Bo Meng Town, Dawn City, Yunnan Province Secondary School Multicultural Teacher Ethnographic Study

This study is focused on education-oriented micro-ethnographic study by combining the emic and etic research of cultural materialism with post-modernism in the critical anthropology as its main theoretical paradigm. It presents the status quo, connotation and features relating to the professional development of multi-cultural teachers of ethnic areas with detailed account and explanation, mainly through the observation of classroom teaching of Meng Han Town Middle School in Jinghong City, Xishuangbanna Dai Ethnic Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province of China. The study, including four fieldworks, lasts seven months.Here in multi-cultural teachers are defined as follows: thinking highly of differences between students and the individual culture; realizing that education is to ensure that all students have equal access to education; assisting the students of disadvantaged group to improve their motivation for more positive cultural value orientation; giving solid performance in education as well as disciplinary expertise; in addition, boasting attainments on essential cultural anthropology and being capable of designing multi-cultural curriculum and multicultural teaching.The professional development of multi-cultural teachers refers to the teachers' professional development as a sustained process of updating, improvement and enrichment of multi-cultural professional development or the expertise structure on cultural aspects.The study, mainly by case study, describes and analyzes the concept of multicultural education from teachers of Meng Han Town Middle School , discussing equality and justice as the core idea of multicultural teachers, elaborating democratic and free teaching style of multicultural teachers, showing their love to students and admiration for culture as a nature of multicultural teachers . By some parts of the classroom teaching case, it gives a clear account of their designing competence in the multicultural curriculum. And this designing capability is the most important and essential one for multicultural teachers, consisting of two main aspects, i. e., non-multicultural curriculum material design and multicultural curriculum material design. There is no necessary connection between multicultural curriculum material and multicultural education. As teachers are the key to the implementation of multicultural education, teaching materials are only a prerequisite. Multicultural classroom teaching designing capability comprises a number of aspects, such as paying more attention to pluralism and diversity, using students' experiences, and utilizing discussion as cooperative teaching and learning, etc.The study, combined with fieldworks, puts forward three-stage theory and typology of the professional development of multicultural teachers in ethnic areas, i.e., three stages: from multicultural unconscious stage and multicultural awakening stage to multicultural action and critical stage; four types of multicultural teachers: "an insider from the inside", "an outsider from the inside", "an insider from the outside" and "an outsider from the outside". As for multi-cultural teacher training, the study gives suggestions with a clear aim on multicultural teachers' pre-service and post-service training: classification of normal universities; the expansion of the enrollment ratio of ethnic students at normal universities; the establishment of the training goal to multicultural teachers and reformation of curriculum in teacher training departments; developing distinctive features for schools in ethnic areas; making primary and secondary schools in ethnic areas main bases of multicultural teacher training; modifying the policy on education evaluation system.The significance of the study is mainly reflected in the following: Firstly, the study explores the professional development of teachers from the perspective of cultural anthropology and sociology in an effort to enrich China' s existing teacher education research. Secondly, the study presents that teachers are key factors to develop multi-culture, which has a theoretical significance for multicultural education research in China. Thirdly, the study is of great significance for facilitating education theory research in ethnic areas, by means of going into the ethnic school for anthropological research in the ethnic minority areas, with a view to thoroughly understanding the status quo, problems or challenges facing ethnic education, in efforts to attract more attention from academics as well as government departments to education status in ethnic minority areas, helping adopt and formulate corresponding policies to promote education and teacher development in ethnic minority areas.Last but not least, the study, to some extent, widens channels for the research on classroom teaching ethnography of multicultural teachers in China, by using a local ethnic school in ethnic minority areas as a particular case, with a perspective from teacher-student interaction in classroom teaching, especially through a number of fresh cases like teacher-student dialogues or scene descriptions to study the multicultural teachers.