Who are Studying as Pre-Service Teachers in Universities? An Investigation of Gender Composition and Urban-Rural Backgrounds of Pre-Service Teachers Enrolled between 1982 and 2019

Abstract

In 2018, the Chinese government issued the Opinions on Comprehensively Deepening the Reform of Teacher Supply in the New Era and the Action Plan for Teacher Education Revitalization (2018-2022) to emphasize the need to attract high-quality students to join in teacher education programs through various means such as advanced enrollment, setting public-funded targeted teaching positions, tuition refunding for novice teachers, and shortening compulsory service periods. The purpose of this study is to investigate the pre-service teacher body composition and its alterations in the past few decades to identify what kind of college students have studied as pre-service teachers and the changes in student sources for teacher education programs?