PEDAGOGICAL TRANSFORMATION UNDER CHINA'S 'DOUBLE REDUCTION' IN ZHEJIANG
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18623/rvd.v23.6786Keywords:
Double Reduction, Education Policy, Education Quality, Educational Governance, School, Teacher TrainingAbstract
The 'Double Reduction' education policy, introduced by the Chinese central government in July 2021, aims to alleviate students' academic burdens by restricting off-campus tutoring and improving the quality of in-school education. This study investigates how this policy has reshaped secondary school teachers’ professional roles in Zhejiang Province by employing retrospective pre-test/post-test quantitative design and self-developed Teacher Role Change Scale. A stratified random sample of 120 junior high school teachers completed the RRCS, rating their role performance before (July 2021) and after (2025) policy implementation. Paired-sample t-tests, correlation analyses, and multiple regression were conducted to test research objectives. Results show a significant improvement in overall role scores from pre-policy (M = 61.50) to post-policy (M = 64.21; t (119) = –2.918, p = .004), validating H1. However, the four demographic variables (teaching experience, professional title, school type, and location) were not significantly correlated with role-change scores (|r| ≤ .131, p > .15) and collectively failed to predict role change in regression analysis (R² = .042, p = .292), thus H2 and H3 were not supported. These findings suggest that the policy effectively expanded teachers’ roles—particularly in classroom teaching and homework guidance—the magnitude of change was uniform across demographic groups.
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