A Study On Equity Of Opportunity To Learn

Equity of opportunity,which can help students get fair development,especially for those students how were ignored before,is the key to education equity.Equity of opportunity to learn is a content of educational opportunity equity at the school level.As the critical role of distributing opportunity to learn,teachers’ educational and teaching behaviors are relative with whether students can get equal opportunity to learn.However,teachers will come across different kinds of problems about distributing opportunity to learn unequally and they have to deal with them in classroom teaching process because of the different subjective and objective reasons.Then,how do teachers see and deal with these problems? And how should we understand and explore the issues about equity of opportunity to learn? This study aims at examining and exploring the issues about equity of opportunity to learning in specific situation.Problems about equity of opportunity to learn and how to deal with them are interrelated with each other.However,exploring how to deal with these problems depends on analyzing the problems about inequity of opportunity to learn in the reality.Besides these,it is also important to explore all influence on equity of opportunity to learn.Taking consideration of the above issues,this study,using case study method of qualitative research,describes and explains the inequity problems in the process teachers distributing opportunity to learn,and how teachers analyze and deal with these problems through interviewing 12 teachers from 4 schools in Shanghai deeply.Based on Jacobs’ s New Opportunity Egalitarian Theory,combining traditional opportunity egalitarian theory and Rawls’ s fairness of equal opportunity,this study understands and explores issues of opportunity to learn from three dimensions of opportunity equity: procedural equity,background equity and stake equity.From the perspective of procedural equity,teachers will realize equity of opportunity to learn through ensuring and respecting students’ learning rights and freedoms.From the perspective of background equity,teachers will make equity of opportunity to learn come true through distributing learning resources to students differently,and giving reasonable compensation to disadvantaged students.From the perspective of stake equity,teacher will achieve equity of opportunity to learn through regulating learning results distribution structure to help every student to get learning results,and limit their effects on future’s distribution of opportunity to learn.About the exploration of effects on equity of opportunity to learn,this study,based on The New Institutionalism Theory,examines the influence factors from four specific facors,which are national policy and institution,social value ideas,school cultural atmosphere and teachers.Based on these,the findings of this study mainly are as follows.Firstly,there are nine categories of three dimensions problems of equity of opportunity to learn: a)the inequity of rights and freedom to join learning,including the inequity of rights to join learning activities,the inequity of rights among students from different backgrounds,and the inequity of rights to get learning results;b)the inequity of getting learning resources,including the inequity about rights to get learning resources,the inequity among students from different backgrounds,and the inequity to get learning resources which are helpful to help students get learning results;c)the inequity of getting developing learning opportunities,including the inequity about rights to get developing learning opportunities,the inequity to get developing learning opportunities among students from different backgrounds,and the inequit y to get developing learning opportunities which are helpful to help students get learning results.Secondly,teachers are inclined to deal with the equity problems of opportunity to learn from a single dimension.Although teachers see or analyze the equity problems of opportunity to learn from different dimensions,they often realize equity of opportunity to learn from one dimension——procedural equity,background equity or stake equity when deal with these problems.Accordingly,they will show out three kinds of basic approaches to deal with equity problems of opportunity to learn,which are following the procedure,considering the background,and regulating the stake.Thirdly,the realization of equity of opportunity to learn is an interaction process between teachers’ teaching practice and different kinds of influential factors.Finally,this study puts forward some suggestions about how to improve the equity of opportunity to learn.Again,this study will make a theoretical thinking about exploring equity of opportunity to learn synthetically,and try to build an integrated approach in order to be beneficial to analyze and explore equity issues of opportunity to learn.Also point out some shortages of this study,and the future expectations and research directions.