A Narrative Inquiry On The Experience Of A Director Of A Rural Family Kindergarten

This thesis studies Teacher Li's experience of running kindergarten by method of narrative inquiry. Teacher Li lived in Village F in Cixi City in Zhejiang Province. She was once a director of a family kindergarten in Village F from 1994 to 2002. During the course of her running kindergarten, Teacher Li experienced such stages as commencing, prospering, competing, transferring and leaving her kindergarten. And the kindergarten was bankrupted one year after she left. Different with Teacher Li's leaving her kindergarten, Chen Feng, a director of another kindergarten in the same village, acquired the only license of running kindergarten in Village F. Through studying Teacher Li's experience, this thesis aims at finding some interpretations for the following questions:In the process of running kindergarten, what is the deep reason that influences and even determines the director's behavior and development of running kindergarten? And what is the key reason that determines the director's behavior and development?In order to answer the two questions, the author choose Bronfenbrenner's theory , the ecology of human development , as the perspective and place emphasis on the macrosystem of the theory hereinbefore . This thesis studies Teacher Li's experience by means of dividing it into two stages, boom and decline. For each stage, the author narrates Teacher Li's story of running kindergarten by order of time, thereafter, analyses this story by the sequence of macrosystem, exosystem, mesosystem and microsystem. By this sequence, the author are trying to interpret how the macrosystem influences director's behavior and development, in some certain period and in some certain circumstamces, through the factors of such systems as exosystem, mesosystem and microsystem and the mutual relationship among all the systems.In the initial stage, Village F was lack of kindergartens, so the parents were eager for a "regular" kindergarten run by a person who has educational background, to meet children' s requirements to acquire preschool education. At the same time, the government of Cixi was encouraging people to establish kindergarten with social resources, and taking for granted that it's good to establish a kindergarten, so it interfered little executively with the director's education and teaching actions. Consequently, the ideas which are related to education as "value ethics moral education" and "value academic credentials" became the core of macorsystem at that stage. Being a teacher who had worked in primary school for over 30 years, Teacher Li adapted to the ecological environment of running kindergargen at that stage, so she was approved and praised by the government and the parents etc.Teacher Li's ecological environment of running kindergarten transformed because many factors changed in her chronosystem, such as competitors appeared in Village F and two police reating with early childhood education issued by Cixi government. Accordingly, the values such as "authority orientation" , "others orientation" and "ralation orientation" in Chinese culture became the core value of the macorsystem at that stage. In order to be the winner, the director must act the role well as a manager. Teacher Li couldn't adapt to the ecological environment of that stage and she had to transfer her kindergarten in 1999 and leave her kindergarten in 2002. On the contrary, Chen Feng, adapted to it very well and acquired the only license of running kindergarten in Village F.Through analyzing Teacher Li's experience of running kindergarten, we draw such conclusions as:1. All kinds of factors in the ecological environment of running kindergarten could influence the director's behavior and development of running kindergarten. But the culture relating with macrosystem is the deep reason which infuluences the director's behavior and development of running kindergarten . It is the director's adaptability to the ecological environment of running kindergarten that determines his or her behavior and development of running kindergartens.2. Social policy is an important factor that makes ecological environment of running kindergarten .This thesis studies Teacher Li's experience of running kindergarten by method of narrative inquiry. It is a kind of ecological oritented study.This thesis could provide an opportunity to a director of rural family kindergarten, then she could speak loudly and make the researcher and practitioner in early childhood education know her. This thesie could give some new materials to the study of early childhood education in rural areas. And this thesis could provide a model for other researchers who want to use the ecology of human development as their perspective.