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Workplace Learning And Professional Innovation

Posted on:2015-12-22Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:K S LinFull Text:PDF
GTID:1227330428479393Subject:Vocational and Technical Education
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Under the circumstance that the voice of revival and reform of the vocational education rising up, the study on how to further optimize the quality of vocation teachers is form the implicit to convex. In all kinds of relative theories and practice explorations, there are two basic approaches, which launched roughly around two mentalities:First, taking "teacher education" as the dominant strategy, trying to take the "top-down" approach to optimize the quality of vocational teachers systematically; Second, taking the "teacher learning" as the core action, trying to use "bottom-up" approach to enhance the overall professional standards of vocational education teachers. Two different oriented research paths have different impact on the change of professional development of vocational teachers. The former more emphasizes on the external knowledge absorption and the adaption of the external environment of teachers, the latter more highlights the enhancement of teachers’professional skills and transcendence of the external environment. From the long-term benefits of view,"bottom-up" orientation path can make the professionalism of vocational teachers be better reflected, more stable and higher upgrade. Switching the professional innovation to the teacher itself means vocational teachers must become the main specialization of innovation, means the learning of each vocational teacher every day should be the necessary conditions for realizing the ultimate goal of professional innovation.Workplace learning, which regards workplace as a legitimate learning space, emphasizes that vocational teachers are rooted in the school working context and learned in the daily work practice and advocates work with learning and learning with work. Obviously, workplace learning implies distinctly contextual, practical and routine charm, corresponding to the "bottom-up"professional innovation-orientation can a powerful lever to upgrade the profession level of vocational teacher systematically. However, in practice, workplace learning how to promotes the professional development of vocational education teachers? Workplace learning of vocational education teachers does really happen? Vocational education teachers adopt what kind of Workplace learning? Whether the vocational college with the conditions to support the workplace learning of teachers? Whether workplace learning can truly become the mechanism which can promote the knowledge system of Vocational education teacher to continuous improvement? How to build the workplace learning to a long-term mechanism to promote the specialization of vocational education teachers? These unknown questions will be the major issue of concern in this study.Focus on the core issue of concern, the study with an eye to the current existing difficulties of professional development of the vocational teachers, taking the possibilities of "bottom-up" professional innovation-oriented as logical starting point, regarding the workplace learning as the core concept, combining quantitative and qualitative research methods, with research direction from constructed by the overall to the concrete and then restored to the whole construction, the study focus on the content of four plates, eight modules.Plate one takes the meaning interpretation and frame designing as the core theme, specifically contains two modules, namely introduction,"workplace learning pointing to professional innovation" and chapterl "the meaning and theoretical model of vocational teachers’workplace learning". Workplace learning stem from the western countries in the1980s, mainly used in the field of human resource development in business situation. Since then, the theory and practice paradigm of workplace learning is gradually introduced to the school to help students achieve transition from school to the workplace more easily and to solve the problem of knowledge and skill renewal. Although workplace learning already have a mature system of theory and practice, if we want to migrate it to the school to address the issue of teachers’professional development, it is necessary to place it in the different contexts to discuss and compare. Given this, this plate takes the discussion of the revolution of society, the reformation of vocational education, the research practice of teacher learning as the cut, based on the reveling of the heavy cosseted of vocational teachers’professional development and the urgency, importance and possibilities of seeking innovative path of transition, Through the systematic and deeply research of the mentality of workplace learning, re-understanding and re-conceptualized the argument, the essence and the mechanism, and based on the discussion above to build an integrated analytical workplace learning framework of vocational teachers. It is called integrated analytical framework, one reason is that on the longitudinal it will be resolved to learning motivation, learning strategy, learning environment and learning performance. Another is on the transverse it will be divided into individual teacher workplace learning and vocational schools workplace learning. Plate two takes the description of current status as the core theme, specifically contains the second chapter, the motivation of vocational education teacher workplace learning, chapter three, the strategies of vocational education teacher workplace learning, chapter four, the environment of vocational education teacher workplace learning and chapter five, the performance vocational education teacher workplace learning four modules. In practice, the teachers or the vocational schools, conscious or unconscious, are undergoing workplace learning objectively, but there are significant difference in learning abilities between different vocational teachers and different vocational schools. In order to explore the general characteristics and the different features of vocational teachers’ workplace learning, the study taking the quantitative as the research method, based on the theoretical discussion compiles "the motivation questionnaire","the strategies questionnaire", the environment questionnaire" and the performance questionnaire" respectively to investigate the basic characteristic and between the vocational teachers from different types of school(national-key school and non-national-key) and different regions(eastern, western, central) of learning motivation, learning strategy, learning environment and learning performance. The result reveals that overall situation of vocational teacher workplace learning is not ideal, national-key vocational schools and non-national-key vocational schools, vocational schools in eastern region and in Midwestern region have significant difference in workplace learning of vocational teachers. Plate three takes the relationship revealing as the core theme, includes chapter six "the relationship between the learning motivation and learning performance, learning strategy and learning performance, learning environment and learning performance" one module. Workplace learning is an open, complex and dynamic self-organization system, is a distribution system with input and output, in this system, the motivation is the input, the learning strategy is process, the learning environment is the safeguard, the learning performance is the output. The learning motivation, learning strategy, learning environment and learning performance exists interplay relation in theory. In order to reveal the phase between the elements of workplace learning, to show the overall appearance of vocational teacher workplace learning further, this plate takes the learning motivation, performance, strategy as dependent variable, the learning performance as independent variable, using quantitative and qualitative research methods to reveling the causal relationship between learning motivation and learning performance, learning strategy and learning performance, learning environment and learning performance. The result shows the learning motivation, learning strategy and learning environment can predict the learning performance of vocational teacher workplace learning from different aspects and varying degrees.Plate four takes the mechanism-designing as the core theme, includes chapter seven "the mechanism of effective workplace learning of vocational education teacher" one module. In the context of international education reform, taking the whole school as a unit to carry out activities gradually become the mainstream trend. Therefore, by cultivating the ability of workplace learning of vocational teachers to improve work efficiency of teachers, by creating a learning vocational school to enhance school development effectiveness should be the critical path in the process of Chinese vocational education reformation. Empirical research reveals that vocational teacher workplace learning has the fractured, fragmented, isolated, low-leveled and other issues, faced with these problems, the forum is rooted in the school-based vein, based on vision system and capacity constructed orientation, taking the intrinsic motivation, action learning, organizational learning, eco-building and knowledge management as the core strategic action, designed the learning motivation, learning strategy, learning environment and learning performance respectively, constructed an effective integration mechanism model of vocational education teacher workplace learning to provide more systematic problem-solving ideas and programs for vocational education teachers and vocational colleges.In summary, the study which is constructed a theoretical model, developed measuring tools, analyzed learning features, compared the characteristics difference, revealed causal relationship and designed learning mechanism will help people understand the current situation of vocational education teachers’ workplace learning and provide empirical evidence and practical styles for the vocational teachers and vocational college to take reformation action. Meanwhile, it also will help to provide a beneficial reference for future research. The most important thing is that in the exploration process of workplace learning of vocational teachers, the meaning of professional innovation of vocational teachers is continued to be examined, interpreted and re-assigned, the’"bottom-up" professional innovation-orientation path based on the workplace learning appeared to be clear.
Keywords/Search Tags:Vocational Education, Professional Development ofTeachers, Workplace Learning, Learning Motivation, Learning Strategy, Learning Environment, Learning Performance
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