| Teachers are at the central position of education and are also the key to the successful reform of basic education curriculum. Teacher education has attracted wide concern and attention from teaching fields both home and abroad. The 8th National Basic Education Curriculum Reform and the Full Implementation of Quality Education in China has proposed a brand-new request to teachers' professional quality, which is both an opportunity as well as a challenge for teachers and teacher education. Pre-service teacher education is a pivotal stage of teachers' professional development. China has adopted various measures to improve the quality of pre-service teacher education. To encourage and train more outstanding young people to become excellent teachers and lifelong educators, the Ministry of Education started the policy of free training of pre-service teachers in the six normal universities directly under the Ministry of Education from 2007.Practicum is an important part of pre-service teacher education and this is also true for pre-service teachers' development of practical ability. However, there are still some problems that can not be ignored in practicum, particularly that some middle schools are unwilling to welcome pre-service teachers to have teaching practice in their schools. To solve this problem, Southwest University explicitly proposed "Full-Time Teaching Practice Model" (FTPM) in 2000 which aims to incorporate "practicum" with "supporting for rural education" together. The practice was initially implemented in 2002 in Southwest University and has achieved preliminary results. Besides, it has also drew attention and obtained affirmation from the Ministry of Education. On the other hand, as a new thing, and because of its complexity, FTPM leaves behind many issues to study. In particular, there is no strong evidence from practice to prove the effect of FTPM on the development of pre-service teachers' professional quality, which will not only affect the implementation of FTPM, but also affect the reform of the teacher education model.To verify FTPM's effect and problems in the development of pre-service teachers' professional quality, and to analyze factors that influence the development of professional quality during full-time teaching practice, as well as the similarities and differences in FTPM and other practicum models, this research studies the development of pre-service teachers' professional quality in S University during full-time teaching practice, and compare with other two practicum models, the Focused Practicum Model(FPM) and the Mixed Practicum Model(MPM), specifically including the following three aspects:(1) Do pre-service teachers improve their professional quality during full-time teaching practice and what is the effect? (2) Which factors influence the development of pre-service teachers' professional quality in FTPM? Were there any special factors in FTPM compared with other practicum model? (3) Are there any other issues existing in FTPM worth studying in terms of improving pre-service teachers' professional quality?According to the organizational model of practicum in S University, in this study FTMP is that pre-service teachers in senior class who are selected by the university go to rural schools, functioning as in-service teachers. FPM is that pre-service teachers from the same department practice in the same middle school. MPM is that about 20 pre-service teachers from various departments of the same university practice in the same middle school. In FTMP and FPM, the participants are provided with guidance and directions from teachers of the university and also the primary/middle school, but in MPM, there is only guidance and directions from teachers of the primary/middle schools.The professional quality of pre-service teachers in this study belongs to the category of teachers' professional quality, which refers to the sum of psychological qualities pre-service teachers have to acquire in order to adapt themselves to teaching and successfully complete the task of teaching in the future, including professional affection, professional ideas, expertise and professional abilities. And it is existed as two-dimensional structures, one refers to the factors as affection, ideas, expertise and ability; the second refers to the educational tasks as teaching, management, research. Affection is consistent amony tasks, and ideas, expertise and abilities are integrated in the specific tasks, reflected in the quality of teaching, management and research. It characterizes with professional orientation, comprehensiveness, potential, and a unique core.This study is based mainly on qualitative research, supplemented by quantitative research paradigm, and adopts parallel triangulation research strategy. The specific methods used as: document analysis, classroom observation, interviews, documentation, questionnaire survey, inductive analysis, comparative analysis, and so on.Specifically, this study uses an extreme case sampling, and selectes Ms. Hua who is in a preferrable condition and Mr. Wang who is under a disadvantaged condition of FTPM, and Ms. Liu is also chosen from MPM as a control. Three cases have been observed for a semester. What is more, this study adopts a self made-up questionnaire to investigate 343 pre-service teachers from mathematics, physics (including science) or chemistry who have completed practicum recently, and receives 310 valid questionnaires, questionnaire coefficient (Crobach'sα) is 0.931.From the studies mentioned above, this dissertation comes to the following conclusions:Firstly, pre-service teachers have improved their professional quality during practicum, but the most obvious is the FTPM. Questionnaire survey found that the professional quality of pre-service teachers in FTPM scored the highest, and had significant difference from FPM and MPM, but there are no significant difference between FPM and MPM. Case study found that, students in FTPM got the experience of sufficient practice and there was an active selection of teaching methods. However, pre-service teachers in MPM mainly performed the instructor's intentions in a limited range. Though they got more familiar with their teaching methods, there is a lack of experience and active selection during the process. Therefore, they stay at the technical level.Secondly, different components of the professional quality improved inconsistently. Among them, the most obvious improvement is the quality of teaching, and there was a limited improvement in the quality of students' management, the updating and application of knowledge. And there was even some degradation in these aspects. In addition, the components of professional affection also changed in different degrees.Thirdly, large degree of freedom, more chances of teaching new lessons and positive objectives of practicum are the possible factors for the significant improvement of pre-service teachers' professional quality. (1) Survey shows that the greater the freedom attachment is, the higher score in all dimensions is, and there are significant differences. And the case study found that Hua and Wang acted as in-service teachers, and independently taught classes and their subject, so they got a large degree of freedom. However, Liu acted as an assistant and intern in the practicum school, and didn't taught subjects independently, so he got a small degree of freedom. (2) More opportunities to teach a new lesson in FTPM is especially beneficial to improve the teaching quality of pre-service teachers, and it helped FTPM to form a different model of teacher development from MPM. Specifically, practicum of Liu is subject to guidance, imitation and specifications by Mr. X, which results in the consistency in many of the indicators in Liu's three teaching cases, so her professional quality is improved under regulations. Hua and Wang has experienced the process of "attempt-failure/success-summary/reflection-try", so their professional quality is improved through their experience. (3) The main objectives of FTPM participants are "supporting the rural education" and "more opportunity to practice," which may make them more involved in the internship and more dedicated to achieving high professional quality.The study also found some emerging issues in the organization and implementation process of FTPM, including arrangements of lessons, guidance teachers, replacement training of teachers, system construction, and so on.Three innovative aspects could be found in this study:firstly, as far as the choice of the topic is concerned, it is the second dissertation on the FTPM, and is also the first research from the angle of professional quality development. Secondly, with respect to the research methodology, it is the first research that adopts both qualitative case study and questionnaire survey to verify the effect and problems of FTPM. Thirdly, as for the content and conclusion of this research, this dissertation collected plenty of data of pre-service teachers during the internship, further analyzed from professional quality development, and summed up the factors impacting the professional quality development of pre-service teachers. Such data and conclusion not only help people to understand and implement FTPM better, but will also contribute to the reform of teacher education.Limited by research time, funding and capacity, there are some limitations in this study:(1) the samples in case study failed to cover all types of practicum; (2) there are still some contamination of researchers on the data of case study; (3) the questionnaire need to be improved, and the survey sample is not enough, and so on.In later studies, on one hand, more cases need to be explored to further enrich people's understanding of FTPM; the questionnaire needs to be improved and a research within a larger sample needs to be conducted. On the other hand, research also needs to focus on the system construction on the effective implementation of FTPM, and empirical research are also in need to study the refined strategies in the implementation process of FTPM on related topics.
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