Under The New Curriculum Ideas, Classroom Teaching And Research Of Art Teachers In Rural Areas

In January 1999, the National Fundamental Education Course Reform Expert Group was established which formally started course reform. Since the autumn 2001the section of the art course reform has been implemented in 38 experimental districts of 27 provinces and is currently in a phase of overall implementation. The new art courses bring up new educational concepts and new requirements for the teaching behavior of art teachers. The rural middle school art teachers in particular are faced with both serious challenge and chance of development. The study of their in-class teaching has therefore become a subject drawing much attention in the reform. It is crucial to the success of the whole fundamental art course reform, to the future of every student and to the development of the society. The environment in which rural students grown up is in essence different from that of the urban students so that rural students have unique developmental characteristics physically and psychologically. Therefore, rural school art teachers have to adjust to this situation, improve their own quality in the context of the new course concepts and refine their in-class teaching behavior.The key or 'soul', the 'embedded idea', of the rural school art course reform is to enable every student's development under a circumstance of "democracy, freedom and equality". In another word, it is to improve citizens' quality education. This idea will penetrate each aspect of the reform and requires teachers to update their teaching concepts continually. Teachers should set up the goal of promoting students' personality formation and overall development, keep in mind of students' individual difference, pay attention to students' life experiences and creatively carry out in-class teaching.This article deals with the rural art teaching practices and interprets the requirements put on art teachers' in-class teaching by the new course concepts. Researches are done by means of observation, communication, class auditing, class evaluation and personal teaching experiences for the study of teaching performance. Analysis of affecting factors is given and based on that teaching strategies are suggested to help improve teaching behavior in rural art classes to facilitate the reform. The study suggests that many problems exist in the process of the reform in spite of developments toward the new ideas' direction. This situation attributes to many factors including internal factors such as ideas, knowledge, capability and level, and external factors, especially the restriction of the inadequate teaching research and the evaluation system. As a result, the improvement of teaching quality in rural school art classes calls for both internal growth and external support.