Research on the Construction Policy of College Counselors Team Based on Cooper's Four-Dimensional Analysis Framework

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The policy regulating the construction of university counselor teams constitutes a key institutional pillar for governing ideological and political education within China’s higher education system. Currently, the number of university counselors has reached 279,000, and the related institutional framework has become increasingly mature. Nevertheless, implementation challenges remain, such as a disconnect between policy rhetoric and grassroots realities, a misalignment between expanding job responsibilities and available resources, and underdeveloped career advancement pathways. Additionally, most existing studies adopt a single-perspective approach and lack a systematic framework that integrates multiple dimensions—namely value, institution, actor, and technology. To address this gap, the present study conducts a comprehensive investigation of the value logic, institutional structure, stakeholder interaction, and operational outcomes of the counselor team construction policy, with the aim of providing a theoretical basis for policy refinement. This research employs the four-dimensional educational policy analysis model proposed by Cooper and his colleagues as its theoretical foundation. It combines historical institutionalist analysis, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaire surveys to perform a multi-faceted examination of the policy in question. Centered on the normative, structural, constitutive, and technical dimensions, the study develops an analytical pathway that moves from “value logic” to “institutional form” to “interaction structure” to “operational effectiveness.” The normative and structural dimensions focus on national policy texts, systematically reviewing eight core policies issued since 2004 and over forty institutional documents dating back to 1949. The constitutive and technical dimensions take Neijiang Normal University as a case study, integrating textual analysis with empirical data collected through in-depth interviews with fourteen key stakeholders and survey responses from 105 valid participants. The findings are as follows. At the normative level, the counselor policy has established a triple value construct—political legitimacy, educational justification, and professional rationality—yet the institutional articulation of career development rights remains relatively general, indicating room for further value balancing. At the structural level, the counselor system has evolved through stages of emergence, consolidation, and integration, gradually embedding itself into the core structure of higher education governance. However, path dependency has resulted in a sustained expansion of duties while resource allocation lags behind, creating structural tension. At the constitutive level, interview data reveal an operational pattern characterized by “high expectations and tight constraints,” wherein local universities shoulder implementation responsibilities under resource limitations. From this, a cyclical explanatory framework of “tension, adaptation, solidification, and reproduction” is derived. At the technical level, questionnaire analysis shows that institutional support is the dominant predictor of perceived policy effectiveness (β = 0.665, p < 0.001), while the student-to-counselor ratio and the clarity of career advancement pathways still require improvement. Based on this four-dimensional integrated analysis, this study argues that in the context of local undergraduate universities like Neijiang Normal University, the counselor system has moved from a “system-construction stage” to a “system-optimization stage.” The implementation tensions observed in this case reflect common characteristics shared by similar institutions operating under resource constraints. Meanwhile, the analysis of national policy texts in the normative and structural dimensions provides the macro-institutional backdrop for understanding these local practices. Accordingly, future policy priorities at the local undergraduate level should shift from scale expansion toward quality enhancement and refined governance. Specifically, this entails strengthening professional expression at the normative level, promoting hierarchical and classified design at the structural level, optimizing multi-actor interaction mechanisms at the constitutive level, and improving monitoring, evaluation, and policy learning mechanisms at the technical level.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• CHAPTER 1. Introduction 1
• 1.1 Research Necessity and Purpose 1
• 1.2 Research Questions 6
• CHAPTER2. Theoretical Background 8
• 2.1 Conceptual Definitions 8
• 2.1.1 University Counselors and Team Construction 8
• 2.1.2 Policy, Ideological and Political Education Policy, and University Counselor Team Construction Policy 12
• 2.2 Literature Review 14
• 2.2.1 Domestic Literature Review 15
• 2.2.2 Foreign Literature Review 28
• 2.2.3 Summary of the Literature Review 32
• 2.3 Theoretical Model 34
• 2.3.1 Cooper’s Four-Dimensional Policy Analysis Model 34
• 2.3.2 Related Prior Research on Cooper’s Four-Dimensional Policy Analysis Model 48
• CHAPTER3. Research Methods 51
• 3.1 Overall Research Design 51
• 3.2 Literature Sources 58
• 3.3 Interview Data 60
• 3.3.1 Selection Criteria for Research Participants 60
• 3.3.2 Interview Data Collection Process 65
• 3.3.3 Data Analysis 67
• 3.4 Questionnaire Data 68
• 3.4.1 Questionnaire Design and Participant Selection 68
• 3.4.2 Questionnaire Data Collection and Analysis 71
• CHAPTER4. Research Results 77
• 4.1 Normative Dimension 77
• 4.1.1 Policy Text Selection and Value Orientation Explanation 77
• 4.1.2 Political Leadership and Ideological Legitimacy 81
• 4.1.3 The Political-Educational Value Orientation of Counselor Policy 85
• 4.1.4 Professional Development and the Value Reconstruction of Modernization 91
• 4.1.5 Summary: The Normative Construction and Evolutionary Logic of the Value System 97
• 4.2 Structure Dimension 100
• 4.2.1 Policy Review and Basis for Stage Division 100
• 4.2.2 Institutional Formation Period (1949–1976) 106
• 4.2.3 Establishment Stage (1977–2005) 115
• 4.2.4 Integration Stage (2006–2025) 126
• 4.2.5 Summary: Evolutionary Logic and Institutional Generation Mechanism 136
• 4.3 Constitutive Dimension 139
• 4.3.1 High Expectations and Tight Constraints: The Source of Tension in Policy Implementation 139
• 4.3.2 Strategic Survival: The Adaptive Practices of College Buffering and Frontline Prioritization 142
• 4.3.3 Goal Displacement: Institutional Translation from Education-Oriented to Assessment-Oriented 146
• 4.3.4 Suspended Support: Organizational Coordination Difficulties under Resource Constraints 151
• 4.3.5 Formation of a Closed Loop: The Stable Logic of Limited Feedback and Gradual Adaptation 156
• 4.4 Technical Dimension 163
• 4.4.1 Sample Structure and Institutional Context: Quantitative Projection of Policy Tension 163
• 4.4.2 The Disconnect between Cognition and Implementation: Quantitative Evidence of Institutional Translation 166
• 4.4.3 Who Is More Satisfied – Differentiating Effects of Institutional Context and Influencing Factors 168
• 4.4.4 Feedback Mechanism: Structural Tension between Channel Existence and Limited Responsiveness 172
• 4.4.5 Summary: Empirical Positioning of the Institutional Support Structure 174
• CHAPTER5. Conclusions and Suggestions 177
• 5.1 Conclusions 177
• 5.2 Suggestions 180
• 5.2.1 Normative Dimension: Strengthen Professional Expression and Promote Balance in the Value Structure 180
• 5.2.2 Structural Dimension: Promote Stratified and Categorized Institutional Design to Alleviate Path Dependence Pressure 183
• 5.2.3 Constitutive Dimension: Optimize Multi-Actor Interaction Structure to Alleviate Implementation Tension 185
• 5.2.4 Technical Dimension: Improve Monitoring, Evaluation, and Policy Learning Mechanisms 187
• 5.3 Theoretical Contributions and Practical Implications 189
• 5.4 Limitations and Future Directions 194
• Reference 196
• Appendix 214