the curriculum leadership should be also included. In the curriculum reform policy, for example, the single national curriculum system is transformed into the three-level curriculum system of the national, local and school. With this regard, individual schools have to shoulder unprecedented responsibilities for curriculum development as well as curriculum management. Consequently, the curriculum leadership has become one of key components in principal development and principal

Teaching-Study System [JIAO-YAN-ZHI-DU]
Teaching-Study System [JIAO-YAN-ZHI-DU]is a system to promote teachers to engage in study and improvement of teaching on a daily basis so as to assure the quality of teaching and learning and the continuous improvement of teachers professional attitudes, knowledge, and skills for teaching. Historically, the initial purpose of establishing Teaching-Study System (TSS) in China was to address the practical challenge in the early years of 1950s. When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the enrolment rate of primary and secondary schools in China was much lower than that in industrial countries. The statistics in 1949 showed that the enrollment rate of primary schools was 20% and that of lower secondary schools was only 6% (Nie, 2010). To improve the education attainment of the Chinese people soon, the scale of primary and secondary education of the newly founded state was expanded rapidly in a very short period of time. In 1949, there were 346,800 primary schools in China, with 24.391 million students. But by 1952, there were 527,000 primary schools and 51.1 million students, the number of schools and students increased by 51.9% and 109.5% respectively (Zhao, 2014). The scale of primary and secondary education had expanded so fast that the number of qualified teachers was not adequate to meet the demand. Furthermore, due to the shortage of qualified teachers, there was a serious problem of skills gap among districts, schools and teachers. The TSS as one of government initiatives was to bridge the skills gap at the time. In1952, published two policy documents titled Interim Provisions for Primary Schools (Draft) and Interim Provisions for Secondary Schools (Draft). According to these two RHDs, all primary and secondary schools were required to establish the teaching-study mechanism called teaching-study conference to regularly have subject-based teacher meetings concerning the teaching schedule, improvement of teaching methods, and sharing the lessons from teaching practice (MOE,1952a;MOE,1952b). In 1955, the , an organ magazine of the MOE at the time,

published an editorial titled Education Departments and Bureaus of Provinces and Municipalities
Must Strengthen Teaching-Study Work to call for the establishment of the teaching-study office to assist provincial and local education authorities to assure the teaching quality at schools. Since then, the management system of teaching-study has been established across China (Liang, et al., 2010;Zhao,2014;Hu & Wang, 2017). In the established framework of TSS, a subject-based teaching-study group at school is professionally supervised for each of its subject areas by the teaching-study office in the Education Bureau (in a rural county or city district), which is in turn supervised by the relevant teaching-study office in the Education Department in the provincial or municipal government. (OECD, 2011, p. 88 (Hu & Wang, 2017).
With this regard, how to improve the quality of school-based teaching-study activities was regarded as the vital issue of the TSS. From then on, the term school-based teaching-study was widely used in China s school leadership practice. In the three-level (provincial, county/district, and school) TSS, the county/district teaching-study office plays the key role to provide schools with subject-based technical support for county/district wide school-based teaching-study since the office members are usually composed of the subject-based specialists who are respectively good at mentoring teachers of all subjects of primary, junior high and senior high schools.

Teaching-Study Specialist [JIAO-YAN-YUAN]
Teaching-Study Specialist [JIAO-YAN-YUAN] refers to the subject-based professionals who work at provincial or county/district teaching-study offices. Most Teaching-Study Specialists are selected from experienced and talented subject teachers of primary and secondary schools and their attitudes, knowledge and skills in teaching are recognized. Given the number of Teaching-Study Specialists had been 100 thousand by 2010, it is not a small cohort of subject-based specialists, and they have made a great contribution to China s basic education reform in the last decades (Liang, et al., 2010;Zhao, 2014). Initially, the priority of a teaching-study office was to close the skills gap among schools within a county or a district.
Accordingly, the role of a Teaching-Study Specialist was to supervise the classroom instruction and to convey the content pedagogical knowledge of a certain subject. The role of Teaching-Study

Specialists was increasingly intensified after the curriculum reform launched in 2001 because
Teaching-Study Specialists were required to provide school teachers with technical support in developing school curriculum (school curriculum did not exist in China until 2001) and to take responsibility in leading school teachers to change their teaching approach to meet the new demands of the curriculum reform (Liu, 2009;Liu & Huang, 2018 Specialists in the province were good at inspecting and commenting on the classroom instruction (in most cases, criticizing the teachers performance), but they are unable to work with teachers to explore realistic ways to improve the performance of teaching and learning (Ha, 2012). There is even an absurd phenomenon in practice that some Teaching-Study Specialists have not had classes for years, yet they are busy with classroom observations and make comments on teachers performance almost every work day  In the link of lesson preparation, teachers are usually required to prepare lessons in advance by collective way. For example, teachers should prepare lessons in advance for the first and second weeks of the semester before the semester starts by the way of Collective Lesson Preparation [JI-TI-BEI-KE] organized by the Lesson Preparation Group (LPG). The major task of lesson preparation includes, based on the analysis of antecedent learning condition of students, the arrangement of the teaching content and determination of the teaching objectives, pace of teaching, the focus in teaching and the possible difficulty in student learning.
In the link of classroom instruction, teachers are required to allocate time properly for each 40-minute lesson, to use diversified teaching strategies in terms of individual students responses in the class, to provide incentives for students with learning difficulties, and to ensure student to understand the core knowledge of the lesson.
The link of assignment homework, grading In terms of home work designing, teachers are required to design the home work by revolving around the core knowledge while considering appropriate difficulty and workload for students. In the process of grading each student s work, teachers are required not only to mark and grade individual students work in time but also to write brief written feedback on students work book when necessary. The commenting on overall s usually aims at solving the common problems reflected by students home work. The process of the commenting is actually not a process of students listening to teachers' remarks, but rather, it is a process of the reflection and discussion between a teacher and his/her students.
The link of tutoring refers to the teacher makes additional efforts for students with learning difficulties. Teachers are required to take the responsibility to identify the knowledge flaws of the students with learning difficulties, and to analyze key reasons for their learning failure in learning motivation, antecedent knowledge and skills for learning, learning strategies and after school learning environment. Subsequently, the teacher should develop tutoring programs to provide the students who left behind in learning with one on one tutoring. However, teachers are not required, in the link of tutoring, to exclusively focus on the student cohort with learning difficulties. In some cases, the teacher may also attempt to provide tutoring for the gifted and talented students to In the link of assessment, the regular task of teachers is developing the exam paper, supervising students exam, marking the exam papers, analysis of the results of exam, identifying major problems in students learning and summarizing the quality of teaching and learning in a period of time. In the five links, the lesson preparation and the assessment are usually carried out as team work organized by the LPG.

key terms 169
foster their higher-order thinking skills and complex problem-solving skills.

Collective Lesson Preparation [JI-TI-BEI-KE] refers to the timetabled meeting of the teachers in a
Lesson Preparation Group (LPG) 18 in which teachers of the LPG work collectively to "draw up very detailed lesson schemes for a particular topic the following week. Teachers are expected to teach according to the scheme, which is then translated into more detailed lesson plans by and for individual teachers [after the meeting]" (OECD, 2011, p.88). Therefore, the lesson scheme, as the result of Collective Lesson Preparation (CLP), serves as a guide for teachers when they prepare specific lesson plans for their lessons. The intention of CLP is to ensure teachers exercise classroom instruction in accordance with the professional requirements for teaching, while there is still room for teachers' individual autonomy and creativity.
Although neither the central government nor the local governments in China have ever made policy provisions on CLP, the CLP regulations have been set in all primary and secondary schools in China without exception (Chen, 2006). Historically, the CLP was created in 1950s to address the challenge of the "skills gap" among teachers in the time of qualified teacher shortage. At the Both subject-based Teaching-Study Group (TSG) and the Lesson Preparation Group (LPG) play key roles to ensure the quality of teaching and learning at school on a daily basis. Given the LPG is the professional group of lowest level at school in which the teachers of same subject at the same grade (they usually share one office) communicate and interact directly almost every school day, the professional influence of a LPG on teachers is, in most instances, more frequent and stronger than that of a TSG. time, the first priority of the CLP emphases, didactics, pace and student home work for every lesson delivered by different teachers in the same LPG (Chen, 2003;Zhu, 2011). Consequently, the "unification" indeed guaranteed the base line of classroom instruction, but individual teachers personal style and features in classroom instruction were constrained. However, the CLP has gradually become one of the vehicles for school-based teacher development since the shortage of qualified teachers in China was gradually alleviated in1990s, especially after the beginning of curriculum reform in 2001.
Since then, "unification" has been no longer the core mission of the CLP. Rather, sharing of peers' professional experience and discussion of teaching innovation have been the dominant themes in CLP (Chen, 2003). Nowadays, the frequency of the CLP in numerous schools is also declining, from once a week to once every other week. Of course, the specific purposes and ways of the CLP vary from school to school in practice. Yet, in some schools where teachers are still weak, "unification" is still the focal issue in their CLP. Concomitantly, it is helpful for beginning teachers to accelerate them to meet their job requirements by participating in the "unification-centered" CLP (Xue, 2013;.As far as the CLP is concerned, the main function of instructional leadership in most schools is to promote a positive climate for the CLP, which includes establishing regulations, allocating internal and external resources, maintaining leadership visibility, providing incentive for LPGs, etc.

Classroom Observation and Commentary [TING-PING-KE]
Classroom Observation and Commentary [TING-PING-KE] is one of regular teaching-study activities in China s primary and secondary schools, in which peer teachers as observers observe -minute lesson, listen to, after the lesson, the observed teac explanation about what his/her initiate ideas, objectives, strategies, methods and procedure designed for the lesson in his/her lesson preparation and how he classroom instruction, and make evidence-based commentary on the strengths and weaknesses of this lesson and make suggestions accordingly Ding, 2018). The role of the Classroom Observation and Commentary (COC) in China s school context is composed by three aspects. The first aspect of COC is regarded as an effective vehicle to promote the renewal of teaching ideas, the sharing of teaching experience, the exploration of effective teaching strategies, and to 6.2 key terms improve teachers' teaching skills, and ultimately make students benefit more from the classroom instruction (Hu & Si, 2014;Fu, 2017). As a high school principal, Shen pointed out that the primary purpose of COC did not encourage teachers imitate each other's specific behavior in their classroom instruction, but that teachers should have a deeper understanding of the key factors that contribute to a successful classroom instruction (Shen, 2018). In this respect, the Teaching-Study Groups in many schools have been engaging in identifying shared characteristics of a qualified classroom instruction in the past decades. For example, the high school principal Li worked with his teachers to gradually identified a shared protocol of a quality classroom instruction through many times of COC. These included , Clear instructional objectives.
•Reasonable teaching design.
• Pre-set teaching scenarios together with necessary on-site adjustment.
• Flexibility and diversity of teaching methods.
• Concerned with all students.
• Embodying the notion of learner-centered.
• Achieving the instructional objectives efficiently.
• Being able to control the order in classroom.
• Good interaction between the teacher and students.
However, there are no universal protocol of a quality classroom instruction in practice. There is no doubt that the so-called shared protocol is school-based as well as subject-based. In another words, the protocol of a quality classroom instruction is exclusively shared among the teachers in the same subject at the same school. Moreover, the shared protocol is not fixed, but change with the deepening of teachers' understanding of classroom teaching. The second aspect of the COC's role is to act as an instrument to evaluate teachers' performance since the COC is often used as a lens through which to examine teachers' professional quality. As described in an OECD report, "in many cases, teachers are observed by the school principal or by district education officers when they are being considered for promotions or awards. In short, a Chinese teacher sees a lesson more as a show or a performance, and puts in many hours of preparation to cover the standard 40-minute period." (OECD, 2011, p.88 (Zheng, 2009;Lu, 2012;Qu, 2017). Because of such a consensus, most principals in China maintain a high frequency of attending the COC. A high school principal, for example, claimed that he managed to organize his schedule to make one to two periods of classroom observation every weekday so as to keep linking leadership with classroom . Another high school principal claimed that he usually made over 60 times classroom observations in each semester and attending the COC had become the habitual behavior of his instructional leadership (Qu, 2017).
But for most principals, their frequency of COC attendance is not as high as that of these two principals. Although the positive role of the COC has been generally acknowledged for a long time, the effect of the COC is not always positive for all teachers. A questionnaire survey of Physical Education teachers of primary and secondary schools in Beijing showed that teachers with less than five years of service had the highest enthusiasm for the COC. With the increase of their working years, teachers' enthusiasm for the COC gradually declined . This result suggests that the inexperienced teachers, compared with experienced teachers, are likely to benefit more from the COC.

Open Lesson [GONG-KAI-KE]
Open tend to organize Exploring Lessons to explore and examine the possibility or feasibility to implement certain strategies as well as specific methods of some pilot programs to address the challenges emerged in the curriculum reform. The instructors of Exploring Lesson are usually the teachers who are engaging in a pilot program (Xiao & Lin, 2013;Shao & Qin, 2014). The observers of Exploring Lesson are most probably the teaching-study specialists who are leading the pilot program, other teaching-study specialists in the same subject, the highly regarded teachers in the subject and subject-based teaching researchers from universities.
Today, the OL in China s school context is regarded as not only the platform to conduct intra-school as well as inter-school COC, but also one of major vehicles to promote the school-based teacher development. In China, almost all experienced teachers have had the experience of giving OL, and the most of distinguished teachers talents, expertise and wisdom in teaching are highly recognized by peers because of their inter-school, inter-district and even inter-province OL (Liu, 2010;Li 2014;Shi, 2017;Wang, 2018). The teaching protocols of their OL are present throughout China, from remote villages to prosperous cities (OECD, 2011, p. 89).
Compared with the Routine Lesson (RL) [CHANG-TAI-KE], OL usually differ in preparation time, topic selection, design focus, classroom environment and students' performance (Shi and Li, 2016).
Preparing for OL often takes several times as long as preparing for RL because the instructor tends to deliberate over the lesson plan and to revise it over and over again during his/her OL preparation.

Topic choice
When choosing the topic of an OL, the instructor tends to avoid topics that they are not familiar with, or are not suitable for the "wonderful performance" in his/her classroom instruction, but choose the topics that he/she is most familiar with and good at. In contrast, it is impossible for teachers to deliberately choose a topic for a RL.

Focus of design
The focus of the teaching design of RL is the students learning results. That is how to help students to acquire knowledge, to learn skills, and to develop positive values towards the world.
Besides the focus of the teaching design of RL, there is another focus of OL teaching design. That is to consider how to display the teaching accomplishment and art of the instructor in front of the observers as much as possible in the process of the OL.

Environment and atmosphere
For the physical environment, a RL conducts in a regular classroom whereas an OL has to be taught in a larger space, and even move to the theatre sometimes because too many observers participate in. The change in physical environment will inevitably have an impact on the mentality of the students and the classroom atmosphere.

Student performance
In an OL, the performance of the students who are surrounded by stranger audience is most likely to be better than their performance in most RLs because the students want to win glory for their teacher and the class collective.
these above-mentioned differences between OL and RL, there have been critiques of the OL in recent years. Arguments include that people can learn little from the teaching protocols of OL because an OL is primarily concerned with the ins s show rather than students learning; or that the marrow or the highlights of an OL can be hardly replicated in a RL because the OL s output-to-input ratio is too low (Zhang, 2009;Wang, 2012;Shi and Li, 2016).
In an extreme case, for example, it even took a teacher three months to prepare a 40-minute OL (Zeng, et al., 2011). Nevertheless, most educators of China are the proponents of the OL though there are critiques of it. In China s instructional leadership practice, the OL has been viewed as one of effective ways to promote school-based teacher development. Maybe that's why the OL is still widely adopted in teaching-study activities of primary and secondary schools in China at the moment (Han, 2011;Li, 2014;Wang, 2018).

Compendium for Curriculum Reform of Basic Education (trial edition) issued by the MOE in 2001,
in which the policy framework and relevant requirements of the curriculum reform are set out.

Figure 6.2 The timeline of the first seven times curriculum reforms in China after 1949
The curriculum of basic education in China had experienced seven reforms between 1949 and 2000 (see Figure 6.2), but the changes before 2001 had never been as comprehensive and profound as this most recent one (Zhong et al., 2001, p and globalized economy. To reach the goal of the human resource preparation, curriculum reform was seen as a vehicle for holistic reform of education (Feng, 2006;Wang,2011).  (Ye, 2008;Zheng, 2013;Chen and Liu, 2018). However, the realization of the purpose and objectives CCR depends largely on the influence of school leaders on school teaching practice.

Three-Level Curriculum Management [SAN-JI-KE-CHENG-GUAN-LI]
As noted in 6.2.7, there were seven times curriculum reforms of basic education in China between 1949 and 2000. However, the focus of the first seven reforms were mainly on the increase or decrease of subjects and the change of subject syllabus and textbooks. The centralized curriculum system borrowed from the Soviet Union had not changed since 1949 (Zheng, 2005;Wang,2011).
Compared with the previous curriculum reform, one of the most remarkable changes in the latest curriculum reform is the change of curriculum system from centralization towards decentralization, although the degree of this change is still limited. The core of this change is marked by establishing the three-level curriculum structure and system of three-level curriculum management.
In the RHD of the CCCPC and the State Council released in 1999, establishment of a new system of three-level curriculum (national, l basic education was proclaimed (CCCPC and the State Council,1999 Council, 2001). Ten days later, the MOE was released Compendium for Curriculum Reform, in which the responsibilities of the MOE, the provincial education department and school to curriculum management was defined respectively (see Table 6.1).This is the first time since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 that the central government has substantively shared curriculum management power and responsibilities with local governments and schools (Zhong, et al., 2001, p.347;. ·Creating a new curriculum evaluation system. through their efforts to coordinate local resources, to provide school leaders and teachers with training programs, and to establish curriculum evaluation and incentive system (Han, 2014;Sun, 2019;He & Yue, 2019). the curriculum leadership capacity of school leaders, meanwhile, has developed in the practice of school curriculum management in past eighteen years. The curriculum leadership at school level will be discussed in detail in 6.2.9.

key terms
As noted above, the purpose and the objectives of curriculum reform set out by the CCR in 2001 triggered off a significant transformation of China s school education. However, the realization of the purpose and objectives depends largely on the influence of school leadership on school teaching practice. At classroom level, the intended objectives of curriculum reform may be altered and even ruined by the teachers without motivation to change their chalk and talk teaching format, or the teachers who have found the new curriculum difficult to handle when preparing their students to do well in public examinations (OECD, 2011, p.91). That is, educators jokingly describe the situation as follows: High-sounding appeals to promote quality[-oriented] education, down-to-earth preparation for examinations (OECD, 2011, p.90). Furthermore, the MOE Leading the Curriculum and Instruction 180

Curriculum Leadership [KE-CHENG-LING-DAO]
all schools to develop school-based curriculum plan. It was proposed that the curriculum plan might consist of school vision, school tradition, curriculum expectations of students and parents, curriculum objectives, curriculum structure, curriculum implementation and management, curriculum evaluation, curriculum resources, and mechanism of quality assurance (Yin, 2010;. Through curriculum planning, principals would learn how to keep linking central government intention in curriculum reform with school characteristics and specific needs of students and parents, so as to ensure that the general purpose of curriculum reform would be coupled with the school-based curriculum reform objectives. The second path was to enhance members of school leadership team, middle managers and backbone teachers to translate the national curriculum standards into a range of subject-based specific criteria for classroom instruction and other learning activities, so as to put the school-based curriculum plan into practice (Yin, 2010).
-based research by requiring principals to construct learning organization and to encourage teachers to engage in the school as well as subject-based scientific research, so as to solve the problems and to address the challenges emerged in the practice of curriculum reform as far as possible (Yin, 2010;WE, 2015).  (Zhang, 2011;Chen, 2013;Liu, 2014;Wei, 2015;Gao & Tan, 2016;Li & Zhou, 2018). On the other hand, Curriculum Leadership as an area of leadership practice, which has been on-going development. One of recent developments is that the distributed perspective is introduced into the practice of Curriculum Leadership. It is recognized that Curriculum Leadership is not an exclusive role of the principal, or other members of school leadership team. Rather, Curriculum Leadership is probably best conceived as a set of functions which must be carried out by both school leaders as well as teachers (Ding, 2015;Cao, 2018). Nevertheless, challenges are emerging in the practice of Curriculum Leadership in China, which are identified as unbalanced development of Curriculum Leadership between coastal cities and inland of China (Gao & Tan, 2016;Yang, 2016), unbalanced performance in different functions of Curriculum Leadership (Zhu, et al, 2017), the school-based action of curriculum reform, in some cases, exclusively reflects the principal's personal preference rather than students' real needs (Wei, 2015), and the research methodology concerning curriculum leadership is not sophisticated (Chen & Liu, 2018). In 1984, the founding director of Shanghai Institute of Educational Sciences argued at a conference that the research themes of educational research conducted by local research institutions and primary and secondary schools should mainly focused on practical issues at schools rather than the themes of theoretical research. "We should identify research themes from the problems in school practice that need to be studied and solved urgently" he proposed (Feng, 2005, p.16). His view was widely accepted at the time and reinforced later in curriculum reform after 2001 (Xing, 2000;Liu, 2004;Zhou, 2005;Chen, 2009). A high school principal even asserted that the problems that arisen in the course of school-based curriculum reform were, of course, the research themes of the school, and the solutions to them would be based on the educational research conducted at school (Huang, 2018). Perhaps, that's why nowadays school leaders and teachers prefer using the term school-based research to using the term educational research.

School-Based Scientific Research Management
With the curriculum reform gradually gaining ground after 2001, China's local authorities and school leaders recognized that it was imperative to foster the scientific research ability of teachers because the implementation of curriculum reform would not solely rely on the group of amateurs" to "institutionalized practice". In the teaching-study convention, but should step up efforts to build a school-based scientific research team to energize their schools (Liu, 2002;Fang, 2004). The scientific research here refers to the research highlighted by the data-based and evidence-based methodology because there has been an emerging consensus in last ten years that the complex task of school-based curriculum reform needs the support from empirical research (Liu,2017;Chen & Liu, 2018). Thus, the term school-based research has been recently replaced by school-based scientific research.
In another development, the recognition of the significance of scientific research became one of the driving forces to promote principals to consider how to ensure the research in their school to be exercised "scientifically" by establishment of a specialized office to manage school-based research projects. Consequently, the term school-based scientific research management was naturally accepted by principals. This development has yielded a prevalent trend that more and more schools have tended to establish the Office for Scientific Research & Teacher Development (OSR&TD) over past nineteen years since the launch of curriculum reform. The OSR&TD as one of middle management of a school performs management functions concerning school-based research and takes responsibility in improving teachers' knowledge and skills on scientific research by relevant training programs. More specifically, the OSR&TD usually fulfill the following roles (Wu, Feng, &Wei, 2008, p.258): To assist school leadership to identify emerged as well as emerging challenges in implementation of curriculum reform, and to prepare consultation paper for leadership decision making when necessary.
To deliver scientific research knowledge to teachers by teacher training.
To develop school scientific research plan in terms of leadership decision, and coordinate teachers to apply for the research projects at school, district and provincial levels.
To supervise the progress of granted projects and the condition of funds usage.
To organize an expert meeting for project appraisal upon completion of each project.
To release newsletters of school scientific research regularly.
To be responsible for collection and filing of school research data.
Now that the OSR&TD has been set up at a school, what role should the principal play in the management of school-based scientific research? In terms of successful cases, the roles of the principal in school-based scientific research management basically include (Xing, 2000;Wu, Feng and Wei, 2008, p. 261), •To aware of the value of school-based scientific research to the development of schools and to see it as one of the priorities of school leadership.
•To make decision on the orientation and purposes of school-based scientific research and to guide the process of the school research planning.
•To establish an effective management agency (e.g. the OSR&TD) of school-based scientific research.
•To provide incentives for teachers to be research educators.
•To create a school climate that can foster the school-based scientific research. in China's school context. Moreover, one of the beliefs underpinning the convention and format is that successful instructional leadership must be based on the solid teaching-study in which the principal personally involves. So, it is hard to imagine that a principal who is ignorant of classroom instruction being respected by teachers. By the same token, it is hard to imagine that a principal exercises instructional leadership well without maintaining high visibility at the work place of teaching-study activities.
Apart from the terms around instructional leadership, we also examined a set of terms regarding the curriculum reform, through which the status quo of Curriculum Leadership in China's context has been presented. There is no doubt that the curriculum reform in China has

Summary and Discussion
made great achievements since the reform was launched in 2001. Concomitantly, the curriculum reform has also brought some challenges to school leadership. The biggest challenge for Curriculum Leadership in many schools is the standards of the national curriculum are not flexible.
Although the curriculum system consists of national, local and school curricula, the high-stakes testing subjects (e.g. Chinese language and literature, Mathematics, Foreign Languages) are all categorized into the domain of national curriculum. China is a country with a large population of school-age children. According to the statistics in 2017, there were 186 million students and 12 million teachers (non-teaching staff not included) at two hundred and fifty thousand primary and secondary schools distributed in different parts of the country under different economic levels of development (MoE, 2017). As many high performing teachers choose to move to the schools in coastal cities, it is hard for teachers in small towns and rural areas of mainland China to fully change their teaching approaches in accordance with the new requirements of curriculum reform because they lack the capacity to ensure their students' test scores to be higher enough in high-stakes test if they abandon the traditional teaching methods they have been familiar with.
This situation has resulted in the problems in the practice of Curriculum Leadership in China, which are identified as unbalanced development of Curriculum Leadership between coastal cities and inland of China (Gao & Tan, 2016;Yang, 2016). Secondly, teacher workloads have excessively increased accompanied with the progress of curriculum reform. With the implementation of curriculum reform, the requirements and expectations for the role of a teacher are accruing. In traditional Chinese culture, the primary responsibility of a teacher is not only to teach students the knowledge and skills of subjects but also to guide the process of socialization for students. Therefore, the term "educator" is quite different from "instructor" in the Chinese cultural context because an "educator" is not only an "instructor" but also a "moral guide." If a teacher only acts as an "instructor," he or she will be seen as an unqualified teacher. In this sense, when the question of "who is a qualified teacher?" is raised, the traditional answer is very simple: A qualified teacher is an educator. Recently, the answer has changed to "not only an educator but also a learner" because for teachers in the era of curriculum reform, they have too much new knowledge to learn. Even more recently the answer has become "an educator, learner, innovator, facilitator, researcher…." Consequently, teacher workloads have been rapidly increasing with the endless requirements and expectations from the reform. This raises serious questions for school leadership: What is the peak load for a teacher? Will a number of teachers collapse or even burnout some day? Can a fatigued teacher work well? Will the intended new teaching approach required by curriculum reform be altered and even ruined by a fatigued teacher in classroom instruction?
Such questions still remain to be answered though some principals are aware of this challenge and are trying to take measures to deal with it. (Feng, 2003;Feng, 2007;Li, 2009;Wang, 2017).
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