An Intervention Upon Preschool Teachers' Instructional Support In Language And Literacy Activities In Whole-group Settings

In recent years,with the promulgation of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals,the focus of preschool education has gradually shifted from equal access to quality and equity.A large number of studies have shown that,for the quality of early childhood education,teacher-child interaction essentially matters,and its sub-dimension ‘instructional support' is most closely related to children's executive function,academic achievement,emotional and emotional development.However,international researches across many countries have showed that,instructional support was usually rated the lowest and was the biggest obstacle to address.This problem is globally restricting the overall improvement of educational quality.Therefore,it is of great significance to pay attention to instructional support and to explore the possible ways to improve it.Starting from preschool language and literacy activities in whole group settings,this research focused on three questions:(1)What is the status quo of teachers' instructional support?(2)What kind of teachers' professional development mode is workable to improve the quality of instructional support,and how it is carried out?(3)How effective is the quality improvement project? Three kindergartens in X County,Ningbo City,Zhejiang Province were included.Firstly,we randomly recruited 110 teachers with different educational backgrounds,titles,and years of teaching,and recorded each teacher a video of language and literacy activity in whole group setting.After analyzing these data with a self-developed coding system,we designed a instructional quality improvement plan and randomly selected 21 experimental classes and 42 teachers from the three kindergartens and the same number of control classrooms and teachers according to cluster-randomized controlled trail rules.This three-round action research lasted for 2years,and we finally evaluated its effectiveness.The first study focused on the status quo of instructional support.Before video transcription and coding,we developed a coding system from the perspective of both dialogue analysis and ethnography of communication,which included four dimensions(instructiveness,supportiveness,cumulativeness,and purposefulness)and a three-level analysis unit(Communicative Situations(CS),Communicative Events(CE),Communicative Acts(CA)).The coding system has made a breakthrough in methodology and can interpret teacher-child interaction in more detail.The results showed that there was an obvious mismatch between teachers' beliefs and behaviors.To be specific,teachers had acquired ‘child-centered' belief,but their behaviors were blendings of instrctivism and constructivism due to the lack of relevant knowledge and ability.The main reasons were as follows: firstly,the training content was mostly focused on the teachers' beliefs and less attention was paid to the knowledge or ability that teachers should have.Secondely,teachers' trainings were mostly carried out by the froms of lectures or workshops,and there was a lack of practice.As for kindergartens' teaching and researches,participants were highly homogeneous and more about imitating each other.Thirdly,teachers were faced with serious‘time famine',thus didn't have enough time to prepare for daily activities.Besides,teaching references cann't provide effective support for teachers.Overall,it was extremely urgent to innovate teachers' professional development model to improve teachers' instructional support.The second study was the three-round action research upon instructional quality improvement.We employed a model that combined preschool curricula and intensive professional development.Pedagogical content knowledge(PCK)and instructional strategies knowledge were offered as two scaffolds to teachers.We aimed to established kindergartens' teaching and research system under the crossing-boundary cooperation model between universities and kindergartens,and learn PCK and instructional strategies from theory,demonstration,practice,classroom application and feedback.The action research went through three phases.The first round lasted from March 2019 to December 2019.Researchers and practioners hold different opinions on quality improvement,and finally established a preliminary teaching and research model after three months of communication.Results showed that teachers' motivation to participate in teaching and reseach activities had been enhanced,and they began to gain the knowledge and awareness of effective teaching.Some teachers' behaviors gradually began to change.However,the trainings given by researchers were still a way of passive learning for teachers,and classroom application and feedback was of low fidelity.The second round of action research lasted from March 2020 to July 2020,which coincided with COVID-19.We explored the online teaching and reseache model,which transfromed the passively teacher training to actively teacher learning.Results showed that both teachers' PCK level and instructional strategy knowledge made big progress.However,the main problem lied in the lack of practice.The third round lasted from September 2020 to December 2020.We explored a blended teaching and research model.As for teachers' practice,the idea of collective driving individual development was adopted,and personalized feedback was given to teachers with the help of electronic platform.Results showed that teachers gained experience of using these strategies and have a deeper understanding of theory at the same time.However,the quality of self-reflection and peer feedback still needed to be improved.In a word,through two years of continuous attempts,this research had explored a local path to improve instructional quality on the basis of international experience and traditional Chinese teaching and research culture.The third study examined the effectiveness of quality improvement program.Results showed that: Firstly,teachers had more kinds of language and literacy activities which would guarantee children have richer language learning experience.Secondly,teachers had more questions aimed at developing children's higher order thinking skills,and more spiral interactions.Thirdly,the quality improvement program aslo promoted teachers' proformance in cumulativeness and purposefulness dimensions,while there was no obvious effect on supportiveness,which requiring higher frequency of teachers' practice and peer coaching.We further explored the mechanism of PCK in promoting teachers' instructional quality.It was found that PCK can not only promote teachers' communicative acts directly,but also influence the content and form of communicative events,thus allowing more dialogic space.This research drew the following conclusions and suggestions.Researchers and practioners should pay close attention to the mismatch of teachers' belief and behaviors.We need to fully recognize the fact that current teacher training model or teaching and research activities in kindergartens can no longer meet the needs of instructional quality improvement,and some environmental factors are restricting the pace of improving the quality.In terms of quality improvement,the model combing curricula with intensive professional development is an effective way,in which curriculum review can let teachers be more familiar with the content of activities,and both PCK and instructional strategies can effectively support teachers to implement their child-centered belief.During the crossing-boundary cooperation between university and kindergarten,teachers experieced meaning negotiation,perspective and practice reconstruction,which were the important mediating process of teachers' behavior change.As for teaching and research activities,the content,persons and forms are all important variables affecting the efficiency.To be specific,the should cover theory,case and practice.Teachers' subjectivity should be respected and their initiative should be motiviated.The potential of technology should also be explored to boost the reform of teaching and research model.In addition,the leadership of principals is the key to the continuous and efficient promotion of teaching and research activities.Finally,it should be noted that the difficulty of improving teaching support behavior is different,and the improvement of scaffolding behavior requires teachers to have more self-practice and feedback from others.