On the afternoon of January 4, the 2024 Training Meeting for Liaison Directors of the Shanghai Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) Project was successfully held at Xiafei Theater of Shanghai Normal University. The meeting was chaired by Associate Professor Zhu Xiaohu from the Shanghai TALIS Secretariat. Zhang Jin, Deputy Director of the Personnel Division of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission; Sun Taotao, Researcher of the division; Professor Zhang Minxuan, Director of the UNESCO Teacher Education Centre; and Associate Professor Xu Jinjie attended the meeting. Liaison directors from 16 districts in Shanghai and over 200 sample schools also participated in the training.
First, Deputy Director Zhang Jin of the Municipal Education Commission welcomed the district liaison directors, and on behalf of the commission, thanked all districts for their support for TALIS work. She noted that the smooth implementation of previous TALIS projects could not have been achieved without the careful organization of district education bureaus and the strong support of participating schools. The findings of TALIS have provided international perspectives and evidence-based support for Shanghai’s educational policy-making, significantly advancing the development of Shanghai’s teaching workforce at multiple levels. She urged all districts and schools to maintain strict standards and careful organization to ensure the high-quality completion of this TALIS survey. Deputy Director Zhang Jin emphasized that only with authentic data can the TALIS project truly serve Shanghai’s education and help build a world-class teaching team in Shanghai.
Professor Zhang Minxuan led the participants in reviewing Shanghai’s participation in TALIS, highlighting the significance of international educational research projects such as PISA and TALIS in enabling Shanghai’s education to go global. He pointed out that it was precisely Shanghai’s outstanding performance in these projects that led to the establishment of the UNESCO Teacher Education Centre and the UNESCO International Institute for STEM Education (IISTEM) in Shanghai.
Associate Professor Zhu Xiaohu introduced the overall situation and key findings of the TALIS project, emphasizing the importance of Shanghai’s continued participation in TALIS. He then provided a detailed explanation of the implementation process and technical requirements for the official 2024 Shanghai TALIS survey, urging participating schools to strictly follow international standards and survey procedures to ensure that Shanghai’s survey data is authentic, objective, and comparable. At the end of the training, Associate Professor Zhu Xiaohu also answered questions raised by liaison directors from districts and schools.
TALIS, initiated by the OECD, is the world’s largest survey project on teachers and school principals. It aims to understand their professional development, teaching practices, and working environments from their perspectives, providing reliable, timely, and comparable information for countries and offering policy recommendations for teacher development. The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission decided to participate in this international collaborative research in 2014, and 2024 marks Shanghai’s third participation. In line with international technical standards, this survey will involve principals and over 4,000 teachers from more than 200 schools across the city. While maintaining the stability of cross-cycle content, the survey has deepened investigations into several specific policy-related themes and added coverage of current cutting-edge areas in international teaching.
