Ability Assessment-based Classification Of Science Teacher And The Diagnosis Of Their Training Needs

"It is a good teacher that makes a good education",teachers are key performers of school education,so a country's quality of education can't exceed that of its teachers.Judging from the development history of in-service teacher training in developed countries,teacher training has shifted from the period of providing teachers with unidirectional training to the period of diagnostic and tailored training which is based on data collection.Nevertheless,how to propose targeted training projects to meet the needs of all teachers remains a thorny issue to be resolved.In 1999 China's Ministry of Education mentioned that "attending continuing education is the right and obligation of teachers in primary and secondary schools",and meanwhile it divided continuing teacher education into three types in terms of teachers' growth stage&process:training for newly-qualified teachers,on-the-job training for teachers,and training for backbone teachers.In 2010,the "National Training Project" initiated by the State Council ushered in a nationwide training program for teachers in primary and secondary schools.After one decade's continuing education for teachers and over five years'large-scale training,trainings designed to compensate education background insufficiency among teachers in primary and secondary schools have been completed,and the majority of teachers have once attended training programs at county-level or above.In this new situation,limitations in the previous mode of conducting classified training mainly in terms of teachers' service time are exposed.In recent years,as the development imbalance among teachers after their recruitment and their demand diversity for training are ignored,many training programs are not perfectly tailor-made,leading to reduced enthusiasm among teachers and worsened training results.Therefore,how to make scientific diagnosis of teachers' teaching capacity and arrange layered&classified training courses has become the chief issue in improving training efficiency and performing training as per demands.Besides,these are the research purposes of this study as well.In order to propose a set of schemes to diagnose the teaching capability of science teachers in primary and secondary schools and lay foundations for layered&classified training,this thesis unfolds a progressive study concerning the following five research questions:1.How's the teaching capacity situation of science teachers in China's secondary schools?2.What indicators and methods can be adopted to classify science teachers in China's secondary schools?3.How many types can science teachers in China's secondary schools be divided into?4.What are the characteristics and training demands of different categories of teachers?5.Can an evaluation model be used as the tool for teacher classification?Concerning these issues,this research adopts questionnaire method,classroom observation and interviews to systematically analyze the data of 6005 science teachers who come from middle schools of 7 provinces and cities(including Zhejiang Province,Zhuzhou,Zhengzhou,Shijiazhuang,Luoyang,Shenzhen,and Xilin Gol League).The research data were based on the Health Checkup&Promotion Project for Regional Education Quality launched by the "Collaborative Innovation Center for Quality Monitoring of China's Elementary Education",and the author of this thesis participated in the design of major questionnaire for science teachers in 2014.The research sampled 6,005 science teachers of junior middle schools from seven regions in China.First,with questionnaires for teachers,the research made whole description and difference analysis of the science teachers.The result showed that:Fristly,in generally,science teachers of junior middle schools in China hold a classic view of nature of science and positive critical thinking disposition,but they lack truth-seeking and openness in spirit and prescriptive training in scientific method.In class,scientific exploration is far less than recitation and practice which are low-level teaching behaviors in thinking development.In the view of nature of science,critical thinking disposition and teaching behavior,what is prominent is regional difference but not gender difference of teachers with eastern coastal region exceeding central and western regions.At present,trainings remarkably promote teachers' modern science view and positively reduce the amount of recitation and practice,but have no effect on scientific exploration.Secondly,a regression analysis on the outlook of science nature,critical thinking and teaching behaviors is carried out by taking into consideration such factors as their sex,age,teaching duration,education,professional background,and nature of school.Their R-squared values are all lower than 2%.Such results show that,with the growth of China's economic strength and the popularization of Internet,more channels for gaining learning resources become available.As a result,the growth of science teachers in middle schools has become diversified,with personalized traits.Teaching duration,designation,and education are no longer the major influencing factors in teachers'teaching capability.Doing regression to teachers' exploratory teaching behaviors with the help of outlook of science nature and critical thinking can obtain an explanatory ratio of 41%,indicating that teachers' concept has significant influence on their teaching behaviors.Classifying teachers in terms of teachers' concepts and behaviors are more reliable.Therefore,doing classification on the mere basis of age,teaching duration,and designation is unable to fully reflect the diversity in training demands among different categories of teachers,and doesn't fit the demands of modern teacher training.Thirdly,among teachers' outlook of science nature,critical thinking,and teaching behaviors,this thesis deletes factors that don't have significant differences from most other factors and incorporates factors with higher correlation coefficients.Accordingly,we obtain six relatively independent indicators,which can be used as key indexes for clustering analysis.These six indicators include classical outlook of science nature,modern outlook of science nature,exploratory teaching,memorizing&doing exercises,pursuit of truth and openness,and system analysis.Fourthly,Three key indexes were extracted from the description and analysis of science teachers:view of nature of science,teaching behavior and critical thinking disposition.The result of cluster analysis and discriminant analysis of science teachers based on the three indexes showed that:with different starting points,different regions and different teaching environments,the development trend of science teachers of junior middle schools in China is diverse but not in an uniform growth along with teaching ages.The classification based only on teacher's age and teaching age can't fully reflect the different training needs of teachers on different levels and can't meet the development requirements of contemporary teacher training.To adopt cluster analysis and regard critical thinking disposition,view of nature of science and teaching behavior as teaching ability indexes for science teachers,the research found that teachers can be divided into five categories,namely "passive teachers","conservative teachers","radical teachers","classical teachers",and " open-minded teachers”.Cluster results can pass the statistical test and test of external index and is explicable.The result of cluster analysis showed that the current situation of teaching ability of science teachers is severe and one fifth of China's science teachers of junior middle school still need base-compensatory training.Science teachers' critical thinking is the key variable for the unity of knowledge and practice and the research for open questions is of great importance for teachers' professional growth.Through discriminant analysis,the research established a discriminative model of science teachers'teaching ability with high discrimination that can predict teachers'category.Fifthly,this research also attempts to establish a model to evaluate the teaching capability of science teachers with the help of Fisher Method:F(1)=6.545I??+4.464 I??+1.995 I??+7.116I??+4.154I??+3.569I??-214.812F(2)=6.997I??+4.398I??+2.483I??+8.303I??+4.065I??+3.952I??-254.066F(3)=8.009I??+5.559I??+2.168I??+8.075I??+4.355I??+3.838I??-280.029F(4)=8.260I??+5.226I??+2.878I??+9.318I??+4.554I??+4.535I??-339.343F(s)=7.815I??+5.264I??+2.587I??+6.669I??+5.016I??+4.320I??-301.167It is indicated by Cross Validation that,with relatively strong discriminatory power,this model can make correct classification for 5,558 teachers from the database(accounting for 94.8%of all effective cases).Theoretically,for any science teacher from middle school,this model can determine his/her training category after he/she finishes the questionnaire.Sixthly,the research built ICM model that classifies teachers according to their abilities of subject teaching;the research also built a norm of science teachers'teaching ability based on survey data and proposed IDM model to distinguish categories of teachers,which makes empirical data base for subsequent categorized teacher training.The research suggested that the analysis of teacher training needs should be combined with classification and diagnosis which are based on teaching ability;the design of course modules should be based on results of classification diagnosis.With limited budget,the training needs of science teachers in junior middle schools who are in great need of base-compensatory training should be satisfied first.Field training should utilize classification norm to select trainees;distance training should adopt IDM model to push personalized courses with different classification.