Research On Teachers' Personal Knowledge

Teachers' personal knowledge is something integrated by teachers' experience, thought and beliefs. It is a kind of complex knowledge which is combined, situated and multi-symbolized. It is a solid foundation for teachers' educational practice and indicates how a teacher develops his professional capability. It is a social obligation for an educational researcher to pay attention to studying teachers' personal knowledge.This study is based on field research which has been going on for nearly 10years with the researcher as a participative observer. On the basis of giving the denotative and connotative meanings of teachers' personal knowledge, the paper constructs a multi-dimensional structure and three approaches of representing teachers' personal knowledge: thinking, speech and behavior with concrete evidences from several narrative cases and it also deals with factors which influence the development of teachers' personal knowledge: personal experience, teaching image, and professional pursuit.Teachers' personal knowledge is a complex concept. It can be described with connotations, characteristics, types and ways of representation and can be classified according to its content, function and source. This study focuses on the approach of representing teachers' personal knowledge: thinking representation by way of proposition, image and schema; speech representation by way of propositional concepts such as educational metaphor or jargon; behavioral representation by way of educational wisdom or malady.Different types of personal knowledge have different thinking representations. From the perspective of psychology, teachers' personal declarative knowledge is represented by propositions, images and linear order, while teachers' personal procedural knowledge is mainly represented by "production". Teachers' personal knowledge used in the educational process is a combination of declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge, namely schema. Propositional Network of noumenal knowledge of teachers in different stages of development is different. A novice and an expert show great difference in terms of prearrangement, implementation and reflection of instructional schema.The speech representation of teachers' personal knowledge can be referred as metaphors and jargons used in teachers' educational activities, which are of personal characteristic and originality. Educational metaphors used by teachers are teachers' particular ways of recognition, which not only reflect teachers' unique explanations of educational phenomena, but are important clue to looking into teachers' beliefs. Teachers' educational beliefs expressed through different metaphors reveal teachers' different ideas and concepts about students, teachers, instruction and math. Teachers usually have rich metaphor expressions in different vocational speech settings, which are of great educational value.The behavioral representation of teachers' personal knowledge can be classified into educational skills, educational wisdom and educational malady. On the basis of case analysis of teachers' ethical and creative educational practice, the study points out that teachers' educational wisdom, as gem of teachers' personal knowledge, can be found in different instructional process, and is much worth refining. The reverse research on teachers' behavior points to teachers' maladies in instructional process. The paper reveals "four losses" in classroom instruction, namely, loss of sight, loss of hearing, loss of standards and loss of control, and other obstructing behavior of math teachers of primary school. Strategies for teachers' reflection on their teaching drawbacks are proposed to facilitate their personal knowledge.The research also offers a case study about an expert math teacher, which discloses the developmental process of teachers' personal knowledge and its influencing factors such as image, experience and pursuit.