Supply-Demand Preferences and Compatibility between Sending and Recipient Parties in Shanghai–Yunnan Group-Based Paired Education Assistance

Abstract

To examine the supply-demand matching status of the Shanghai–Yunnan “group-based” paired education assistance and to identify the supply-demand misalignments and their generative mechanisms between the sending and recipient parties, this study draws on supply-demand adaptation theory to construct an analytical framework of “supply preference—demand preference—supply-demand adaptation status—causes of contradiction—optimization path.” Employing a mixed-methods design that combines a two-sided supply-demand importance matrix, independent-samples t-tests, and NVivo qualitative coding, the study uses 40 questionnaires from Shanghai teachers dispatched to Yunnan and 52 questionnaires from local teachers in recipient county-level general senior high schools in Yunnan as its primary data, triangulated with policy documents, symposium interviews, and typical assistance cases. The findings show that the two parties are highly aligned in teacher team building and curriculum resource development; significant cognitive misalignment emerges in the dimension of school management systems and institutional export, which falls into the Supply Surplus Zone; hardware facilities and teaching equipment support fall into the Supply Gap Zone; and the compatibility between policy and local learning conditions and the rationality of the assessment mechanism constitute the major practical obstacles. The supply-demand misalignment is rooted in the developmental gap in education between eastern and western China, the inertia of project-based supply, the absence of two-way communication mechanisms, and the risk of discontinuity caused by personnel rotation. The study proposes an operating mechanism of “front-end demand diagnosis—two-way dynamic adaptation—localized transformation and implementation—closed-loop evaluation and feedback,” so as to shift assistance from supply-driven to demand-oriented and move from “one-way embeddedness” toward “two-way integration and symbiosis.”