A Research On Preschool Teachers’ Professional Identity

Teachers’ professional identity refers to the perception and recognition manifestation of an individual teacher for professional feature and value. With a high level of professional identity, teachers have a strong internal acceptance, actively participating in teachers’ occupation, which makes sure the teacher groups have a low rate of turnover and flow, and have a good professional stability. At present, professional identity has become an important index to measure the quality of preschool teachers. Studies on teachers’ professional identity are still in the initial stage both at home and abroad. The existing researches are mainly theoretical exploration, concentrated in the concept, structure of teachers’ professional identity, with less empirical researches. As while as, based on different researchers’ respective theory, the study of teachers’ professional identity is fragmented and has not yet been formed a unified theory.This study, based on a comprehensive analysis of domestic and foreign studies in teachers’ professional identity and the relevant theoretical research, with its aim at the solving the shortcomings of existing studies, formed a theoretical framework. The research, based on the theory of social occupation stratification, made a systematic research on the concept, characteristics, structure and influencing factor of teachers’ professional identity, using the methods of qualitative, quantitative combination. A structured questionnaire of teachers’ professional identity, with high reliability, validity and good dimension structure, was formed, comprehensively using different statistical methods, such as factor analysis, item analysis. With the questionnaire, a sample survey was carried out among Zhejiang Province pre-school teachers. Through the survey, the current situation of teachers’ professional identity and identification feature in resource differences was analyzed. The study broadened the research field of teachers’ professional identity, enriched the theory of teacher education research, and provided an education foundation for improving the teachers’ professional identity level and promoting the healthy development of preschool teacher occupation.This research mainly contains two sections:the questionnaire weave of per-school teacher professional identity and the research on per-school teacher professional identity. The researcher selected700preschool teachers from training teacher in Zhejiang province and conducted test on their teachers’ professional identity by questionnaire. The results revealed that:1. Teachers’ professional identity, a multi-dimensional systematic structure, is composed of professional emotion identity, professional salary identity, professional environment identity, and professional reputation identity.2. The "pre-school teachers’ professional identity questionnaire" formulated in this study is of fine reliability and validity; it meets the demand of statistical measurement and is applicable to the measurement of pre-school teachers’ professional identity.3. Pre-school teachers’ professional identity in Zhejiang Province as a whole is of high professional identity, matching up to result of the national level.4. Pre-school teachers with different social resources reveal their characteristics in professional identity. In the aspect of occupying different organizational resources, there are significant professional identity differences between public and private kindergarten teachers, public kindergarten teachers have higher professional identity than private kindergarten teachers; there are significant professional identity differences in the total level and each factor between teacher with and without preparation, except in professional salary identity, pre-school teachers with preparation have higher professional identity than those without preparation in the mean. Teachers with different economic resources have significant professional identity differences in total level and salary identity. Teachers with different cultural resources no have significant professional identity differences in the total level and each factor.Therefore, government departments should focus on the institutional segmentation factors in preschool education, adjust the structure of resource inputs, standardize occupational access system, and appropriately increase occupational salary for preschool teachers, to improve preschool teachers’professional identity.