COLLABORATIVE EDUCATIONAL GOVERNANCE AMONG GOVERNMENT, SCHOOLS, FAMILIES, AND COMMUNITIES IN CHINA

Abstract

Collaborative educational governance is increasingly essential because students’ learning, health, safety, character, and social development are shaped across institutions beyond the control of any single actor. In China, recent laws and policies require government departments, schools, families, and communities to coordinate responsibilities, yet formal participation does not necessarily produce coherent action. This article synthesizes collaborative governance theory, ecological systems theory, the overlapping-spheres perspective, international partnership scholarship, national research and policy. The literature shows that effective collaboration requires a shared public purpose, complementary roles, relational trust, equitable participation, boundary-spanning leadership, integrated resources, ethical information practices, and continuous learning. However, collaboration is constrained by administrative fragmentation, school-centered decision making, unequal family capacity, weak community voice, power asymmetries, excessive digital communication, privacy risks, and uneven local conditions. From an educational administration perspective, collaboration should be designed as a governance system rather than a collection of meetings or temporary projects. Accordingly, the article proposes the COHERE Collaborative Educational Governance Framework: Clarify shared outcomes and public value; Organize multilevel roles and coordination; Harmonize communication, trust, and conflict resolution; Enable equitable participation and stakeholder capacity; Resource integrated services and community-based learning; and Evaluate shared accountability and adaptive improvement. Through diagnosis, co-design, coordinated action, and review, COHERE connects national direction with local discretion and student-centered problem solving. The article concludes that sustainable collaboration depends on institutionalized reciprocity: government provides stewardship, schools exercise professional leadership, families contribute knowledge and responsibility, communities mobilize resources and social support, and students remain the ethical center of collective action.