The Role Of Career Mindsets In Improving Performance Through Workplace Learning Investment For Vocational Education Teachers

Human society is witnessing innovation era with great development,dramatic change and important adjustment.And new educational concept,new pattern as well as new technology are overwhelmingly changing teachers' vocational ecology.In the face of the new era,teachers involved in vocational education have to inevitably go through workplace learning.Education administrative departments at all levels and higher vocational schools are taking initiative in trainings for teachers' learning,however,with different workplace learning effects even for teachers in the same organizational environment.This study shows that a fundamental factor for this difference lies in teachers' attitude toward vocational education.In this dissertation,both qualitative interview and quantitative empirical analysis are adopted to study the influence of vocational education teachers' mindsets on workplace learning investment and learning performance.First of all,interviews and literature analysis are undertaken to explore the meaning and dimensions of the core keywords,career mindsets included,so as to clarify the relationships between the career mindsets,the learning investment and the learning performance,and to establish the relational model involving path relationships from the career mindsets to the learning investment and the learning performance;Secondly,three scales respectively for the vocational education teachers psychology,the workplace learning investment and the learning performance are developed by codes after interview.Final three scales came into being after reliability and validity have passed the test by means of EFA(exploratory factor analysis)and CFA(confirmatory factor analysis),which will be used to further analyze the above three dimensions;Third,structural equation model was employed with collected data from 388 samples to test the relational model and hypothesis involving the above three dimensions,which arrived at conclusions based on data analysis,revealing the conditions and effects of workplace learning upon learning performance.Such concepts as dedication to work,enthusiasm for work and slackness in work are defined to interpret the connotation of career mindsets,which agrees more with the context of Chinese culture.Main characteristics of three vocational psychologies were illustrated: Those who are dedicated to work do things according to the requirement and try their best to complete tasks;those who are enthusiastic about work could combine their work with hobbies and interests,and dare to try.Those who are slack in work are lack of enthusiasm for work with the attitude of being no merits,no demerits.Under the influence of different career mindsets,teachers' investment in workplace learning is different in quality and quantity,which may lead to a significant difference in learning performance.Learning investment is a multi-dimensional concept covering deep investment,shallow investment and emotional investment.Teachers' deep investment in workplace learning means paying more psychological capital and more positive emotion.The main characteristic of such learning is to develop high-level thinking,while the shallow investment means passive learning in such external force as school requirements.The learning activities with the second concept are a kind of self-expression simply for being observed by some other important people,which is featured with learning without deep thinking and knowledge integration,not to speak of flexibility in use.The study found that the learning process is accompanied by the generation of emotion dispersed in the deep and shallow learning investment.Learning performance refers to knowledge,ability or skills acquired by learners through learning activities,and changes in psychological tendency as well.This change over a period of time must be inferred from external behavior or performance.Since learners can best understand whether their learning goals have been achieved,self-assessment is adopted to evaluate teacher's learning performance.The performances of teachers' work and study are mainly reflected in two aspects: one is that teachers' vocational ability is advanced;the other is strong sense of efficiency.This study arrived at the following conclusions based on the data analysis:(1)The vocational education teachers' psychology has a significant impact on workplace learning investment.The enthusiasm for work has positive influence on the deep investment and the emotional investment in learning,and has negative influence on the shallow investment.The slackness in work negatively affects the deep investment and emotional investment and positively affects the shallow investment.The dedication to work has positive significant impact on work performance,but the path coefficient is not significant from the dedication to work to the deep investment and the emotional investment,and the enthusiasm for work has been found as the key factor positively influencing the learning investment.(2)The vocational education teachers' psychology has a significant correlation with the workplace learning performance.There exists a significantly positive correlation between the enthusiasm for work,dedication to work and the teachers' workplace learning performance.The slackness in work has a significant negative correlation with the teachers' workplace learning performance.(3)The teachers' workplace learning performance has a significant impact on learning performance.The deep investment and emotional investment have significant positive impact on learning performance.The shallow investment has a significant negative impact on learning performance.(4)The career mindsets is found to function as the adjustment in the influence of the learning investment on the learning performance.The higher the value of the dedication to work and the enthusiasm for work are,the stronger the positive influence of the deep investment and the emotional investment on learning performance would be,and also the stronger the negative influence of the shallow investment on learning performance would be.The impact value of the deep investment and the emotional investment on learning performance would not significantly change with the indicator change in the slackness in work,but with the impact value increase of the slackness in work,the negative influence of the shallow investment on learning performance climbed up.In order to promote the deep higher vocational education teachers' workplace learning,the study puts forward the proposals as follows based on the above conclusions: to further improve higher vocational teachers learning environment,to establish system for the promotion and protection of teachers' learning motivation,to offer effective protection and use of teachers' learning achievement,so as to safeguard smooth reform of the higher vocational education and teaching.