The Reflection On Teacher Education Policy Since The Reform And Opening Up In China

It is well known that a nation’s one-hundred-year plan is based on education while the education plan is based on teachers. Therefore, to implement the strategy of invigorating China through science and education, it is quite important to improve the quality of teachers’ education. However, whether this task can be achieved and to what extent it will be achieved depend largely on China’s teacher education policies and the degree of implementing the policy in practice. This paper tries to conduct a historical review and analysis of the teacher education policies since the reform and opening up in China, to discuss problems of the policy, and to sum up the experience of the success or failure of the policy. Finally, ideas are presented to improve the teacher education policies in this paper.Methods of documentary research, comparison and case analysis are employed in this paper.First of all, this paper conducts a historical review and analysis of the teacher education policies since the reform and opening up in China. It is well known that China has formulated a series of policies on teachers’education, which have forcefully secured the healthy development of the teachers’education legally in China. According to our government’s judgment of education trends in different historical periods and the different understanding of the importance of the teachers’ education, the development of the teacher education policies since the reform and opening up in China can be roughly divided into three stages: the recovery stage, the reform stage and the rapid development stage. This paper introduces the backgrounds of these policies in each stage emphatically, conducts a preliminary combing for the teacher education policies made in each stage, and analyzes the focuses of the policies in each stage. Having reviewed the development of China’s primary and secondary teacher education policies for more than30years, we find the policies have the following characteristics:in the first place, China’s primary and secondary teacher education policies are gradient, judged from the policies’contents, from the scattered to the systematic, from the one-sided to the comprehensive, and from the micro to the macro. Secondly, they have reflected the transition, judged from the paradigms of the policy-making, from the experienced to the scientific. Thirdly, the legalization of the primary and secondary teacher education policies has been strengthen unceasingly, and has embarked on the track that the education should be administered in accordance with the law. Fourthly, they have presented the development, judged from the theoretical research of the policies, from the fact that there were no teacher education policies in the very beginning of new China. On the second place, in order to learn main problems in teacher education policies, the teacher certification system, policy of free education for pedagogic students and the national training program are selected to comprehensively analyze the problems in the process of the policy-making background, policy-making process and the implementation process. The teacher certification system in china itself has some drawbacks, for example, the entry barriers are too low, the accrediting agency is irregular, the effectiveness of the regulation is unreasonable and the effect on the development of teachers is limited, and so on. There are some problems in policy of free education for pedagogic students, for example, the implementation scope of it is too narrow, the training level is single, the quality guarantee system is not sound, the mechanism of motivation, elimination and withdrawal is missing, the service period is too long, the policy content is incomplete, this policy is opposite to the teacher education university’s and opening-up trend, and so on. At the same time, there are some problems in the implementation process of the national training plan, for example, the qualification of training institutions is under the standard; the supervision of training institutions is irregular; students enter these institution without a restrict selection process; courses in these institution, which didn’t be investigated seriously, have no practicability; only the form is emphasized when these institution are evaluated. Finally, this paper puts forward ideas to improve teacher education policies as follows:strengthening the communication between the policy makers and the policy researchers; paying more attention to the dialogues with the teachers, allowing teachers to participate in the design of teacher education policies; paying more attention to the evaluation and monitoring of teacher education policies.