Growing From Subject Experts To Professional Teachers

The importance of education arises the demands of high quality teachers. As the major channel of teachers education, the M.Ed. is committed to cultivate professional teachers to grow from subject experts by providing educational theories, teaching strategies and internship. Then how to develop professional, practical and quality M.Ed. program to help those employed and future teachers to grow from subject experts to professional teachers? This is the research problem of the dissertation.Tracing back the development history of teachers’ education in China and the U.S., both experienced the transformation from the middle education, to college, then university mode, and the education emphasis transforming from skills to theories. But the teachers’ education in the U.S emphasizes more on the teaching training and the subject knowledge has been weakened. On the contrast, China pays more attention on subject knowledge learning. The differences are reflected on the cultivating mode of Master of Education.The major problem existing in the education of M.Ed. in China is the ambiguity of the educational objectives, resulting in the low efficiency of students’professional and practical proficiency in future teaching. In this respect, the efforts to standardize M.Ed. Education in the U.S. afford us lessons that merit attention. The standardized process of M.Ed. education makes M.Ed. earn its own featured educational mode successfully, getting rid of the effects of M.Pd.. Hence, the core objective of this dissertation is to study the standardized process of M.Ed. education in the U.S.First of all, the paper studies and illustrates the core standard of M.Ed. Program in the U.S., which is the NBPTS core propositions. NBPTS is the abbreviation of The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, a national certificate authority for high quality teachers in the U.S.. Because of its high standards and authority, the NBPTS Propositions have become the instructional framework for the reconstructing of the M.Ed. Programs in the U.S.In order to make the research more persuasive and valuable, the author pursue the M.Ed. in Cameron University in the U.S.. By experiencing the whole learning procedure, by collecting and analyzing plentiful first-hand materials, the author concluded that the NBPTS Propositions to be the core standard of M.Ed. program. Based on the core standard, the author illustrates a three-dimensional structure of the M.Ed. program formed by curriculum, practice and assessment, which would be helpful for the development of the M.Ed. program in China.The second part of the dissertation is the detailed illustration and analysis of the curriculum, practice and assessment system of the M.Ed. program in the U.S. based on the NBPTS Propositions. Firstly, the M.Ed. curriculum is developed from two sorts of curriculum standards--subject standards and professional teaching standards, working together to educate professional high quality teachers. Secondly, the M.Ed. experiment process is formed by three types of practical training for teaching competence--observation, field experience, and internship, which are vital to the quality of the M.Ed. program. Thirdly, the assessment system of the M.Ed. consists of four gates for evaluation--admission, completion of9hours,21hours and program completion, which are necessary measures to ensure the validity of the M.Ed. Education.Finally, the author concludes that the M.Ed, education must be developed in a distinguished way apart from the M. Pd.. The dissertation put forward to suggestions in five aspects on what to learn, what to do, how well, how to teach, and teach by whom respectively. To conclude, a standardized system including curriculum, practice, assessment, teaching methods and faculty requirement should be set up to to achieve the objective of M.Ed, which is, to cultivate high quality teachers.The innovations of the research fall in three aspects:First is the application of experience and action research methods. The pursuing of the M.Ed, is the starting of the research, the analyzing of the first-hand literature is the refining of views, the writing of the paper is the building of the theoretical thoughts and the action improvement is the application of the research. Hence the research process illustrate a complete action research procedure from practical experience to theoretical construction, and then back to practical improvement. The second innovation lies in the research viewpoint--the NBPTS Propositions, which is the core of the M.Ed. program summarized from huge first-hand literature by the author. Last but not least innovation is the research argument, which is the construction of three-dimension M.Ed. program consisting of one core standard, two kinds of curricula, three types of practice, four stages of cultivation. And in the end, advices from five aspects of are given for the development of M.Ed. Program in China.The dissertation consists of six chapters. The first chapter is the introduction of the dissertation, which illustrates the research background and literature review. Chapter two analyzes the NBPTS Propositions and six professional objectives. Chapter three to five are the research on curriculum, practice and assessment system respectively, which support each other and form the three-dimension system to meet the goal of the M.Ed. Program cooperatively. The last chapter summarizes the whole dissertation and give advices on five aspects for the development of the M.Ed. Program in China.