On Teacher Cultivation Research

As time marches on, teacher development has been endowed with new mission. It is the ecological approach that has become the current of the teacher's professional development all over the world. Approaching to 1990s' especially, teacher research has become a highlight and played an important role in teacher professional development and educational reform.Such international teacher research movement has raised the upsurge of research for teachers of primary and high schools in various countries and many achievements have been made in a large amount of researches. However, some teachers are not very interested in it; the result of research is also not satisfying. Teacher research has seemly stepped into "the plateau", which makes the research of teachers of primary and high schools fall into the awkward situation. It is showed in three aspects: First of all, the legitimacy, rationality and feasibility of teacher research are criticized and queried. In epistemology, there is such inclination that the teacher is not the producer of the knowledge, but the recipient and user; in research ethics, there is such inclination that the teacher's main duty is teaching, not researching; As for the result of research, there is such inclination that the validity and creditability of teacher research are insufficient, and teacher research is too context-dependent and individual; As for the feasibility of teacher research, the inclination is that the teacher doesn't possess corresponding theory, ability and time. Secondly, the negative effect was caused by the phenomena deviating from the normal of teacher research. In the process of teacher research, there appear a number of researches that automatically imitate the paradigm of academic research or "making a show ". In fact, these misunderstandings of teacher research, together with the phenomena deviating from the normal caused by the subjective factors of the teachers and others and social realistic interests, separate teacher research from the educational practice, and distort teacher research, and bring blight to it. Finally, the deficiencies in the school cultural ecology of teacher research cause teacher research lacks certain independence and continuity, and the result of research is separated from practical application, and the responsibility and power of teacher research are imbalanced and lack communicating platform etc..Based on what has been discussed above, we may draw the conclusion that there are many reasons for the teachers to be passive to educational research. However, we have ignored one significant factor of the teachers' educational experiences and wisdom. Up to now, some have regarded experience and wisdom as essential power of teacher's development, teaching and learning. It is a pity that teacher doesn't make use of these educational resources in research really.Therefore, it is appropriate to do research on the teacher's own experiences, which is propitious to inspire teacher's enthusiasm. And there are a lot of advantages for teacher to do research on his own experiences, which we called Cultivation Research, such as developing excellent experience, improving teacher's ability, eliminating depression, feeling successful and happy, etc. In other words, Cultivation Research is one kind of referenced framework about theory and practice of teacher research. In the process of doing research on his/her own experiences, teacher who is assisted by experts cultivates suitable attitude, ability and the school cultural ecology. Objectives of Cultivation Research are to improve teacher's ability of teaching and study, as well as pursuing happiness and the rationality of educational practice.Cultivation Research belongs to the category of teacher research and has the general characteristics of teacher research. It absorbs the rationality in Action Research and experience summarizing. However, it also has its own particularities. Firstly, Cultivation Research is suitable to the primary & high school teachers. (1) Research begins with teachers' experiences, developing from and reflecting on them; (2) Class Natural Experiment belongs to one of educational experiments. It is applied to the class context, with the characteristics of flexibility, instantaneousness, and handiness. Class is laboratory; (3) given deficiencies in ideas; foundation of research, research capability and research methods, Cultivation Research adopts cooperative research form. Secondly, Cultivation Research can arouse the enthusiasm of teacher research. On the one hand, Cultivation Research promotes teachers to approach to overall dedication (the measurable dedication and the intelligent dedication) and the goal of pursuing happiness; on the other hand, Cultivation Research tries to ensure the combination of the result of teacher research with the action of teacher research. Thirdly, Cultivation Research can keep the continuity of teacher research. Cultivation Research pays attention to the close connection between teacher research and the school cultural ecology environment. Teacher research has a great potential to developing the school cultural ecology environment, the educational experiences of teachers and the study experiences of students. Similarly, the school cultural ecology environment has also a great potential to teacher research. Therefore, the relationships among the three are reciprocal, and the suitability will arouse the enthusiasm of teacher research. The suitability and the enthusiasm will improve the continuity. Similarly, the school cultural ecology will improve the continuity, the suitability and the enthusiasm. As one of the teacher research, Cultivation Research is based on such theories as Pedagogy, Psychology, Sociology, administrant theories, Philosophy etc. Because Cultivation Research extraordinarily put emphasis on inspiriting teachers' enthusiasm for research, the theories of motivation act as its espoused theory. Cultivation Research pays more attention to making use of the theories of motivating and inspiriting teachers, for example, (1) analyzing the needs and motivation of teachers; (2) arousing the needs and motivation of teachers; (3) maintaining and making the needs and motivation of teachers steady.Based on one important view of Cultivation Research, that is, teachers reflect on and validate the rationality of their own educational experiences and behaviors, and the effect of their own educational views; in order to change and improve their personal action theories (espoused theories & theories-in-use). Thereby, action theory is one of the referenced conceptual frameworks for Cultivation Research. Theories-in-use is the key to altering personal action theory, for theories-in-use are built up and solidified over a long period of time through acculturation and are reinforced by ongoing experience in the culture; they become such an integrated part of our beings that they are difficult to be isolated from. If we can articulate theories-in-use from our unconscious "background" and become "foreground", it will be of advantage to promote teacher professional development.Cultivation Research derived from Education for Understanding originally. Education for Understanding emphasizes the educational experiences and wisdom from schools and teachers, and advocates understanding teacher research profoundly. There is a mode of educational life for teachers of primary and high schools that teachers live in "teaching in researching, researching in teaching, teaching benefits researching, and vice versa".The dualism about theory and practice is a legacy of excessively prevailing technological rationality. Up to the present, the researching on educational praxis rests on the practical outer field, ignoring educational experience world of teachers. To alter the status quo, technological rationality should be criticized and practical rationality should be paid more attention to. Cultivation Research advocates developing teachers' educational experiences and wisdom, making the research on educational practice for inner field, producing theory in practice contributing to educational knowledge. So, critical theory is one base for Cultivation Research.The process of Cultivation Research is similar to the routine educational research. Both comprise three phases: preparation, actualization and summarization. The difference between them lies in the ideas and methodologies used by them, which has been clarified above. Accordingly, four critical steps are the characteristics of cultivation research process, and must be clarified in brief.Firstly, experiences developing. Experiences developing are the process is to find, reveal and present the valuable and promising educational experience. In a word, on the one hand, experiences developing are to find the new developing field or new growing standpoint of experiences; on the other hand, experiences developing are to find the deficiency of experiences or aspects need to be improved. In general, advanced experiences are characteristics of open-mindedness, validity, stability, acceptability, creativity and expansibility etc. We should keep to several principles when we developing experiences, such as voluntary, authentic, worthwhile, impartial etc. The forms of experiences presenting can be divided three ones: (1) experiences expressed by written language; (2) experiences expressed by oral language; (3) experiences expressed by what have done. In addition to common methods of experiences developing, there are some special methods for experiences developing in cultivation research. For example, method of helper- enlightening, method of outline-portraying, method of judge-inducting, method of intelligent-diary, method of left-hand column, and method of Learning-oriented historical literature etc.Secondly, model building. Model building is to combine experiential prototype with advanced theories of education, and conceptualize the experiential prototype, and discover its essential attribute or underlying systemic principles, and verify its validity. In fact, model building is a spiral circular progress which consists of building models, verifying and rebuilding. The aim of model building is to understand the experiential prototype better and create new one rather than to be restricted by it. Subsequently, we put forward five experiential models so as to clarify the process of model building. They are "Thinking Aloud", "The Transformation of Languages in Composition Teaching", "The Transformation of Two Languages in Mathematics Teaching", "Tick Schoolwork Each Other, Track and Examine Them" and "The Process of Acquiring and Sharing Teacher's Tacit Knowledge " etc.Thirdly, experimenting and validating. Their aims are to experimenting and validating the rationality and validity of the built experiential models. The criteria are rest with the effect on learning ultimately. The forms of experimentation include routine experimental research and natural class research, and the latter is attached to the former. The aim of natural class research is to cultivate teachers using the view of research in class teaching. Its basic viewpoint: (1) question experience or experiential models as research theme and experimental hypothesis; (2) teaching plan as research scheme; (3) teaching methods and class management forms etc. as independent variable; (4) the achievement of students as dependent variable; (5) the process of teaching and class management as research process; (6) class or schoolyard as laboratory.Fourthly, product sharing. Product sharing is to extend the examined models to other teachers and schools, and increase theirs value. First of all, we should publish the research product, so they could be shared by other teachers and schools. To sum up, the forms for the product of teacher research have mutual expression, virtual expression, performing expression and written expression. In fact, a product ought to be expressed from multi-dimension in order to be expressed thoroughly.Cultivation Research not only cultivates teachers' educational experiences, but also teachers' attitude to research, the capacity for researching, and shaping the fit school culture ecology. It is a long time to developing the school culture ecology, therefore, Cultivation Research emphasizes on shaping cooperative and inquiring teacher culture. At the same time, Cultivation Research takes measures for developing the school culture ecology, such as reconstructing the role and idea of principal, developing holding environment for teacher, founding the community of teacher research, providing teacher necessary time for research, establishing timely and effective mechanism of feedback etc.To sum up, as one kind of referenced framework about theory and practice for teacher research, the redeeming feature of Cultivation Research has been proven. However, Cultivation Research is still in its infancy, and many remains need to be done.