Abstract:

“Harmony in diversity” is a precise positioning of the new era essentials of the quality and balanced development of compulsory education. “Harmony” is defined as the fair distribution of educational resources and the on-demand supply of high-quality education. “Diversity” stresses the educational development of “different quality”, “out of sync” and “uneven”. However, the current four governance bodies of the central government, local governments, schools, and society ignore the “harmony in diversity” of the quality and balanced development in the process of compulsory education governance, still sticking to the governance logic of the basic balanced development stage. The idea of the phase of basic development which just stresses the indicator, efficiency, criterion, and single governance strategy makes the quality and balanced development of compulsory education trapped into a dilemma of “difference but not harmony”. In order to make full use of the governance utility of the governance subject, starting from the institutional arrangement of the governance subject “institutional field”, taking the new era meaning of “harmony in diversity” as the value orientation and action criterion and reconstructing the governance logic of “harmony without uniformity” are the feasible ways for the quality and balanced development of compulsory education in China.

Key words: new era, compulsory education, quality and balanced development, governance logic