A Story Of Rural Female Teachers

In the process of education reform, the role of teachers has drawn more attention than before. What a teacher knows is the key element in his or her professional development and it affects every aspects of the teaching. To date, most of the research on teacher's knowledge has focused on the prerequisite of a teaching professional. Little research exists on the teacher's practical knowledge. By doing qualitative research, the current study investigates a teacher's professional knowledge in an attempt to have a better understanding of a teacher's knowledge.In this study, the author hypothesizes that the social construction of knowledge may reflect a teacher's practical knowledge. The social construction of knowledge is a branch of sociology which examines the relationship between knowledge and social values. The main assumptions of social construction of knowledge are that people's cognition is determined by society and the development of the knowledge is influenced by social structure and social values.The current study's main purpose is to accurately present a teacher's teaching by describing a female teacher's story in rural area. By doing so, the social aspects influencing the development of a teacher's practical knowledge may be identified so that the reflective critical thinking of the participant in this study may be improved and therefore her professional growth may be enhanced. This study may also serve as an inspiration to other teachers.The current study employs narrative inquiry, which captures the story-like characteristics of human experiences and examines the human experiences, then subsequently presents the result in a storytelling format.The participant in this study is a fifth-grade teacher in Nangong Elementary School in the rural area of Beijing, China. The author observed the participant in class many times and interviewed the participant in great detail. Based on all the information collected, the result is presented in a storytelling form which includes: 1) the background information of the story-the society, community, school settings that the participant lives in; 2) the story - the information the author collected about the participant directly and indirectly from the field; 3) the extra - the previous personal experiences of the participant. The participant's practical knowledge was reflected through various scenes and time periods and the characteristics of the participant's practical knowledge was thoroughly analyzed.In sum, by employing social construction of knowledge, the current study investigates the elements influencing the structure of a teacher's practical knowledge step by step. From the relatively general to specific, the elements are social elements, community elements, and school elements.