Study On Teachers' Practical Knowledge In The Background Of Teacher Professionalization

The discrepancy between theory and practice is inevitable in teacher education. To bridge the gap between them, it is necessary to study about teachers' practical knowledge, which is the basic concept in this thesis. The postmodern standpoint of knowledge not only makes us have a deep understanding about the nature of knowledge, but also makes teachers' practical knowledge be the focus of teacher knowledge. To some extent, teacher's practical knowledge has more advantages to academic prepositional knowledge. It comes from teaching practice, accumulates in the course and finally aims at answering the questions arising from the teaching practice. The study on this kind of knowledge might be somewhat meaningful in integrating theory with practice. Today, teacher professionalization likes a raging fire. Under the background, teacher practical knowledge reveals the idea of self-directed development of teachers, emphasizes on the particularity of the career of teacher, testifies the power for teachers and promotes the development of teacher professionalization. On the base of a good understanding of teachers' practical knowledge, we can make a great breakthrough in the study of personally professional development of teachers, establish efficient policies and programs to promote the development of teachers and bring forward some pertinent suggestions and opinions on the reform and development of teacher education for our country from two perspectives of theory and practice. With this aim, mainly employing literature search, historical methods and comparative methods and so on, the thesis probes into the connotations, characteristics and development of teacher practical knowledge and pays more attention to its special meaning on teacher professionalization, and try to gain some enlightenments and lessons to the development of domestic teacher education from this study in the end. The thesis consists of five parts. Part I. Foreword. This part mainly deals with some topics such as the concepts of knowledge, teacher and teacher knowledge; this part also introduces the meaning of selecting the topic, the status quo of the studies and the methods of the research. Part II. What is teacher practical knowledge? To begin with, this part analyzes other relative concepts, and then deduces the connotations of teacher practical knowledge. From the dialectic viewpoint, this part reveals its characteristics. Part III. Why is it necessary to study teachers' practical knowledge with teacher professionalization in the background? This part puts this study on the background of teacher professionalization and explains why teacher practical knowledge can promote the process of teacher professionalization. Part IV. How does teacher practical knowledge develop? This part mainly discourses upon the teacher reflection and collaboration as two basic routes to promote the development of teacher practical knowledge. Part V. The enlightenments and lessons from the study of teachers' practical knowledge. Based on the examination in former parts, this part puts forward some suggestions and reference to the reform and development of domestic teacher education from two viewpoints of preservice and inservice teacher training.