Study On Teacher Professional Development From Multicultural Perspective

The very core idea of multiculture is to advocate the equality and the interaction of the different and diverse cultures. Multiculture demands that the teachers response and make choice actively to cultures, but not only transmit given mainstream culture passively. Then, it appears that teacher's subjectivity and cultural consciousness are especially important. Through enhancing the abilities of critique and introspection, inspiring cultural consciousness, and promoting teachers participating in the decision of policies and curricula, the teachers' professional development with multicultural ideas can change teachers from "passive subject" within monocultural transmission into "positive subject" within multicultural research, and make teachers' subjectivity clear and cultural perception unlock, so that teachers achieve their power and competence in the professional development, which not only improves teacher's contribution to the education of minority nationality, but makes teachers exert and realize their initiative power in advancing educational quality. The paper takes the central concepts of multiculture, such as justice, equality, difference, diversity, tolerance, sound, and criticism, for subject words; and aims at discussing multicultural connotation and approaches of teachers' professional development.The thesis consists of five parts as the following:Part one: Introduction. It illuminates the theoretical and realistic background, introduces and analyzes the present situation in details, to obtain the purpose and the values of the research, and puts forward the thought and the method of the research.Part two: Real review. We came into the scene where the paper focuses research problems, investigating and analyzing the status quo of the teacher professional development of the minority national education in China, to give us the practical basis and theoretical apocalypse for this research. In the chapter, the paper choose "the National Culture into Classroom" with the characteristics of multicultural education in Guizhou province as research case to unfold, pointing out that teachers' identification of multicultural education can't ensure effective teaching practice; teachers' insufficient preparation leads easily to form wrong culture ideas on multicultural education; teachers' inadequacy of participation in the local and school-based curriculum by which they could develop their profession independently; teachers' insensitivity of the cultural differences among students and lack of corresponding teaching strategies; national cultural teacher education hasn't been fallen into practice in blend multiculture in their self- professional development.Part three: Searching theoretic foundations. The paper analyzes the correlations between multiculture and teachers' professional development and the related topics to establish the theoretical foundations and value orientations of this study. The paper points out that multiculture not only demonstrates the social phenomenon with differences and diversity, but also provides cultural concepts and thinking methods to deal with differences and diversity, and has deep philosophic and political meanings. The teacher professional development with multicultural ideas and thinking methods, should tolerate any differences and diversity, wake up teachers' cultural consciousness and make them constitute their multi-viewpoint, cultivate their critical and reflective spirit, and can take positive action on social reform to practice the ideas of equality and justice by researching in the professional growing. The paradigm of teachers' professional development reflects and embodies the multicultural society and its education at the four dimensions: organization, target, curriculum, and teaching. And these reflections and embodiments have the deep theoretical supports of philosophy, sociology, and psychology.Part four: Resolving connotation. The paper discusses how to understand the teachers' professional development from the multicultural perspective, which is about the problem of " what to be developed". Multiculture demands the reform of teacher role and teacher culture, in order to stand out teacher's trait as a cultural existence, and manifest critical and reflective spirit of multicultrue. The teachers' professional development in the frame of multiculture explanation planes to break the limitation, that only regards the teachers' professional development as a technological process with value free and emphasizing external standards, and acknowledge again that the teacher professional development is a mutliculture cultivation process full of value and soul-searching, which incarnates on the professional appeal for transcending specialized complex and gives prominence to teacher's common responsibility and humanistic solicitude. Multicultural Professional Literacy takes much of teachers" solicitous affections and attitudes than their master of knowledge; it attaches importance to teachers' dynamic construction and value judgments of knowledge, not just static master of knowledge and neutral attitude; it emphasizes teachers' critical and active abilities but not ask them to accept or comply unconditionally; it appreciates democratic and equitable cultural understanding but not limiting and arbitrary cultural hegemony.Part five: Exploring ways and means. The paper explores how to carry out the teachers' professional development from the multicultural perspective, to solve the problem of "how to develop". Based on the central concepts of multiculture, and from the four main dimensions influencing the teachers' development such as teacher and himself, teacher and others, teacher and culture, teacher and teaching, this chapter explains the basic ideas promoting the teachers' professional development as follow: presentation of sound history, unfolding of dialectic conversation; learning of national culture; harmony between pluralism and unity. In addition, we analyze the basic features or claims of pre-service teacher's and in-service teacher's professional development activities combining with idea selection to analyze the teachers' professional development having the characters of multiculture by examples, such as role play or role imitation, guest speaker by people with different culture background, cultural practice, mountain caifeng, the development of national culture curriculum, and so on. At the some degree, these activities reveal three main educational meanings of multicultural teachers' professional development: culture annotation, culture critique, and culture practice.