Primary School Teacher Education From A Postmodernist Perspective

In this thesis I try to sort out, analyze and investigate the problems of the education of primary school teachers in the educational innovation by adopting the principles of postmodernism. Based on this analysis, an inspiring method will be provided to the primary school teacher education reform in a postmodern perspective. Postmodernism is a popular Western philosophical and cultural trend of thought in the late 20th century. As the most influential ideological trend in the West, postmodernism has aroused great interest among scholars because it has opened up a new theoretical space, the research perspective of which has been restricted by the traditional scientific research and logical deduction. This new space is more for thinking and criticism and it compels us to introspect our basic premise, method and way of practice and enforces more people to rethink their theory and political assumptions and by reexamining the familiar concepts and theoretical scope, to produce new theories and practice. It brings out a brand-new and all-embracing thinking about the primary school education reform, curriculum system, pedagogical mode and primary school teacher education system. Nowadays the educational innovation emphasized on the basic curriculum reform has marched into a new stage of development. On this turning point Chinese teacher education reform is facing up with a practical problem, i.e. how to update the ideas and how to make innovations. In the field of teacher education, that of the primary school teacher can not afford to be neglected not only because its number is the largest, but that primary school teachers constitute a special group with more distinct characteristics compared with teachers of other educational stages. In this case it is required to adopt a primary school teacher reform with corresponding particularity to cultivate competent primary school teachers.On by adopting a postmodern perspective to examine the problems in primary school teacher reform can we find that no fundamental changes have taken place in the enclosed situation of the primary school teacher education concept. Problems still exist in the curriculum arrangement of primary school education governed by the scientific rationality. The instructional mode focusing on prescriptive culture has restrained the development of primary school teacher education. Besides, the mode of the reform also needs new innovations. It is an urgent requirement of the new curriculum of basic education and a significant subject of the high education reform to abolish the above-mentioned drawbacks and to establish a competent and vigorous primary teacher education system. This thesis is concerned with the reform and development of primary school teacher education. In the interaction of interpretation and experience of the primary school teacher education it tries to construct an ideal blueprint of the reform and development of primary school teacher education on the basis of some practical problems. In the postmodern perspective to analyze this problem we will find new transformations of various educational elements in the primary school teacher education: the primary school teacher education will be less demonstrated as a study and comprehension of the present educational knowledge, method and pattern, but a process that teacher as a study group have mutually affected, experienced and researched. The idea of primary school teacher education will be more open and multiple and the curriculum system of primary school teacher education will move form rationality to life. The pedagogical mode of primary school teacher education will advocate the play and free creation of postmodernism, the representatives of which includes the hermeneutic pedagogy, such as image study, acoustic study and time study and criticism-dialogue pedagogy. These primary school teacher education ideas with their postmodern characteristics will offer a new mentality to the primary school teacher education reform. This thesis consists of three sections as follows:Sectio...