Teachers’ Logic Of Practice In Rural Middle School Changes

In the field of middle school changes, teachers especially who are in the rural schools occupy a special position. Researchers always tend to regard teachers as "particles" which are pulled by outer forces in the process of school changes; they are also treated in the perspective of functionalism to view the subject status of teachers in change. It is beneficial for us to enhance our understanding of the rural school changes, thus providing a new approach to study rural teachers’ professional development and highlighting rural teachers’ logic of practice in school change and hence their regenerated strategies.The main issues are as follows. First, how do teachers learn about the environment of school changes? Second, how do they choose strategies and tactics responding to such school changes? Third, what are the results of different strategies? Chapter Two answers the first issue, and another two issues are showed in Chapter Three.With a case study of the L Middle School, this project seeks to draw upon Pierre Bourdieu’s "logic of practice" theory to select the rural middle school change scenarios and analyze teacher’s logic of practice. On this basis some reflections will also be given in this study. Focusing on specific analyses of rural teachers’ rituals under change, strategic formation, and the results of school change, this research will further discuss some key issues like the rationality of teachers’ logic of practice and its limitations. And in this study, rural teachers’ logic of practice has not been justified as the intrusive suggestions and countermeasures are also not simply defined.The conclusion includes the following three statements:First, teachers’ awareness and perception of school change field are concrete. They reconstruct their knowledge of the field of school changes autonomously and establish their place in it; the habitus of teachers are thus historical and stable.Second, in the actual situations, teachers have adopted different strategies depending on their habitus. There are individual differences in specific strategic selection, adaptation, assimilation, dilemma and refusal. The siructure-supported change activities are stable, which will not be shaken by personal behaviors. Eventually, the school falls into the process of change reproduction without any substantial development.Third, rural teachers’ attitudes towards knowledge are blurred while they choose to stay with urban-rural differences. The incomplete teachers’insight into the school change field affects the reconstruction of teachers’habitus in that one of the features of teachers’strategies goes to the inadequacy of the collective action. Autonomous individuals and dependence on hotshots and personal social network serve to hinder the regeneration of collective consensus; and teachers’practice of change without energy and depth ultimately turns out to be a modern cynicism.