Competency Modeling Of Outstanding Teachers In Higher Vocational Education Institutions And Its Application

The development of higher vocational education institutions is of utmost importance for achieving the strategic goal of Top Country for Higher Education.To run vocational colleges and universities well,building teacher team and promoting scientific management are of highest priority.It's therefore an important research subject to address issues on outstanding vocational teacher competency as well as its connotation and indicators.It would provide basis and standards for excellent teacher development and human resource management in the higher vocational schools,which in turn would facilitate vocational teachers' professional development and improve the higher vocational education quality along with its management and operation.This study was conducted through the lenses of teacher professional development theories and the Teacher Competency Model.Behavioral Event Interviewing(BEI)questions were used to interview 20 outstanding vocational teachers of provincial and above level in the area to be sampled to solicit responses on their real-life success and failure experiences as well as their perception of and positioning as outstanding teachers.Grounded Theory(GT)approach was then employed to analyze and code the interview data and then to refine 23 competency elements of outstanding teachers,based on which a tentative competency model of outstanding vocational teachers was constructed.The competency in this model falls into two dimensions: explicit competency and implicit competency.The explicit competency includes teaching and research competency,management competency,practice competency and development competency.To be specific,teaching and research competency comprises the five characteristic elements: professional skills,student coaching,classroom instruction,teaching innovation and scientific research;Management competency also consists of five elements including team leadership,communication and coordination,overall planning,cooperation and sharing as well as executive capacity;Practice competency covers three elements: institution-industry cooperation,enterprise practice,and contest coaching.The implicit competency,on the other hand,involves individual attitude and intrinsic motivation.Specifically,individual attitude comprises such four characteristic elements as responsibility and accountability,persistence,optimistic disposition and advancement ambition,while intrinsic motivation consists of three elements including passion and dedication,need for achievement and goal pursuit.Based on the tentatively constructed competency model,this study further developed the Questionnaire of Vocational Teacher Competency Status covering all the competency elements of the tentative model.123 vocational teachers with the outstanding title and 877 ones without the title completed the survey.Data analysis showed satisfactory reliability and validity of the questionnaire,which validated the rationality of the outstanding vocational teacher competency model and thus provided a effective research instrument for the investigation of vocational teacher competency.Status quo analysis on outstanding vocational teacher competency explored the influence of such factors as age,gender,educational background,and professional titles on the making of an outstanding teacher,and indicated that outstanding vocational teacher competency exhibited features of conspicuousness,endogeneity and significance.Qualitative analysis on outstanding teachers' interview and quantitative analysis on the questionnaire suggested that development platforms,development contexts,significant others and key events were major indicators of the growth of outstanding teachers.Development platforms mainly include school rankings,key disciplines,high-level teams,post and position,and high-level projects;Development contexts comprises teamwork atmosphere,school policies,background of vocational education development as well as industry development and changes;Significant others can be vocational teachers' leaders,supervisors,colleagues,experts and relatives;Key events consist of professional title upgrade,educational pursuits,development opportunities and post promotion.Based on the research findings,this study attempted to apply the outstanding vocational teacher competency model to innovate and optimize such human resource management processes as staff recruitment,performance management,career planning as well as training and promotion to improve the quality of teacher teams and scientificity of human resource management of higher vocational schools.The model could be adopted to carry out vocational teacher competency evaluation,the results of which could be the scientific basis for teacher recruitment and performance management.The evaluation results could also be used by vocational teachers to identify their strengths and weakness and create their career development plans.Vocational colleges and universities should address teachers' professional development needs and in-service teachers' competency status with customized teacher training programs to assist their professional development and promote the higher vocational education development.