The Construction Of Instructional Model For English Postgraduates From The Ecological Perspective Of Education

In the past two years, there is a sharp surge in the postgraduate body, especially in English postgraduate programs. This affects the quality of English postgraduate teaching to a certain extent. Accordingly, many scholars have paid attention to the issue and made efforts to improve the instructional model for English postgraduates. This is also the intention of this study. The ecology of education, with its unique innovative perspectives and multi-disciplinary knowledge, provides a new vision for the reconstruction of instructional models.This study makes use of a survey to investigate the current quality of English postgraduate teaching in 13 universities in Shandong, Beijing, Liaoning, Shanghai and Guangdong. Two questionnaires and two interviews are employed. There are all together 293 participants involved in this study, among which 231 are English postgraduates,54 graduates and 8 postgraduate supervisors. The combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods are used to analyze data.Date analysis indicates that by and large the current English postgraduate teaching is effective but there still exist some problems. There are five prominent phenomena of imbalance in English postgraduate teaching:the first one is the imbalance between classroom subjects and classroom environment. The second is the imbalance between the impractical instructional objectives and the all-round development of English postgraduates. The third is the imbalance between teaching and learning. The fourth is the imbalance between curricular study and extracurricular practice. The last one is the imbalance between instructional evaluation mechanism and the assessment of postgraduates'comprehensive abilities. As such, it is necessary to construct a new suitable model of teaching for the practice.On the basis of the ecology of education and humanistic psychology, the researcher constructs an instructional model with ecological features for English postgraduates. Interpretative structural modeling is employed to analyze the main elements of English postgraduates teaching. Referring to the five basic components (theoretical thesis, instructional objectives, content, strategies and evaluation) and the characteristics of the ecological instructional model, the researcher identifies and selects 12 specific instructional elements for construction. With the guidance of teacher-led and student-centered principle, the new instructional model advocates the adoption of autonomous learning and collaborative learning. It aims to provide a dynamic and balanced ecosystem wherein students and teachers can ultimately achieve sustainable development comprehensively. The instructional procedures can be subdivided into three aspects:classroom teaching procedure, extra-curricular learning procedure and practice procedure. Teachers combine diverse ways of teaching such as subject study, individual presentation, academic forum and teaching practice to improve the overall abilities of English postgraduates. As such, the dynamic interactions of the instructional subjects (teachers and students) can benefit the establishment of a harmonious, relaxed and liberal learning environment. Moreover, a multi-dimensional instructional evaluation is adopted to assess the comprehensive performance of English postgraduates.This study is an applied research. It is expected to provide the tentative theoretical support to the development and innovation of the instructional model for English postgraduates. It is also of practical value for improving the deficiencies of the current English postgraduate teaching.