A Study On Private Elementary And Secondary School Teachers’ Professional Development

Tracing to the sources of studying private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development cannot fail to mention teachers’ professional development which can go further back to teachers’ professional status. Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers, issued by UNESCO and ILO in 1966, is recognized as a landmark document on enhancing teachers’professional status, proposing:"Teaching should be regarded as a profession which requires of teachers expert knowledge and specialized skills, acquired and maintained through rigorous and continuing study". Henceforth, teachers being professionals have come into the public view, and teachers’ professional development has become the norm of teachers’ work and gone on to be the core of educational research topics. After half a century later, researches on teachers’ professional development can be described as vast stars. Under that research background, teachers have got professional development, obtained dignity and joy, and achieve individual development as well. Over-viewing the literature on teachers’ professional development, we will find many research perspectives on teachers’ professional development, such as the perspective of concept, process, stage and factor, the perspective of teachers, i.e., college teachers’ professional development, primary and secondary school teachers’ professional development, and the perspective of subjects, i.e., language teachers’ professional development, mathematics teachers’ professional development, etc.. However, research on private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development has mostly concentrated in influencing factors and developing conditions, and its findings are comparatively messy, scattered and unsystematic.This dissertation takes private elementary and secondary school teachers as research object, their professional development as research problem. Employing literature study, questionnaires, interviews, observation and case studies, the dissertation designs "explaining characteristics, reflecting the status quo, making theoretical analyses, and proposing strategies" as research framework, and tries 1) to summarize connotations and characteristics of private elementary and secondary schools, then-teachers and their teachers’ professional development respectively on the theoretical level; 2) to reflect on the main existing problems of private elementary and secondary school teachers’professional development on the practical level. Finally, based on the two intertwined levels, it tries to propose the orientation, objective and approach, suitable for private elementary and secondary school teachers’professional development, and puts forward practical strategies to solve current problems.Starting from clarifying the connotation and features of teachers’ professional development, combined with connotation and features of private elementary and secondary schools and teachers, it reaches the connotation and characteristics of private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development. Private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development refers to school runners and teachers of private elementary and secondary schools, based on the satisfaction of mutual needs, benefits and interdependence, and schools’practice, continue to use advanced and educational theories suitable for their own work to guide their thinking and behavior of education in actual work. Meanwhile, combining with own and their fellow’s rich educational practice, they reflect, refine theories to guide and predict educational practice. Both school runners and teachers must realize that professional development is a process. In the process of constantly enriching and improving professional quality, it can safeguard and enhance teachers’ working emotion and affections to schools, then enhance teachers’ professional identity and status and school brand in a conscious and proactive way. School runners should play an active role in constructing pleasant, respectable work environment for teachers, and improve the sound development of their and teachers’ lives in professional and individual levels by helping teachers build and carry out developing plans. The characteristics of private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development are multidimensional in development subject, comprehensive in development content, dual in development values, systematical and hierarchical in development conditions.And then, it objectively makes a survey on the status quo of private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development by employing questionnaires, individual interviews and observation methods in the expectation of presenting "what it is". Based on the survey data and relevant literature, combined with its characteristics, it makes in-depth analyses on the main problems and causes of current private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development. These problems can be categorized into two types:teachers and school runners. Teachers’ problems are mainly presented:lack of goals and inadequate actions, and low professional identity. School runners’ problems are mainly presented:the harsh rules and regulation of schools, utilitarian style of school’s management, administration of school’s organizing units, and neglect of teachers’ legitimate rights. All-above mentioned problems are just appearance, behind which causes are the wrong orientations of school runners and teachers in their professional development:the former holding the orientation of technical rationality; the latter holding linear orientation.What on earth private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development should be? According to its uniqueness, combined with the causes of existing problems, the dissertation tries to discuss "what it should" of private elementary., and secondary school teachers’ professional development from the three dimensions of orientation, objective and approach. Both school runners and teachers should have appropriate orientation of professional development-symbiotic orientation. The objective of professional development is composed of four divisions, i.e., professional knowledge, professional capability, professional affection and professional action. Guided by the symbiotic orientation and objective, the approach of professional development, from microcosmic, middle and macroscopic levels, can be summarized as self-learning approach, classroom-based approach, and systematical career planning approach However, how to fill up the gap between "what it is" and "what it should" of private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development? This dissertation puts forward three strategies. The first is to promote school runners’ and teachers’ identity; the second is to concentrate on the cultural construction of professional development in the field of school; the third is to build a community for private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development.In sum, this dissertation argues that the study on private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development is both necessary and feasible. In most areas of China, the research of private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development has become an important component and has occupied almost half of the nine-year basic education research. Teachers have also made an indelible contribution to the nine-year basic education of China. The key of private elementary and secondary education quality is teachers, and the key of improving teachers’ educating and teaching quality is professional development. Moreover, professional development is an inevitable choice for teachers to achieve self-value and self-development. Especially in the today’s reforms of private elementary and secondary education, calls for improving teachers’ quality are increasingly imminent. Therefore, the study on private elementary and secondary school teachers’professional development meets the requirements of the era, and is possessed with theoretical significance of teachers’ professional development and practical significance of guiding private elementary and secondary school teachers’ professional development.