Research on professional development (PD), exploring its practice and impact, has made significant progress in the past thirty years. In a vocational education environment, the role of teacher professional development in relation to enhancing teaching quality and capability has received extensive attention (Zhou, Tigelaar and Admiraal, 2022). Scholars have reviewed PD in conjunction with students' academic performance, leadership performance and school reform (Sims et al., 2021). More recently in China, the PD of middle leaders (MLs) has gradually entered scholars’ field of vision, through the development of distributed leadership theory and adult learning theory.

Internationally, MLs have been recognised as playing a key strategic and operational role in the leadership team of schools and colleges as executors, coordinators and participants of development strategies, working both vertically and horizontally within their organisations (Lipscombe et al., 2020). However, research exploring the PD for MLs in the Chinese mainland is still limited. Indeed, the literature review findings of this study found that most of the existing research is restricted to a general education environment. From a vertical perspective, research on the PD of MLs is relatively advanced (Zhang, Wong and Wang, 2022; Bryant and Rao, 2019; Walker and Qian, 2019; Bryant, Wong and Adames, 2020). From a horizontal perspective however, there are clear limitations to the research conducted to date, when compared with other countries. Scholars are accustomed to classifying the PD for MLs directly as teacher professional development, without taking account of the added complexities involved in MLs’ rolls and the PD needed to support their development. As such, this simplistic generalisation limits the scope of PD and its impact on both MLs’ and system improvement.

In the context of the new education reform, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued a series of policies that put forward higher requirements for the quality and ability of teaching faculty in Chinese higher vocational colleges (CHVCs) from 2019. Among them, the principles of stratification and classification were explicitly proposed. The policy requires that the improvement plan for different stages of PD in CHVCs should be precisely planned, according to the needs of different teachers, leaders and trainers. However, reform efforts in PD for MLs lack an informed view, through the absence of empirical research in the context of China. There is a reliance on learning from the experience and achievements of research on PD and MLs conducted in other countries. This runs counter to contemporary understandings of the importance of context for system improvement efforts. Conducting localised research in China, is therefore key to reform, enhancing the quality and training of CHVCs. Moreover, such empirical research could contribute to the limited number of non-Western centric studies which dominate the international literature.

This study, located in CHVCs, aims to explore the relevant policy requirements and specific development pathways of PD for MLs, through exploring the following research questions:

1. What are the policy aspirations for the PD for MLs in CHVCs?

2. What is the experience of MLs engaging with PD in CHVCs?

3. What are the implications for the extent to which policy aspirations and MLs’ experience of PD match in CHVCs?

Through the generation and analysis of data through semi-structured interviews and policy documents on PD at the national, regional and institutional levels, the policy background and implementation status regarding PD for MLs in CHVCs has been illuminated. This study contributes to filling the research gap about PD in the Chinese educational environment. Correspondingly, it introduces understandings of PD from the Chinese mainland to an international audience, especially meaningful for European countries increasingly aware of the importance of MLs and their PD.

This study reports on a qualitative phenomenological study of four CHVCs in Shandong Province, exploring the basic blueprint of PD for MLs and formats. Through the collection and analysis of policy documents on PD at the national, regional, and institutional levels, the relevant policy requirements regarding PD for MLs becomes clear. After completing the semi-structured interviews, formats of PD for MLs in daily work were analysed. Key themes emerged from that data analysis about PD for MLs. The data collection and analysis in this study consist of three phases. During the first phase of this study, official policies and institutional documents on the PD from the Ministry of Education, Shandong Provincial Department of Education and the college's Personnel Division were analysed. In the second phase, the researcher combined purposive sampling and snowball sampling as sampling methods, recruiting MLs as interviewees in four CHVCs. Finally, in the third phase, the researcher designed the second round of interviews based on the analysis results of Phase 1 and Phase 2. The followed-up interviews mainly focused on emerging themes through in-depth discussions with the interviewees. Grounded theory coding was applied as a data analysis tool in this study, consisting of three iterative coding stages, depending on the degree of fit and abstraction to the data: initial coding, focused coding and theoretical coding (Charmaz, 2014). Through the coding and analysis of relevant documents, national and regional level guidelines and instructions were explored. The background and status of the PD for MLs gradually became clear. At the same time, the attention to supporting measures and financial investment for the PD formulated at the organisational level according to the relevant national requirements was gradually clarified. To better understand the implementation around PD for MLs, the researcher conducted two rounds in-depth, open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 15 MLs, developing a detailed description of the experience of and insight into PD provision by each ML participant in their CHVC context.

The findings from the interview and document analysis would suggest that the blueprint for the PD for MLs in CHVC consists of three perspectives: macro, meso and micro. Specifically, according to the ability requirements and development standards of MLs proposed in the national guidance document, the content of PD for MLs mainly includes three aspects: classroom teaching, team leading and external servicing. In practice, MLs in CHVCs form Middle Leaders Communities (MLCs), a Professional Learning Community (PLC) to carry out job-embedded learning activities. Among them, the common formats of PD involve four categories: Experience and Information Presentation, Collegial Visits, Coaching and Self-regulated Learning. This study highlights the role of collective learning and college-enterprise cooperation as the core measures in strengthening PD. Moreover, in the context of the pandemic, the combination of online and offline PD has been widely used in PD provision. This combination enhances the understanding of PD for MLs in CHVCs. The study’s findings highlight the critical role of PD in the Chinese vocational education reform process.

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