A Study On The Tuition-Free Normal College Students' Recognition Of Teachers' Role

In 2007, China's Education Ministry put forward the policy of tuition-free normal college students'education, aiming at improving the quality of our primary and secondary education. The implementation of the measure can attract outstanding students to devote to the teacher education and to teach in primary and secondary schools, especially in rural areas, and prompt the balanced development of education and educational equity in order to achieve the purpose of enhancing the education quality of primary and secondary schools comprehensively and sustainably.Apparently, strengthening the normal college students'recognition of teachers'role and enhancing their willingness to be teachers in primary and secondary schools is a prerequisite for training qualified teachers and improving the quality of future teachers. However, unfortunately, the studies and researches which focus on normal college students'recognition of teachers'role at home are few. Thus, this study, based on the theories concerning teachers'role, selected the tuition-free normal college students majoring in English education as the subjects. Meanwhile, since classroom observation is one of the basic research methods applied in classroom research and an important way to promote the professional development of teachers, the tuition-free normal college students, as the future teachers of primary and secondary school, can enhance their recognition of teachers'role through observing their teachers'teaching. Therefore, this study attempts to explore the change and improvement of tuition-free normal college students'recognition of teaches'role and their willingness to be teachers after they have studied for one semester in college, through their practice of classroom observation in Comprehensive English Course under the guidance, so as to provide effective information for the emerging tuition-free normal education, the normal college students'pre-service learning and educational activities in normal universities.In this study, the data was collected from two intact classes of English education major in the Foreign Languages Institute of Southwest University; with 60 tuition-free normal college students participating in this study, all of whom are freshmen.30 of them in one class formed the control group while 30 of them in the other class formed the experimental group. The pretest and posttest were conducted among them in the form of questionnaire and interview, and the change of the control and experimental groups' recognition of teachers'role in the pretest and posttest was compared and analyzed respectively. All the other conditions of the subjects were controlled:the same teacher, teaching materials and lengthy of class time. The only different point was that the experimental group conducted the practice of classroom observation (observing the teachers'role performed by their teacher) in Comprehensive English Course for nearly one-term. After the completion of classroom observation, the subjects of the experimental group were required to fill in a classroom observation guideline on English teachers'role and write a journal to record what they have learned during the observation.The researcher made comparative analysis and correlation analysis of the data collected in the questionnaire of the pretest and posttest. The results show that the experimental group's objective recognition of teachers'role has gained significant promotion, though the subjective recognition has not gained significant promotion after nearly one-term practice of classroom observation in Comprehensive English Course. Both of the control group's objective and subjective recognition have gained promotion, but both the promotions are not significant. Meanwhile, though the experimental group's general recognition of teachers'role has been improved significantly, there are differences in their recognition of the specific teachers'roles and some aspects of the specific teachers'role. Furthermore, with the promotion of their recognition of teachers'role, the tuition-free normal college students'willingness to be English teachers has been improved, but the improvement is not significant.These results suggest that the tuition-free normal college students'recognition of teachers'role can be improved objectively, if they observe the teaching of their teacher under certain guidance. Moreover, the recognition of some overt teachers'roles, which are performed obviously in class, can be improved more significantly. And the recognition of teachers'role can facilitate the tuition-free normal college students'willingness to be English teachers but the effect is not significant.Based on the results above, some constructive suggestions were presented for how to improve the tuition-free normal college students'recognition of teachers'role and their willingness to be teachers in primary and secondary schools, and other functions of classroom observation in tuition-free normal college education were put forward.