A Study On The Relationship Between Professional Identity And Self - Directed Learning In Primary And Middle School Teachers

Since the1980s, the teacher as a professional has become a social consensus, and attaches great importance to the academic specialization and professional development for teacher related research. In these studies, teacher’s professional identity (TPi) is the individual’s own identity as a teacher’s perception, understanding and faith, and has great value for instructors teaching practice. Teachers’ professional identity is a complex constructs and can be considered as one component of multiple which include four sub-identities, as the perspectives of a persons’ identity, teachers’ efficacy, teachers’ beliefs and work preference. The persons’identity is a way how teachers describe themselves though their career stories, and is the basis of individual professional identity; teachers’ self-efficacy refers to believe that they can influence and change the students, and believe that through education can overcome the adverse effects of other factors from the family, the community, etc.; teachers’ belief is the view and knowledge of the teaching,learning,students and so on, and is the basis of individual organization teaching activities; teachers’ prefer to select teachers refers reasons, including internal motivation and external motivation, affect individual decisions on whether to participate in the teaching profession and how long he will do as a teacher. Teachers’ professional identity is a dynamic process with multipled factors influence both inside and outside the body, and in the teachers’ professional development, it has the role of the core and inner power. During recent years, self-directed learning has become an important area of study in the field of adult education. Self-directed learning (SDL) is a way of learning, which refers to the organizational learning by individuals themselves, implementation and evaluation of learning outcomes. Self-directed learning is also a characteristic of the individual properties, and the concentrated expression of autonomy, responsibility. Teachers as adult learning are viewed as natural self-directed learners and participate in adult education or continuing education is a way to releasing and developing adult learners’ capacities to become more self-directed in their learning and living. Teacher as a professional, in addition to knowledge and ability must meet certain requirements, also the individual needs of their professional status of teachers agree to hold attitudes and beliefs, as well as continuing education and continuous learning in order to promote the professional development. Teachers’professional identity plays an important role in the process of individual professional development, teachers’ self-directed learning is an effective way of individual professional development, between both inevitable connection. Study of the relationship between these two concepts, not only can enrich relevant theories of teacher education, teacher professional development, and has a certain practical significance.It contains six parts. The first part is the characteristics of self-directed learning in teachers’professional identity and a review of the previous research, in both the research content, research, research method, et were reviewed, based on the building of relations between the two types, research methods and establish suitable for the purpose of this study. The second part is to adopt the qualitative research methods, qualitative material collection process, and introduces the analysis method of qualitative material. The third part is the use of qualitative research method to interpret teacher’s professional identity. The fourth part is the characteristics of self-directed learning in teachers of qualitative material interpretation. The fifth part is about the relationship between qualitative material interpretation. The sixth part is the discussion and summary.In this study, it contains a lot of literature on teachers’professional identity and characteristics of self-directed learning, specifically the concept of teachers’ professional identity and self-directed learning feature, the content discussed and summarized, and from Henan and Yunnan regions49in-service school teachers in-depth interviews.The relationship between two types are as follow:1. teachers’ self-directed learning is a part of his professional identity.2. teachers’self-directed learning is a way to create his professional identity.3. One’s professional identity as a inner part of one’s professional development, his self-directed learning played a role of intermediary. The research of the relationship between two types, not only expanded the understanding of these concepts but also expanded the view of teacher education.