Guangdong Second Normal University

Guangdong Second Normal University was formerly the Guangdong Education Administration Institute founded in 1955. It was renamed Guangdong Education Institute in 1960. In the same year, Guangdong Workers and Peasants Normal College was merged. It was closed in 1970 and its main body was transferred to Xinxing County in Zhaoqing District. It successively established Zhaoqing District Normal School and Zhaoqing Normal College. It was reopened in 1978 and was designated as a provincial adult normal undergraduate college in 1982. In the same year, it began to hold adult normal undergraduate education. In 1985, it began to hold ordinary junior college education. From 1990 to 2008, it held ordinary undergraduate education. In 2010, with the approval of the Ministry of Education, it was restructured into an ordinary undergraduate college and renamed Guangdong Second Normal University. It is an ordinary undergraduate college under the jurisdiction of Guangdong Province. In 2014, it obtained the right to confer bachelor's degrees. In 2018, it passed the undergraduate teaching qualification assessment of the Ministry of Education.

The school is located in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, with two campuses in Haizhu and Huadu, covering a total area of ​​535 acres. It has 19 teaching departments such as the School of Education and 14 research institutions such as the Basic Education Research Center. It offers 44 undergraduate majors in 9 disciplines including education, literature, science, engineering, law, history, management, art and economics. There are more than 16,000 full-time undergraduate students and more than 50,000 adult students.

The school currently has 1,069 faculty and staff, including 714 full-time teachers. Among the full-time teachers, there are 189 senior professional titles, 215 teachers with doctoral degrees, and teachers with doctoral and master's degrees account for 84.17% of the total number of full-time teachers. More than 30 people in the school have won the honorary titles of "National Model Teacher", "National Excellent Teacher", "South Guangdong Excellent Teacher", "South Guangdong Advanced Educator", "South Guangdong Newcomer in the Teaching Field", "Guangdong Province Youth Cultural Talent" and so on. There are 3 provincial inspectors; 1 principal training expert of the Ministry of Education; 7 experts in the national expert pool of the "National Training" plan; 3 hosts of the provincial primary and secondary school teacher training expert studio; 2 provincial teaching masters, 1 provincial intangible cultural heritage inheritor; 2 doctoral supervisors and 10 master supervisors employed by other universities.

The school takes it as its mission to lead the reform and development of basic education and highlight the characteristics of teacher education. Focusing on the training of preschool education and primary school teachers, it cultivates teacher education talents with deep educational feelings, solid professional foundation, strong practical skills, high information literacy and sufficient development potential. While focusing on the main business of teacher education, it moderately develops non-teacher education, promotes the coordinated development of teacher and non-teacher majors, and cultivates applied talents with "sound personality, broad cultural knowledge, solid professional foundation and strong professional skills" for the innovative development of Guangdong's economy and society.

The school has established the concept of "teaching is student-oriented" and innovated the talent training model. Actively explore the reform of the credit system, drive the reform and innovation of the curriculum system, teaching management and teaching guarantee mechanism. Strengthen innovation and entrepreneurship education, integrate innovation and entrepreneurship education into the whole process of talent training, fully expand students' learning autonomy, and promote students' growth and development in all aspects. Our university's college student entrepreneurship incubation base has been recognized by the Guangdong Provincial Economic and Information Commission as the "Guangdong Small and Micro Enterprise Innovation and Entrepreneurship Demonstration Base", and the maker space has been recognized by the Guangdong Provincial Department of Science and Technology as the "Guangdong Province Maker Space Pilot Unit"; our school has been rated as a designated institution for entrepreneurship training in Guangzhou by the Guangzhou Vocational Ability Training Guidance Center. The employment rate of our school exceeds the average level of undergraduate colleges in the province, and the employment quality and employment satisfaction are steadily increasing.

The school's discipline construction and scientific research have made great progress. The three disciplines of education, mathematics, and ecology have been approved as provincial characteristic key disciplines. In the past five years (2016-2020), the school has won 6 key scientific research platforms at or above the provincial level, and has hosted 407 vertical and horizontal projects at all levels, including 24 national projects and 245 provincial and ministerial projects; 160 natural science projects and 247 humanities and social science projects. Teachers of the school have published more than 2,000 academic papers, including 378 core papers of Peking University, more than 130 papers included in CSSCI, 180 papers included in SCI, 73 papers included in EI, and 6 papers included in CPCI (ISTP); 98 books have been published; 70 patents have been obtained; 1 third prize of the National Education Science Research Outstanding Achievement Award and 1 second prize of Guangdong Science and Technology Award. "Journal of Guangdong Second Normal University" (Humanities and Social Sciences) has been rated as an excellent social science journal of national universities for five consecutive sessions, and has been selected as "Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences Core Journal (Extended Journal)" for two consecutive times; in 2021, the journal will be fully revised into an education and teaching research journal.

The school actively serves the basic education and local economic and social development of Guangdong Province. In recent years, the school has built three national teacher education innovation experimental zones; and has cooperated with the governments of Guangzhou, Shantou, Foshan and other places to build nine affiliated schools; and cooperated with Baiyun District of Guangzhou to establish the Guangdong Second Normal University Experimental Education Group, which is the first rural education group in Guangdong Province that covers all stages of primary, middle and high school. It has made bold explorations and accumulated rich experience in promoting the high-quality and balanced development of basic education, especially the rapid quality improvement of weak schools. The school has always been responsible for the training of basic education teachers and school (kindergarten) principals. It is the base of the Ministry of Education's Principal Pilot Project, the base of the Ministry of Education's Teacher National Training Program, and the Guangdong Provincial Primary and Secondary School Teacher Development Center and other six provincial institutions are located in our school. Primary and secondary school teacher training has an important position and significant influence in the country. More than 80% of primary and secondary school principals in Guangdong Province have participated in principal training in our school, and more than 50% of key teachers have received teacher training in our school.

The school actively expands international cultural and educational exchanges and cooperation. In recent years, the university has signed cooperation memorandums or cooperative education agreements with more than 10 foreign universities, including the University of Western Sydney in Australia, the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the United States, the University of the West of England in the United Kingdom, the University of Northampton in the United Kingdom, and the University of Rzeszow in Poland. At the same time, it has cooperated with the University of Western Sydney to carry out joint education projects in the "3+1" and "2+2" credit recognition models, and cultivated a group of applied talents with an international perspective.

Under the framework of the National Education Modernization Master Plan, the new goal established by the school is: around 2025, strive to complete the project construction goal of adding a master's degree awarding unit, achieve a new breakthrough in the level of school operation, and make the school an applied general undergraduate normal college with appropriate scale of operation, reasonable layout of disciplines and majors, high quality of talent training, and distinctive characteristics of teacher education. By 2035, the school will be built into a high-level applied normal university with high quality of talent training, distinctive characteristics of teacher education, outstanding advantages in serving basic education, and comprehensive strength ranking among the top similar colleges in the province, and teacher education has a great impact in China. (Updated in September 2021)