Teaching quality evaluation has become a central instrument of contemporary education governance, yet many systems face an inherent tension. Accountability-oriented inspection and development-oriented professional learning serve fundamentally different purposes that are difficult to reconcile within unified evaluative frameworks (OECD, 2013). While some systems privilege one orientation over the other (e.g., the UK’s Ofsted inspections versus Finland’s trust-based professional autonomy), and others attempt integration within single instruments (e.g., the Danielson Framework in the United States), China adopts a distinctive alternative that has received limited systematic attention in international scholarship.

This study examines the Chinese education system as a case in which administrative inspection (行政督导) and peer observation (同伴互助/听评课) are formally institutionalised as parallel, policy-mandated mechanisms operating within a unified national framework. Rather than treating these mechanisms as isolated practices, the study conceptualises teaching quality evaluation as a dual-track policy system shaped by multiple institutional pillars and enacted across governance levels. This configuration is particularly relevant given China’s vast teaching workforce and substantial regional variation in resources and governance capacity.

Drawing on institutional theory, policy enactment theory, and cultural-historical perspectives, the study addresses four research questions:

 RQ1 (: How are administrative inspection and peer observation institutionally differentiated within China’s teaching quality evaluation policy system? (Differentiation)

RQ2: Through which mechanisms are the two evaluative tracks coordinated while maintaining functional separation? (Coordination)

RQ3: How is the dual-track framework recontextualised across governance levels and provincial contexts? (vertical and horizontal variation)

Scott’s (2014) framework of institutional pillars provides the primary analytical lens for the current study. The regulative pillar operates through formal rules and sanctions that constrain behaviour and enforce compliance. The normative pillar functions through shared professional values and expectations about appropriate conduct. This framework maps productively onto China’s dual evaluation mechanisms: administrative inspection operates primarily through regulative channels (hierarchical authority, standardised procedures, rectification requirements), while peer observation draws on normative channels (collegial responsibility, collective improvement, mutual support). The concept of coupling (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Coburn, 2004) offers analytical leverage for examining how the two tracks relate: whether loosely coupled, tightly integrated, or selectively connected through specific mechanisms.

Policy enactment theory (Ball et al., 2012) complements our analysis by illuminating how policies are recontextualised as they travel across institutional levels. National frameworks establish structural templates, but provincial and school-level actors interpret, translate, and re-specify these designs according to local conditions (Braun et al., 2011). This perspective directly informs examination of cross-provincial variation in policy elaboration.

The study contributes to international debates on teaching/teacher evaluation by advancing the concept of “differentiated parallel governance”, a policy configuration that institutionalises accountability and development as separate but coordinated tracks rather than attempting synthesis within unified instruments. This offers a distinctive response to the formative-summative tension that pervades teacher evaluation systems internationally. The current study provides a comparative reference point that expands the repertoire of available governance designs for European educators and policymakers navigating similar tensions between accountability demands and professional learning imperatives.

This study employs qualitative document analyses to examine the formal policy system of China’s dual-track teaching quality evaluation. The focus on basic education (primary and secondary schooling) reflects this sector’s governance under unified national policy frameworks. Policy documents serve as the core analytical unit, treating them as authoritative texts embodying specific institutional pillars and official discourses (Bowen, 2009). Documents were retrieved from official government databases including the National Laws and Regulations Database, Ministry of Education archives, and provincial education department (i.e., school) websites. The temporal scope (2010–2025) captures the contemporary evaluation framework established by China’s National Medium- and Long-Term Education Reform Plan (2010–2020) through recent developments. Initial retrieval yielded 167 potentially relevant documents. Application of inclusion criteria (official policy texts directly addressing teaching quality evaluation, specifying evaluation procedures or consequences) resulted in a final corpus of 96 documents distributed across three governance levels: national (n=14), provincial (n=61), and school (n=21). Seven provinces/municipalities were purposively selected to capture systematic variation in economic development, administrative capacity, and regional context: Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong (economically developed with strong administrative capacity) and Guizhou, Gansu, and Xinjiang (less-developed contexts with more constrained resources). This contrast illuminates how identical national frameworks are differentially elaborated under varying economic and resource conditions. Analysis proceeded through four phases. First, corpus structuring systematically tagged documents across administrative hierarchy, evaluation track, regional affiliation, and chronological sequence. Second, thematic coding followed Saldaña's (2021) two-cycle approach, employing both deductive categories derived from the theoretical framework and inductive codes capturing emergent patterns. Inter-coder reliability, assessed through independent coding of 20 documents (21% of corpus), reached Cohen's kappa of 0.76. Third, cross-level alignment analysis compared national mandates with provincial and school-level texts to trace policy recontextualisation patterns. Fourth, cross-provincial comparison used analytical matrices to isolate regional variations within the unified national framework. This multi-level design enables systematic tracing of how the dual-track system is designed at the national level and recontextualised as it moves through the governance system, while cross-provincial comparison illuminates how differentiated elaboration emerges within shared structural frameworks.

Institutional differentiation (RQ1): The findings reveal deliberate separation grounded in distinct institutional pillars. Administrative inspection operates through the regulative pillar: a vertically extended accountability chain where designated supervisors (positioned in policy texts as the "third eye" of education regulation) are authorised to inspect, demand rectification, and trigger formal consequences for schools and leaders. Peer observation, by contrast, is anchored in the normative pillar: horizontally organised teaching research groups (教研组) where colleagues engage in collaborative lesson study and reflective dialogue. Evaluative authority is distributed among peers rather than vested in external supervisors, with consequences flowing through collegial relationships rather than formal sanctions. Coordination mechanisms (RQ2): The two tracks are connected through selective and asymmetrical coupling rather than structural integration. Three mechanisms emerge: sequential linkage (inspection findings trigger targeted peer-based improvement activities), artefact circulation (shared teaching artefacts flow across governance routines without collapsing functional distinctions), and temporal complementarity (episodic inspection and continuous peer observation create layered evaluation). Explicit boundary-setting language in policy texts protects the developmental track from consequence-bearing use, preserving its normative foundation. Recontextualisation and variation (RQ3): Cross-provincial analysis reveals strong structural convergence alongside systematic variation in elaboration. All provinces uniformly adopt nationally mandated components, demonstrating coercive isomorphism. However, developed provinces (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Guangdong) exhibit denser professional learning infrastructure, while less-resourced provinces (Guizhou, Gansu, Xinjiang) focus on procedural compliance and minimum standards. This suggests that genuine functional differentiation is achieved primarily in well-resourced contexts, carrying implications for equity in teacher professional learning opportunities. The study advances the concept of “differentiated parallel governance”. This offers an alternative to both integrated frameworks that risk accountability contamination of professional learning and siloed systems where tracks operate in isolation, with potential implications for European systems navigating similar tensions.

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