Innovation Model of Zhongshan's City-Level Integrated Ideological and Political Education Community for Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Institutions: A Collaborative Governance Perspective

Abstract

Advancing the integrated civic and moral education across primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions is a major reform aimed at fulfilling the fundamental task of nurturing well-rounded talent. However, it has long faced challenges such as institutional gaps between educational stages and difficulties in practical coordination. Based on collaborative governance theory, this paper takes a city-level case in Guangdong Province and employs qualitative research methods to systematically examine its innovative practices in building an integrated civic and moral education community. The study finds that the city has established a dual-wheel collaborative governance structure of "administrative support and professional guidance," effectively integrating the resources of the government, universities, and teaching research institutions. By creating a dual-line integrated educational mechanism of "building on historical-cultural resources and empowering through digital platforms," it has addressed issues of uneven resource distribution and spatiotemporal constraints. Furthermore, by developing a "mandatory for all - elective by stage" teacher professional development system, it has achieved an overall enhancement of teaching capacity across educational levels. These innovations collectively form a typical integrated governance model. The research demonstrates that this model, by cultivating key "order parameters" and establishing self-organizing networks, has promoted the collaborative evolution of the city's civic and moral education system from "disorder" to "order," providing an analytical framework for understanding the digital transformation of educational governance. Although the case has limitations in terms of generalizability, the collaborative governance logic revealed by this model offers practical insights and reference value for advancing integrated civic and moral education more broadly and for supporting the modernization of educational governance in other domains.