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Self - Study Of Primary And Secondary School Teachers

Posted on:2015-05-27Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:H P TangFull Text:PDF
GTID:1107330467973865Subject:Development and educational psychology
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Autonomy is the important personality trait and basic psychological needs, generally considered to be closely related with the development of the individual self. With the deep-going research of learner autonomy and the sustained development of teacher profession, teacher autonomy has gradually developed into a key research topic in the academic world, especially in researches of teachers’ education and teaching psychology, with broad attention received from researchers. Teacher autonomy refers to the ability of teachers according to their own wishes in occupation activities and professional development. It reflects to teachers in the classroom teaching, curriculum, development, occupation development and school operation mode, according to the principle of self willingness and inner personality, interference effectively get rid of external conditions of bondage and outside pressure, who make independent judgment and choice, carry out andcan be responsible for the degree in teaching practice. Considering that autonomy is a core element and an important mark for professionalism as well as the individual important personality trait and basic psychological needs. Therefore teacher autonomy can not only predict the professional level of teacher profession, but also be related to the healthy development of the teachers and achieve the goal of education to train autonomous learners. Although research from different disciplines and perspectives, using different methods on the relationship between teacher autonomy concept, structure and measurement,influencing factors and relevant variableshave carried on thebeneficial exploration, which furnishes us with meaningful instruction and reference in understanding teacher autonomy. Overall, there are lack of empirical researches, and the rarely seen analyses also focus on simple linear level without paying much attention to discussion of the complex in-depth causal relationship between related results. In view of this, the research, based on the establishment of a structural model for teacher autonomy, prepares Measurement Table for Teacher Autonomy in Primary and Middle Schools. With it as a measurement tool, it explores the characteristics of primary and middle school teacher autonomy in demography variable and its relationship to work engagement and vocational happiness, and probes into the cognitive processing preference of teachers at different autonomy level toward the autonomy-correlated self-information as well as the influence of supportive and controllable external situations on teacher’s perception of autonomy, thus forming scientific bases for improvement of teacher autonomy and promotion of teacher development.To be specific, the following three researches are included:First, adopt questionnaire technique to prepare for measurement tools of teacher autonomy in primary and middle schools; use prepared teacher autonomy questionnaire to investigate into current status of teacher autonomy in primary and middle schools, and then analyze its characteristics; rely on Structural Equation Model to observe the relationship among teacher autonomy, work engagement and vocational happiness. Second,(Experiments1and2), adopt the prepared Teacher Autonomy Measurement Table as the measurement tool, rely on self-reference experimental paradigm and learning recognition task, and use memory as the indicator to investigate into the cognitive processing preference of teachers at different levels toward the autonomy-correlated self-information and its nature.Third,(Experiments3and4), create supportive and controllable inter-person relation situations and event situations, and adopt "find the difference" task paradigm to investigate into the influence of situation variable on perception of autonomy for teachers at different autonomy levels. The following conclusions are made from the above five research results:(1) Teacher autonomy is a multi-dimensional structure made up of four factors, including will for autonomy, independent decision-making, voluntary behavior and independent experience. Having sound credibility and efficiency, the prepared Measurement Table for Teacher Autonomy in Primary and Middle Schools is as fit as a tool for measurement of teacher autonomy in primary and middle schools.(2) In general, teacher autonomy in primary and middle schools is above average, but not in balance among the four dimensions, which is presented as that will for autonomy precedes independent experience and independent decision-making, and voluntary behavior lies at the bottom; there are obvious differences between sexes, where for will for autonomy, female teacher is higher than male teacher, but for voluntary behavior, male teacher is higher than female teacher; the obvious differences in terms of professional title, study phase, school nature, region, school age and discipline are manifested as:teachers of senior title precede those of intermediate or primary titles; teachers in primary schools precede those in middle school; teachers in key schools precede those in general schools; teachers in urban areas precede those in towns and villages; teachers with school age of11-15years or above26years precede those below5years; and arts teachers precede science teachers.(3) Teacher autonomy is obviously correlated with vocational happiness and work engagement. Work engagement, to certain degree, plays an intermediary role in teacher autonomy and vocational happiness, indicating that teacher autonomy not only enables direct and forward prediction of work engagement and vocational happiness, but also imposes indirect influence on vocati onal happi ness of teachers vi a work engagement.(4) Teachers of high and low autonomy levels all show memory preference for self-information related to the peculiarity of autonomy, which is presented as quick response to the word "autonomy" in high accuracy. When the time for presentation of adjective is limited, the above memory preference still remains, illustrating that such preference is an automation process caused by self-schema related to the peculiarity of autonomy in teacher recognition structure.(5) In supportive inter-person relation situation, decisional autonomy perceived by teacher of high autonomy level is obviously higher than that perceived by teacher of low autonomy level. Decisional autonomy perceived by teacher of low autonomy level in controllable situation is higher than that in supportive situation. In supportive and controllable event situations, decisional autonomy perceived by teacher of high autonomy level is obviously higher than that perceived by teacher of low autonomy level.
Keywords/Search Tags:Teachers in Primary and Middle Schools, Teacher Autonomy, Cognitive Processing Preference, Supportive Situation, Controllable Situation
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