"i Want To Transfer Rural" - A Rural Elementary School Young Female Teachers' Professional Values Of Qualitative Research

Rural education accounts for about half of China’s elementary education. At present, the quality of rural education is not satisfying and the dropout rate of rural students is quite high, which is closely related to rural teachers’work, whereas a significant motive of their professional behavior is their professional values. Teacher’s professional value is the teacher’s view of and attitude toward the teacher’s profession and its meaning. It decides one’s preference in job selection, work efficiency and professional affection. So it has important effect on teacher’s professional value identity, professional happiness and job satisfaction. What is more important to moral educational research, via the relation between teachers and students and teachers’ modeling, it has big influence on students’moral development and moral education in rural schools.With qualitative research method, this paper studies systematically a young female rural teacher’s, Ms. Wang’s, professional value though her professional experience. The data mainly falls into two categories:her pre-professional image of rural teachers and her understanding of her own professional experience. Then,the writer sorts out seven latitudes from her professional experience in rural area, which is presented in seven dimensions, namely material reward, reputation, professional development, interpersonal relations, altruist dedication, organization, and stability. Wang’s professional values are influenced by internal and external factors, with the external factors being more influential. The internal ones include Wang’s cognition about professional conscience and her outlook concerning the city and rural areas, while external advantageous ones include professional stability, the elevation of her teaching efficiency, the relations with colleagues, students’parents respect to teaches and family support, and the external disadvantageous ones include the conflict between "good grades" and students comprehensive development, the relative low social status of rural teachers, the unfair payment, undemocratic management of teachers, and the conflict between work and family.The author argues that rural teachers’ professional value identity has considerable influence on students’ moral development, with the most specific reasons lying in its influence on the teacher’s professional stability, their outlook concerning city and rural areas, their professional value of "demanding good grades" and relatively low professional identity. Besides, the author puts forward some suggestions on elevate their professional value identity with internal and external methods.