Research On Development Of Professionalization Of Instructors From Professional Community Perspective

Universities in China have established the instructor system since 1950s. With its development over more than 50 years, the role of instructor system in China's higher education is becoming more and more important. Instructor system entered into a new stage of development after the implementation of NO.16 document issued by CPC Central Committee in 2004. During this stage of development, professionalization and specialization of the instructors has become the focus of the construction of the instructor system. As the development of instructor system which aims at becoming professional, specialized and expertise, the issues such as lacking of training system, professional organization and professional ethics standard for instructors and instructors'poor professional ability become the bottleneck of the development of professionalization of instructors. For further promoting the development of the professionalization of instructors in higher education and realizing the goal of the higher education, it is crucial to solve these issues by constructing the Professional Instructor Community based on the Professional Community Theory.The paper is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1, introduction, presents the reasons for topic choosing and significance of the research, reviews the development of the professionalization of instructors at home and abroad, explains the research methods and innovation of the work.Chapter 2 discusses the necessity of professionalization of instructors in higher education from both the subjective and objective perspectives. From subjective perspective, the necessity is discussed from the aspects of all-around development of students, individual development of the instructors and development of modern university; From the objective perspective, the influences on the instructors'job caused by three facts faced by the professionalization of instructors process which are the profound changes emerged in this transition period of the society, popularization of the higher education and the information networking tendency are discussed.Chapter 3 presents the history and present situation of the development of professionalization of instructors. First, the development tendency of professionalization of instructor system in higher education is analyzed by reviewing the historical development of the instructor system; Second, the achievements of professional development of instructor system in higher education which are the growth of instructor team, the construction of scientific instructor system, the establishment of professional training system, the perfection of instructor security mechanism and the development of instructor associations are presented. Third, based on a questionnaire survey of the full-time instructors among six universities in Shanghai, the problems existing in the course of professionalization of instructors are summarized and analyzed.Chapter 4 is the theoretical basis of the whole thesis. The intrinsic logic between professional community and professional development is present. First, the research of the community theory is presented from the cultural context, political philosophy and social context; second, the formation and development of professional community are further discussed; finally, the characteristics of the professional community and the effect of the professional community on the process of professionalization are analyzed and the idea of constructing the instructor community is presented.Chapter 5 is the extension of chapter 4. Focuses are put on the enlightenments of professional community on the development of professionalization of instructors in higher education. To solve the problems existing in the process of professionalization of instructors which are presented in the chapter 3, break the bottleneck during the development of professionalization of instructors and further promote the process of professionalization of instructors, advices are given in five aspects which are constructing the scientific education system and training system for instructors, establishing role models, building the professional glory of instructor, setting up the professional associations and enhancing the construction of professional ethic standard.