A Study On Influence Factors Of Teacher Academic Optimism In Primary And Secondary Schools

Teacher beliefs influence the teacher’s educational pursuit and the school performance, so for a long time, it has been a hot issue in the research field of teacher management. Recently, some foreign scholars came up with a concept named teacher academic optimism, which represents a new way to study teacher beliefs. Teacher academic optimism is constructed by teachers’ efficacy, teacher trust in parents and students, and academic emphasis, it means the teacher’s positive-expectation for academic success. Compared to those researches which took teacher beliefs as a single variable, teacher academic optimism is a higher-order and integrated variable, it provides an important way for the education administrators to fully understand and motive the positive teacher beliefs, enhance the management of teachers. Lots of studies have been done on teacher’s efficacy, teacher trust and academic emphasis in our country, but the studies on these three different subjects were generally separated from each other; few studies brought them together and discussed them on the framework of teacher academic optimism. Therefore, it is very necessary to investigate teacher academic optimism in our country in order to help the education managers to motivate the teacher’s positive beliefs further and enrich the theory for management of teachers.The author of this dissertation draws on the relative mature framework of teacher academic optimism in foreign counties, then focus on the following questions, what is the current status of teacher academic optimism in our country? Which factors influence the level of teacher academic optimism? How these factors act and how much influence do they have? Considering these problems, firstly, based on the literature analysis and in-depth interview, the author proposes some hypothesis and constructs the research model. Secondly, the author collects data from a random sampling of primary and secondary school teachers in Shanghai. With the aid of SPSS19.0and LISREL8.7software, the author analyses survey data, including descriptive statistics, variance analysis, regression analysis and structural equation model.Throughout the research and analysis above, the author gets some preliminary conclusions as follows:Firstly, the current level of teacher academic optimism in primary and secondary school is generally high, however, there are also some hidden issues that need to be think deeply, such as the limitations of the academic emphasis, the latent trust crisis among teacher, students and parents, and the low level of teacher academic optimism in secondary school. Secondly, teacher academic optimism is influenced by some factors on individual teacher level, class level and school level, different factors have the different influence on teacher academic optimism, and the author also reaches five core factors that influence teacher academic optimism, including teacher’s classroom teaching strategies, teacher collegial behavior, the personal accomplishment of the teacher, the quality of students and their parents, and the principal directive behavior.Based on the conclusions of the study, the author also summarizes some revelation for education administrators and teachers on policy-making, school climate establishment, teaching strategies using, students’ academic success evaluating, and the relations among teachers, students and parents improvement. Finally, the author reflects on the limitations of this study and puts forward some suggestions for the follow-up studies.