Search For Meaning: Study On Teachers' Understanding Of Teaching Materials

Teaching materials are the starting point and the foundation of teaching.Teachers' understanding of teaching materials inevitably has great influence on teaching activities.In the transition of teaching process from the knowledge-based to the student-based and the applied of Hermeneutics in the curriculum and teaching,the understanding of concept has more connotation.The conventional sense of the knowledge centered and the linear model understanding of textbooks are doubted.Thus,the cognition and the concept of understanding the teaching materials are gradually changing.However,it is difficult for primary and secondary school teachers to promote the new understandings into practice.The corn reason is that a reasonable framework is needed between the concept and the operation.Therefore,what teachers should do to get better understandings of the teaching materials at the meso level is an urgent problem for both theoretical and practical research.‘Understanding' is a concept originated from Hermeneutics and Psychology.In Hermeneutics,different Hermeneutics views seek for the acquisition of different meanings,while in Psychology,‘understanding' focuses on the construction of the psychological meaning of symbols.Based on Hermeneutics and psychology,different disciplines such as Sociology,Politics,Religion and Communication gradually formed their own views of ‘understanding'.But in general,‘understanding' is always related to ‘meaning'.It is the revealing and constructing for meaning.Meantime,the understanding of teaching materials is also changing along with the education views.When the authority of teaching materials is gradually disintegrating,the ideas which regard teaching materials as learning materials,cultural carriers and empirical texts came up,which criticizes the knowledge-centrism and authoritarianism of teaching materials,but highlights the educational value of teaching materials as a kind of educational knowledge text.Based on the meaning of understanding and the views of the teaching materials,teachers' understanding of teaching materials refers to that by unifying the logic of subject and object to reveal and construct the meaning of teaching materials in the specific historical environment in order to promote the basic process of students' life growth.It requires the standpoint of life education,theadoption of subjective and objective as well as the unified way of thinking to rationally reveal and construct the significance of teaching materials.Thus,in order to know how teachers understand the materials involves three basic questions.First of all,what kind of theory should be used to explain teachers' understanding of the teaching materials? Secondly,what is the process of teacher's understanding? Thirdly,what are the contents or dimensions of teachers' understanding?Constructing the theoretical basis of teachers' understanding is the process of developing what is useful and discarding what is not.Although all Hermeneutics schools are trying to figure out the rationality of understanding,from the perspective of Education,it needs to construct a continuous relationship between objective knowledge and students' development to achieve continuity and process in education.The one which could achieve this goal is Meaning Genetics.Meaning as a symbol in human's living situations is bound to be a chain which formed through the interaction with objective activities in human's own living situations.This kind of meaning chain has the nature of Genesis Method.Within the objective meaning and the subjective meaning,the group meaning and the individual meaning,the chain promote the association between different levels and types of subjects through the ways such as rational and normative thinking,imagination,experience to realize the transformation of the meaning and make it own a complete structural system.As the theoretical basis,the Meaning Genetics can fully explain how can teachers' understanding realize the unification of the knowledge and the educational value.In the process of teachers' understanding,the circle of understanding is the key to the occurrence of meaning.Basically,this process is also the process of promoting the generation of human value along the path of meaning occurrence,and the basic mechanism to realize this process is the cycle of understanding.From the micro perspective,the cycle of understanding exists between the individual teacher and the materials,which is based on the teacher's‘pre-understanding' and promotes the bi-construction of the meaning in the interaction between teachers and materials.It ends with getting "self-understanding" and starts a new cycle.From a macro perspective,the cycle of understanding is the cycle between teachers and society as well as historical tradition,which forms the mainstream values of education in the process of connecting society and school,tradition and modernity.It is complicated to formthe cycle when teachers understand the materials because the cognition,experience,imagination and specification work independently but interlace with each other at the same time.From the perspective of the content,understanding needs to reveal and construct the meanings of different subjects.Teaching materials are the kind of texts which are under the control of multiple subjects and have different subject meanings.Teachers should pay attention to these meanings when they are understanding the materials.Firstly,teachers should pay attention to the meaning of the author,which requires to understand the knowledge in the materials.Teachers' understanding of materials should reveal and construct the meaning system which consists of fact,structure,way of thinking and value emotion.Secondly,teachers should pay attention to the meaning of the editor who carries out ideological understanding of the materials.As legal texts,teaching materials are permeated with the mainstream ideological value system of the country and the society,which also reflects the requirements for talent cultivation.Thirdly,teachers should also pay attention to the meaning of themselves,being more professional to understanding the materials.Teaching materials imply the requirements of teacher's professional quality to help them realize "self-understanding" in their professional development.Last but not least,teachers should also pay attention to the meaning of students,to understand the meaning for learning.Teachers should understand the learning concepts and learning styles and apply them into practices.The meanings of different subjects in the materials are independent to some extent,but they are also interactive.They construct the meaning system and become the core foundation for teachers to understand the materials..Therefore,teachers' understanding of teaching materials should be based on the generation of meaning,with deconstructing and constructing the meanings of different subjects through the cycle of understanding between individual teachers and teaching materials,between teachers and society as well as historical tradition.In this process,teaching materials are constantly deconstructed and constructed,and teachers are gradually realizing their self-understanding.