A Study On Teacher Professional Autonomy In The Context Of New Curriculum

Teachers' professional autonomy means a kind of power or influence that theycan enjoy in the conduction of the professional activities based on their professionalknowledge and competence, and such power or influence should be respected and notunreasonably intervened by external force. Its connotation embodies in the threeaspects: teacher personals, classroom teaching and school administration. Influencedby the "empowering teachers" while emphasizing the professional development, sincethe end of the 20th century, with the conduction of new curriculum reform of BasicEducation, which holds the basic idea of "proposing the education of all-round andharmonious development" and "the democratization and adaptation of the newcurriculum", teacher's professional autonomy is drawing more and more attention. Onthe other hand, the drop between ideal and reality during the reform, the teachers'perplexity and choice in conduction of the reform and the inherent requirement ofteachers' professional development, the importance of enjoying the professionalautonomy in conducting the professional activities has become more important andnoticeable.According to the theoretical analysis, it can be more clear that teachers' professional autonomy which is mistaken for "pseudo-question" possesses profound theoretical basis which includes psychology basis, philosophical foundation, sociological foundation, legal basis and professional foundation. In the perspectives of either the actuality (the multiplicity in talents requirements and characteristics of teacher professional development ) or practice ( the dynamic demands of implementation of new curriculum) or theory (the developing tendency of curriculum theory), the existence of teachers' professional autonomy is necessary. In addition, professional autonomy possesses the characteristics of consistency in rights and obligations, subjectivity and vitality, activity and creativity, which makes the teachers who possess the autonomy transform their roles: from "executor" to "developer and creator".Based on the empirical study, the thesis arrives at the following conclusions: The teachers' professional autonomy which is possessed by teachers in primary and middle schools and Preschools is relatively higher in classroom-teaching level, deficient in individual level and serious lack in school administrative level. As a whole, the present situation of teachers' professional autonomy in China displays the characteristic of deletion. Moreover, in comparison of the differences of current status of professional autonomy in different background variables, there exists no significant differences among the teachers of different educational background and teaching subjects in terms of their professional autonomy, and as far as gender, age, working years, executive posts, level of running school, school size, urban-rural difference, provinces are concerned, different level of significant differences are found on the teachers' professional autonomy. By attributably analyzing the above results , the reasons are generally divided into subjective and objective ones. Therefore, in order to realize the teachers' professional autonomy, in strategy, the corresponding internal and external guarantee mechanism should be established.