Regulation Pattern Of Teacher Autonomic Learning And Its Mechanism

The study on the teacher development following the movement of specialization has shifted the focus from the positioning of the teacher in education to the concern of teacher learning. Since 1980s the research on the teacher learning mainly has centred on its products—teachers' knowledge and teaching strategise—and the conditions of the teacher learning, which included the education and training program for teachers as well as the form of activities. However, the process of teacher learning and its effects, which covered the teacher's psychological structure and its relation to their study and development were barely discussed. The psychological structure mentioned here refered to the belief in the profession, motives, initiatives, self-efficacy, capability of learning regulation and the like. Based on the Learning Society Theory, Self-directed Learning Theory and Self-regulated Social-cognitive Theory, we discussed the teacher learning against the background of development in their fields. A series of related sub-studies were conducted on the influential factors, regulation patterns, features of self-regulation and the effective strategies of the teacher learning.In the first study, we interviewed 44 primary school and middle school teachers, through which, we made an exploratory work on the content of the teacher learning, the influential factors on their learning both individually and situationally, the traits of teacher learning behaviors and features of their control and regulation. The results of content analysis showed that the close connection between the content of teacher learning and their development. The content of teacher learning focused on the belief of their speciality, possession of the knowledge in their fields and their strategies in solving problems. The factors that influenced teachers learning could be categorized into individual factors and situation factors. Individual factors included proactive personality, self-efficacy and the personal goals of achievement; situation factors involved the pressure, expectations from the society and competition. It was featured by the schools' goal structures. The types of teacher regulation were composed of three parts: external regulation, task-based self-regulation, and self-regulation. Learning behaviors were put into eight categories, which mainly involved cooperative learning among teachers, individual study based on practice and reflection on meta-cognition. In the second study, we explored the structural features of the factors determined by the interview. The first step was to put forward the theoretical structure of the teacher achievement goal which was formed on the basis of Elliot's evaluation standard of goal achievement and his framework about ability efficiency. The research collected samples from over a dozen of primary school and middle school teachers in and out of Zhejiang Province. The analysis was carried out on 523 valid questionnaires. The results of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory analysis indicated that the structure of the teachers' achievement goal orientation was constructed 2*3 dimensions, which were respectively absolute-avoidance, individual-avoidance, reference-avoidance, individual-approach, reference-approach, absolute-approach. Secondly, the relationship of variables among teachers' influential factors (proactive personality, self-efficacy, personal goals and schools' goal structures ) were discussed. This research collected samples from more than a dozen of other schools, and the analysis was based in 625 valid questionnaires. The result indicated that proactive personality gave positive responses to the self-efficacy; and they both performed positive response to absolute-approach, individual-approach, reference-approach and reference-avoidance goal. Mastery goal structure had positive effect on absolute-approach goal, individual-approach goal, but negative effect on absolute-avoidance goal; performance goals structure had positive effect on absolute-avoidance goal and reference-avoidance goal at the significant level of 0.05, and on individual-avoidance goal and reference-avoidance goal at the different level of 0.001. These results on the one hand confirmed some previous conclusions of relevant research; meanwhile, they revealed features of the relationship between the teacher's proactive personality and achievement goal, self-efficacy and achievement goal, the school's goal structure and achievement goal, which provided the foundation for further studies.In the third study, the structure of teachers' regulation pattern and their self-regulated learning pattern were investigated. Based on the data from the interview and by comparing the results from previous studies, a primary regulation pattern scale was developed. The samples of were collected from more than a dozen of primary and middle school teachers, and 523 valid questionnaires were adopted for the analysis. The results of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory analysis indicated that the regulation pattern of teacher learning was a kind of three-factor structure, which was structured by different consciousnesses and regulation states: the self-regulation, task-based regulation and external regulation. The research also analyzed the effectiveness of the double-regulation pattern of teachers' self-regulated learning, and the result showed that self-regulation and task-based self-regulation form the double-regulation effects.In the fourth study, based on the study of the interview, we put forward the structure of teacher learning strategies and gave an analysis of this framework. The first step we developed a primary teacher learning strategy scale and this was based on the interview and the achieved results of previous research. The samples were collected from more than a dozen of primary and middle school teachers, and 523 valid questionnaires were adopted for the analysis. The results of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory analysis indicated that teacher learning strategies involved 7 factors which were reflective practice, professional talk, reading arrangement, visiting study, following masters' instructions, recording and meditation, and reflection. The feeling-sharing strategy in the original interview was not taken as a common factor. The analysis on the confirmatory analysis indicated the interrelations among the 7 factors, which provided the basis for the formation of the second-order three factors model, which are cooperative learning, exploring learning and reflection. This analysis also indicated that the second-order three factors model was a simplified form of 7-factor model.In the fifth study, we adopted the structural equations and explored the relationships between the influential factor variables and regulation patterns. The result indicated that proactive personality and the self-efficacy, taken as stable personality and cognitive variable, had predictive functions for teacher learning regulation patterns; proactive personality and the self-efficacy both performed positive effects on self-regulation and task-based regulation, negative effect on external regulation. The direction of achievement goal for different teachers had different influence on the teacher learning regulation pattern: there was a tendency that the absolute-approach goal with task as reference was related to task-based self-regulation; individual-approach goal with self as reference tended to be related to various ways of regulation, which exposed the essential function of individual-approach goal with self-development as its aim on the regulation process; the reference-approach goal with social comparison as its reference tended to be related to external regulation; the situation goal, perceived by teachers as school goals, influenced on their learning regulation; the mastery goal structure was related to learning regulation pattern for adaptability; performance goals structure was related to the un-adapted learning regulation pattern. In the sixth study, we explored the influence of teacher learning regulation on their learning strategies. Structural equations were adopted and 625 valid questionnaires of primary school and middle school teachers were analyzed. The results indicated that both self-regulation and task-based self-regulation had positive influence on cooperative learning, exploring learning and reflection. Self-regulation had greatest influence on exploring learning; the influence of task-based self-regulation was almost equal on cooperative learning and exploring learning; self-regulation and task-based self-regulation had positive influence on reflection, but its influence was less than that from cooperative learning and exploring learning. External regulation performed no positive influence on any of the learning strategies, and its negative influence on exploring learning was distinct. What needs to be mentioned was that the teacher learning strategies proposed in our study were in the field of teachers' self-regulated learning strategies and they were given positive influence from teachers' self-regulation and task-based self-regulation.In the seventh study, we discussed the influence of different teachers' adoption of learning strategies on their work achievement. The result indicated that the influence was various. Self-regulation and task-based self-regulation were proved to be effective and adapting. They not only gave direct and positive influence on teacher learning strategies, adaptive performance and job satisfaction, but also exercised influence on teachers' adaptive performance and job satisfaction with cooperative learning and exploring learning as its media. In addition, teacher learning regulation would mediate the relationship between proactive personality, self-efficacy, achievement goal direction, school goal structure and teacher learning strategies, adaptive performance, job satisfaction. This result contributed to the study of process effects in teacher learning.Finally, the main conclusions of this paper were summarized. The theoretical progresses and practice implication of present study were discussed, as well as the limitations of this study and direction for future research.