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Reality And Transcendency

Posted on:2009-01-14Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:S Z LvFull Text:PDF
GTID:1117360245957562Subject:Principles of Education
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Faculty is the subject to run a university. The reason that top-ranking university is ranked so is just because of its first-class faculty. These years, along with the necessity to deepen the reform in university and promote its running level, the issue on faculty has been highlighted seriously in the study on higher education. Among all the theoretical and practical research about faculty, the presupposition to its image is an inevitable precondition. Based on the interpretation to the inherent quality of university and its faculty, combined to the Role Theory and the methodology of "Ideal Type" in Sociology, this dissertation attempts to construct an ideal image which is capable to represent the nature and essence of faculty fully, and then to analyze the contemporary image of faculty in our country and to raise two strategies in order to reconstruct the ideal image of our country's faculty in the cotemporary era.This dissertation is divided into four parts. The first part is preface which mainly introduces the reason why to choose this topic, the literature, the primary reasoning line of the study, the contents of dissertation and its significance.The second part is Chapter 1. After surveying the developmental history of universities and evolution of the ideas on running universities, this dissertation argues that a university is a theoretical higher education organization and its fundamental nature is of theory and education. Thus, the concept of university in this dissertation is in its narrow sense which includes only two types of higher education organizations as research-oriented universities and teaching and research universities. The connotation of faculty refers to those who undertake teaching and research work directly in different organizations of universities. This dissertation suggests that the nature of faculty should be clarified by the way to raise the question "what is the faculty?" and answer it. That is to say, to make clear what the meaning and value of "Being faculty" is. The argument in this dissertation is that the meaning and value of "working as faculty" lies in the devotion to the professional activities of faculty. According the Role Theory in sociology, this dissertation points out that the question raised above may be transferred to "what roles should faculty play and how to play such roles". In this dissertation, the social role theory on intellectuals and "Ideal type" method from Max Weber are used to divide the professional roles of faculty into educators and scholars which belong to two basic professional roles as well as intellectuals which can be considered as the role of superiority. Based on this, this dissertation argues that ideal faculty should be the people who play the roles as educators, scholars and intellectuals and then process the corresponding characters to educators, scholars and intellectuals. Thus, "Being faculty" means the devotion to education and theory and the attempt to become the creators and advocates of human being's cultural value and the spokesmen of "social conscience".The third part of this dissertation consists of Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 and probes into the ideal image of faculty in separate role. The second chapter is on "the ideal image of faculty as educators". Educators generally are called instructors who are the professional staff undertaking directly educational and teaching work to students in universities. The essential characters of instructors are that firstly teaching and educating people is the nature provision and teaching and educating people unify into the process of pedagogy; secondly instructors belong to professionals in modern society who have the rights of professionals and bear the corresponding professional responsibilities. After comparing the traits of ideal instructors in some educators' eyes in the educational history of China and foreign countries, this dissertation points out that ideal instructors images should process three basic aspects: ideal moral image, ideal knowledge image and ideal practical image. Through the comparison to the ideal images of teachers from primary and middle schools, this dissertation argues that the ideal image of faculty has the following traits: on the whole, the ideal image of faculty includes also the basic contents mentioned above; in the specific formation, the core of ideal educators image of faculty is its knowledge image, the educational practical image lies in the second place while its moral image is becoming less important increasingly among the whole image of university faculty. Ideal faculty should possess a knowledge structure of complexity constructed by the Ontology of knowledge with conditional knowledge, practical knowledge and cultural knowledge, and undertake the instructing tasks by combining teaching and researching. They are not only the initiators of knowledge but also the guide of learning and researching who help students develop their independent learning and critical thinking as well as set examples as by displaying instructors' moralities.Chapter 3 is on "the ideal image of faculty as scholars". In this dissertation, the connotation of scholar refers to those who devote themselves to academic research, and academy here involves in specific and systematical learning as well as all kinds of intellectual activities relating to such learning. The most typical characteristic of ideal scholars is nothing but the "Spiritual Ethos". This dissertation explains the spiritual particularity of scholars from five aspects: the life ideality of "taking academy as life career", the academic objective of "taking academy for its own sake", "free thinking and independent spirit" being the inherent guarantee for scholars' research, "the spirit of pursuing truth and creativity" being the spiritual impetus to scholars' research, and academic moral spirit presenting scholars' conscience. Moreover, this dissertation points out that scholars' knowledge is of academy which is theoretical, specific and systematic. And in the end of Chapter 3 this dissertation emphasizes that faculty must be scholars. However, comparing to the ideal scholars image, there exists a phenomenon in modern China that faculty lacks scholars' ethos and behaves poorly as knowledge image. This dissertation analyzes the profound reason causing this phenomenon from five aspects.Chapter 4 is on "the ideal image of faculty as intellectuals". After surveying the derivation of word "intellectual", this dissertation clarifies that the connotation of intellectual is a spiritual concept with specific cultural value and meaning. Intellectuals are not only of high-level in culture or in interpretation but also have the reflective consciousness of deep and sincere consideration and critics to society and culture which displays a strong humanist spirit. This chapter mainly discusses the latter three aspects. This dissertation highlights that the independent free spirit is the spiritual foundation of intellectuals. Idealist spirit is the transcendent quality of intellectuals and the cornerstone and inherent drive of intellectuals' criticism. Care consciousness is the collective embodiment of intellectuals' mission and responsibility for culture, morality and society while the reflective critic spirit is the embodiment of intellectuals' spirit. The author believes that playing the role of intellectuals should become the idealist pursue and the bourn of life of faculty. Nevertheless, modern faculty in our country displays a declining phenomenon in "intellectual" spirit on the whole. This dissertation points out that this status in quo is mainly caused by both the squeezing of some external factors as modern social culture, knowledge, politics and university system and the initiative abandonment of faculty as subject.The fourth part is Chapter 5 which is on "the construction to ideal role image of university faculty". This part explores the construction of the ideal role image of modern faculty in our country mainly from two sides. Firstly, in the view of transformation and practice of faculty as professional role, educators and scholars are the primary professional roles in the systematization to faculty as well as the necessary roles faculty should play. However, the role of faculty as intellectuals is a transcendent social role with the trait of non-systematization and is the self-selection of faculty to pursue their superior life bourn. The conflict among these multiple roles in the practical teaching and research of faculty influences the shaping of their ideal images. This dissertation stresses the exploration to the inherent roles contradiction and conflictive factors among these roles and starting from the purpose to buffer the roles conflict and contradiction, suggests utilizing the strategy of "creativity contract" to separate the multiple roles so as to realize this buffering. Secondly, this dissertation points out that many excellent university instructors both in China and foreign countries can be set as the examples of ideal images and Chen yinko in Chinese Recent & Modern history was one of them. Based on the description and interpretation to the ideal role image as faculty set by him, this dissertation summarizes three essential qualities of Chen yinko's practice as ideal faculty: teaching-orientation, organically combining teaching to researching, practicing intellectual role with scholars' method and moral personality. After analyzing the sample of Chen yinko, two revelations are drawn in the end of this part: faculty subject is the most fundamental factor in constructing ideal image of faculty, and properly interpreting and handling the tri-dimensional relationship among educators, scholars and intellectuals is beneficial to shape the ideal image of faculty.This dissertation focuses on a theoretical study and one of the traits of theoretical studies is its idealization. Via molding the ideal role image of faculty, this dissertation thus attempts to provide a basic point to transcend reality.
Keywords/Search Tags:faculty, ideal image, educator, scholar, intellectual
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