Culture Rationality And Teachers’ Development:Teacher Culture Self-consciousness In School-based Educational Research

Teacher culture, which upwards inherits the mainstream cultural wills of society on one hand and downwards connects student culture, classroom culture, school culture and so forth on the other hand, is the most dynamic and subjective cultural factor. The education of our nation is under a paradigm transition, but subjective confusion, cognition bias, method deficiency and other problems that exist objectively in teacher culture are very unconformable with the transition, therefore the traditional teacher culture acts as a strong resistance against the reform. Teacher culture is developing from free pattern to self-conscious pattern and this means that teachers will create their dignity and well-being through self-actualization and that they, on a basis of critical introspection and conversational understanding, will break the old habitus, promote the teaching culture reform with creative educational practice and reconstruct the cultural ecological field of education.Teacher culture self-consciousness does not only fall in the scope of teacher culture study but is also a deepening and development of cultural self-consciousness in teacher study. This study, from the angles of philosophy, sociology and culturology, based on a rational analysis of the noumenon constitution and the value orientations of teacher culture self-consciousness and the field it exists in, deeply analyzes the actual forms, affecting factors and the existing problems of teacher culture self-consciousness in school-based educational research through questionnaire survey, case study and other empirical study methods and then attempts to construct a strategy to promote the development of teacher culture towards self-consciousness in school-based educational research through the vehicle of teacher culture community construction. This study is mainly composed of the following parts:Part1:Background Study. This part tries to analyze the progress and the existing problems of teacher culture self-consciousness study by combing through the literature of teacher culture, teachers’professional development, teacher culture self-consciousness, etc. so as to provide literature basis for the significance and the value of this study; it presents the logic, the methods and the content system of this study based on a hypothesis construction of teacher culture self-consciousness study so as to provide a frame support for the implementation of this study.Part2:Theoretical Construction. This part, based on a discrimination and analysis of the concepts such as culture, self-consciousness, cultural self-consciousness and teacher culture, centering on a core viewpoint that "teachers are cultural persons", defines the connotations and the characteristics of teacher culture self-consciousness and constructs a3-D model of teacher culture self-consciousness constituted of interior factors, dynamic generation, systematic ecology and so on. Teachers are cultural persons, which means teachers do not only make the cultural achievements of mankind inherited and continued by knowledge teaching and method guiding but also transform the existing cultural achievements into practical knowledge with personal meaning through their own creative experience so as to achieve their own growth and development as well as create and advance the culture of mankind on account of factual meaning. Teacher culture has experienced a development process from free pattern to self-conscious pattern. During the process to gradually developing into "cultural persons", teachers have possessed ideal self-consciousness, disciplinary self-consciousness, accomplishment self-consciousness, ability self-consciousness and other interior factors and reflected such behavioral characteristics as studying independently, understanding in conversations, criticizing through introspection and practicing in study. Meanwhile, individual self-consciousness and group self-consciousness have been consistently under an interactively constructed ecosystem.The core value of teacher culture self-consciousness is reflected in the development value of human life. Teachers in real life are faced with such value contradictions as independent choices and dependent submissions, living needs and career pursuit, tradition inheritance and creation. How teachers achieve a transition from the exterior instrumental value to life development value based on selective creational ideas, open subject concepts, globe-oriented national views and values with an integration of science and humanities will become the core value pursuit of teacher culture self-consciousness.The realization of teacher culture self-consciousness is not secluded self-cognition but open and diversified cultural exchange generated in groups. Schools are the field for teachers to study, work and live and teachers, as a subject occupying more cultural capital, are an important cultural subject in this field and an important force to reconstruct this field. The school field creates field space for teacher culture self-consciousness. In the school field, teachers’ individual cultural self-consciousness is under prescriptive affection of teachers’ group cultural self-consciousness, but meanwhile teachers’ individual cultural self-consciousness is also the endogenous force for the reconstruction of teachers’ group cultural self-consciousness. This study selects school-based educational research, a comparatively independent field in school reform, as its break-through point. As introspectional cultural practice of teachers, it provides a real practical setting for teacher culture self-consciousness and individual teachers, teacher groups, professional researchers and so on also constitute an unique relation network.Part3:Empirical Exploration. The study of culture should return from a basis of theoretical hypothesis to reality. This study does not only deeply analyze teacher culture self-consciousness by seeing the sample school as its holographic points but also regularly explores teacher culture self-consciousness in school-based educational research through data analysis. According to an exploratory factor analysis of the generative factors of teachers as cultural persons, this study has conducted questionnaire surveys to the teachers of the sample school and analyzed the status quo of school-based educational research, the relation between school-based educational research and teacher culture self-consciousness as well as the factors affecting school-based educational research and cultural self-consciousness. Under an analysis of the cultural background of the sample school, this study intensively describes the values and ideas, organizations and activities and problems and exploration reflected by the teachers of the school in school-based educational research. Based on hypothesis and generated in reality, it shows that teacher culture self-consciousness in the field of school-based educational research is under active development and conversational understanding is the most important behavioral factor. School-based educational research and teacher culture self-consciousness are notably and positively correlated and the research results are very predicable. School-based educational research is being actively conducted in schools, but there still exist many problems. Teacher culture self-consciousness in school-based educational research is being affected by many complicated factors such as school culture and teachers’ individual characteristics and technical rationality still plays a leading role. The tension between individual self-consciousness and group self-consciousness, educational research and educational practice, continual exploration and achievement "materialization" has become a strong force affecting its development trend.Part4:Strategy Analysis. To activate teacher culture self-consciousness in school-based educational research urgently needs the formation of teacher culture communities. According to the case study and surveys and analysis under this study, based on the practical logic of school-based educational research, developing into teacher communities----construction of "unions of free persons"----is of great significance. To construct teacher culture communities in school-based educational research means an achievement of shared visions for life orientations, a sharing of research practice and community knowledge. Reconstructing school-based educational research values, establishing open school-based educational research organizations, forming effective stimulating systems for school-based educational research and activating the research self-consciousness of the faculty are effective strategies to reconstruct school-based educational research.The conceptual construction, the practice interpretation and the strategy analysis of teacher culture self-consciousness represent an educational reform and a paradigm transition of teachers’ professional development, that is, the focus turns from teachers’ quality structure, teachers’ professional organizations, teachers’ educational systems and other exterior factors onto teachers’ living status, logic and modes of generation of teachers’ educational behaviors, construction of teacher culture ecology and other interior factors. As the subject of development, teachers receive noumenal observation during this paradigm transition. The study of teacher culture self-consciousness is to answer the questions such as how to arouse teachers’ rational self-consciousness, how teachers form their own practical self-consciousness in world participation and world comprehension and how to finally construct an unique world of meaning and achieve the life development of the subject during cultural inheritance and creation.