A Study Of The Status And Influencing Factors Of Kindergarten Teacher's Professional Autonomy

It is the essential condition to own the professional autonomy if teachers want to realize the real specialization. To promote teachers'authority and occupational status have become an important part in educational reform. Only if teachers'professional autonomy is realized, may teachers regain the vigor from occupational fatigue, experience the value of professional life and obtain the occupational well-being. There were many researches on teachers'professional autonomy in the past. However, most of the researches took teachers in primary and middle schools as object, and few of them studied kindergarten teachers. Therefore there is theoretical and practical significance to study the issue of professional autonomy of kindergarten teachers.This study has analyzed the current situation and influencing factors of professional autonomy of kindergarten teachers, by the means of255questionnaires and9interviews. The findings are as follows.First, kindergarten teachers are eager to get the real empowering in various aspects of professional autonomy. However, it is unbalance of teachers'various professional autonomy in practice, especially lack of democratic management.Second, the four latitude aspects of professional autonomy and overall professional autonomy exists differences in marital status, age, seniority, education background and position, etc. Teachers with postgraduate degree have the largest gap between their expectation and present situation on professional autonomy. The professional autonomy of new teachers gets the lowest score on overall latitude. The professional autonomy of the teachers under the age of25, is lack of effective protection in practice.Third, factors that affect the teachers'professional autonomy are complicated, and there exist primary and secondary division in different latitude aspects. Onerous daily teaching tasks and undue chores become the essential element of a constraint to achieve the autonomy. Moreover, teachers'lack of ability and enthusiasm are the internal factors of the implementation of professional autonomy.Finally, on the basis of the summary of the foregoing survey findings, this study offers proposals for improving teachers'professional autonomy in four aspects of teachers, kindergartens, education authorities and parents.