A Study On The Effectiveness Of Teachers’Participation In Instructional Research Activities

Instructional research activities are different from instructional activities. The latter refers to those classroom teaching activities conducted in classes, while the former refers to practical and reflexical research activities of teachers’ purposeful, procedural and methodological analyses and solutions of specific instructional problems from curriculum implementation and teaching to promote professional development. Instructional activities cover heterogeneous cultural activities among teachers, students and classroom environment, while instructional research activities cover homogeneous cultural activities among organizers such as subject department heads and research staff members, teachers and corresponding environment. Instructional activities are targets of instructional research activities, which aim at fostering teachers’optimizing their teaching to improve cultivation of students.Since the founding of PRC, instructional research activities in primary and secondary schools have undergone a complex development of borrowing and creation, styling and institutionalization, stagnation and deviation, reconstruction and enrichment, inheritance and innovation, standardization and specification. It is characterized with systematicness, massiveness, frequentness and effectiveness. It targets directly to solutions of instructional problems, and indirectly to teacher development, and students’ all-round development. Types of instructional research activities are amounting and are beyond of list. This study classifies instructional research activities from the perspective of teachers’participation into explorative activities, training and research activities, competitive activities, observational activities, directive and self-studying activities. Contents, characteristics, significances, objectives and basic tymes of instructional activities are being discussed, aiming at summing up experiences and ideals of years’efforts.New changes have been taking place in the field of instructional research activities since the new round of curricula reform, indicating plural objects, innovative forms, and practical contents. A great amount of on-site observations and surveys, however, reveal a disappointing result, such as undefined objectives, unclear directions, insufficiency of dialogues, lack of deep participation and separation of instruction and instructional research. Total effectiveness of instructional research activities in primary and secondary schools are not yet satisfying, influenced by teachers’literacy, organizers’ abilities, arrangement and management of activities, and environment.In this paper, we try to make out a theoretical construct for teachers’instructional research activities. How can instructional research activities meet the teachers’need of professional development? Life-long learning theories, teachers development theories, interactive theory and participatory development theory are characterized with teacher-orientation, calling for teachers’ subjective and active roles in projects, and triggers teachers’drive for professional development, to promote a harmonious development between teachers and schools. This orientation provides a reference for constructing effective teachers’participations in projects. The idea of needs, participations and harmony, the principle of combining interaction among subjects, active and effective participations, group development and individual development should be followed. Different objectives such as substantial and developmental objectives, standardized and promoting objectives are presented in this study, and corresponding activities are also listed. Starting from the preparation, procedure, result and transformation, we analyzed the design and implementation of instructional research activities, and brought forth explorative, training, competitive, observing, directive and self-studying instructional research activities.Strategic suggestions are offered in this study. The first is to strengthen the construction of external environment for instructional research activities. This covers understanding teachers’needs for participations with SWOT analyses of their characters and professional development, providing teachers equal opportunities of participations, learning lessons from overseas teacher training and innovating ways of projects while succeeding to previous quality projects, developing research groups and improving research levels, and setting up criteria of projects and strengthening supervision and evaluation. The second is to activate teachers’internal drive for participation. This includes developing professional development ideals via introspection, developing life-long learning literacy, and promoting quality of teachers’ life with life value. Only when the external environment for teachers’ participation in activities and their internal drive reach a balance can effective participations realize the value of promoting teachers’ professional development. In sum, teachers’ instructional activities should be developed from real instructional research context and directing to real problems, and can attract teachers’ active, deep and substantial participations to promote their professional development.