| In 1960s and 1970s, the findings of curriculum research suggested that the value orientation of teachers played an important role in the decision making of curriculum. Nearly two and three decades, the research of educational reform has revealed that it couldn’t succeed if the value orientation of teachers didn’t be changed, and teachers’ culture whose core was value orientation was the key for educational reform. The study of teachers’ culture discovered that the value orientation of teachers was the most stable and internal part of teachers’ culture structure, and also the key for the transformation of school culture. Without the transformation of the value orientation of teachers, the culture structure of school will won’t be transformed and the culture structure of teachers won’t be changed, and certainly there will exist no true educational reform. These theory study reflects my own middle and elementary school experience, clarifies my purport to study teachers’ value orientation.In the past, the theory exploration for teachers’ value orientation revealed that:it was the key of school culture and teachers’ culture; it had a profound influence on the decision making of curriculum and instruction behavior; it had surface structure and deep structure; its characteristics include stability, diffusibility and reciprocality; its approach include instrumental orientation and goal orientation; and so on. However, actually what was teachers’ value orientation? How did it act upon teachers’ behavior and educational reform? How to change it? These theory questions still remain unclear. To this end, my study aims to reveal the content of teachers’ value orientation, its role in school educational reform and its relationship with school culture through analyzing the isness(实然样态) of a case, the teachers’ value orientation in a middle school.Teachers’ value orientation refers to some notion system which influences practical instruction behavior; it is the dictation which can be used as a guide for teachers to choose instruction behavior, and was triggered by some value criteria and value goal. It is embedded in teachers’ culture and schools’ culture, deep in teachers’ notion system, implicated in teachers’ language, thinking and behavior, and stay behind school’s rule and teacher’s creation. It is invisible just through observation and questionnaire. So it is appropriate to apply qualitative method. To investigate the relationship between school culture and teachers’value orientation, and the operation of the latter in school educational reform, I chose the case study design. The case is J middle school. I collected data of teachers in J middle school through observation, interview and clinical study etc. And employ three-level coding strategy of grounded theory to analyze data, so to explore the structure of value orientation of teachers in J middle school, reveal the operation of value orientation in teaching design, instruction management and course teaching, identify the implication of value orientation to school educational reform, and its relationship with school culture. Teachers’value orientation is the "point" in school culture. So, start from the "plane " of the whole school culture, through several "point" of value orientation, then return to the "plane" of the phenomena of school culture. This technique starts from hypothesis to empirical study, then to oughtness( 应然), aims to improve reliability and internal validity of the research.In the empirical study of school culture in J middle school, I applied narrative text-writing technique to show teachers’value orientation of this school and its existence through overall and focus perspective. First, I exhibit the structure and manifestation of teacher’s value orientation horizontally through overall perspective. Secondly, I select some extreme teachers as cases to analyze through focus perspective, so explore the operation of value orientation in teacher’s practice vertically. The goal of focus perspective is to reveal the existence of paradoxical value orientation, exhibit the conflict and integration of teachers’value orientation, provide data to support the relationship between teachers’value orientation and school culture, educational reform. Value orientation is culturally constructed; its research couldn’t be separated from school culture. As a result, this research described an integrative picture of teachers’ value orientation and reality, exhibited the embarrassment, contradiction, integration and transcendent during teacher’s pursuit of value, laid a foundation to rebuild teachers’ culture and school culture; setting J middle school as research background, focusing on the practical form of value orientation, and basing on the story of extreme teachers.In terms of J middle school, I analyzed its general development vertically, depict the process of the formation of school culture, and interpret the characteristics of its school culture through the kinds (horizontal dimension) and levels (vertical dimension) of school culture. In general, the characteristics of J middle school culture represent as "RenGan", "speechless competition" and "KanDui" etc. This feature was largely related with the uprising stage in development of J middle school. The school’s "turn-over" was encouraged by a series of procedures:all staffs centered on teaching and learning; all teachers is diligent and dedicative; and the enrollment of "good student" etc. This process made all members of the school shared the values, such as "the more knowledge, the more power", "It’s worthless if not govern the student" setting the contractual context for the construction of teachers’value orientation in J middle school.From the overall perspective, we could find that there existed 5 value orientation in instruction design for J middle school teachers:knowledge orientation, ability orientation, emotion orientation, morality orientation and examination orientation; there existed authority control orientation and non-authority control orientation in instructional management; there existed task orientation, grooming orientation and replacement orientation in classroom instruction. Value orientation of J middle school teachers exhibited co-operative feature of the core and periphery. In the construct of value orientation of the school teachers, the dedication and practice value orientation coexist in teachers’personal notion system of values. According to the analyzing framework of progressive culture and stagnant culture argued by Lawrence E. Harrison, teachers’value orientation in school also exhibit positive or negative difference. The negative value orientation represented as conservative and stale knowledge view, student view and talent view. This was "negative energy" of school’s educational reform. The positive value orientation tended to teachers’self-transcendence and self-awareness of school’s culture. The guide value of behavior was reform, it was "postive energy" of school’s educational reform.I sifted out extreme cases——morality-oriented teachers and emotion-oriented teachers, through the overall perspective of value orientation of J middle school teachers. They stay in the periphery of the school’s value orientation structure, the keep false coherence with the core values of the school, independently from each other, and encompassed in the structure of school culture. Although the value orientation they hold was different from the core values orientation of the school, they instruction behavior was able to reach the school goal "perfectly". Examination was not the guiding principle which restrained teacher’s behavior, instead serving as value goal it was teachers’values orientation, could be used as practice guide for teachers, and reduced the tension between examination goal and behavior choice.I found the overall school teachers’values orientation which transcended instruction values orientation, and argued teachers’ values orientation centered on school development through case study of J middle school. I suggested that teachers’ values orientation was an "invisible hand" of school reform and the key to rebuild school culture through analyzing the relationship among teachers’values orientation, school culture, and educational reform in cases. As a result, I proposed that school educational reform was an intervention theory which moved towards teachers’values orientation transformation, in order to construct reform-oriented and learning-oriented school culture. |
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