Constructivist Perspective Of The Professional Development Of Rural Kindergarten Teachers

Preschool Education is the cornerstone of the whole education system, which exertsconsiderable influence on one’s lifelong education. Preschool teachers assume greatresponsibility of the early education and play an indispensable part in connecting thecurriculum and the children. With the implementation of the Guidance of PreschoolEducation, people attach increasingly great importance to Preschool Education, and evenset a higher and newer demand on preschool teachers. However, the present situationshows that the preschool teachers, especially those who work in rural areas still can notmeet this demand. Hence, a study on how to encourage rural preschool teachers toimprove their professional development can not only help them develop continually, butalso promote the education quality in rural areas.Traditional preschool teacher in-service training emphasizes the outside requirementto preschool teachers without considering the important role they played during theirprofessional development and their personal demands. However, the theory ofconstructivism stresses the important place of learners in the course of learning and thestudents’ automatic construction, which accord with the central idea of preschoolteachers’ professional development. In order to know about the practical situation ofpreschool teachers’ professional development, explore the caused reasons and itsimproving strategies, based on the analysis of the literature, this study adopted the theoryof constructivism to investigate the rural preschool teachers in Jiuquan of GansuProvince with questionnaire and interview from five aspects: preschool teachers’educational idea, professional knowledge and abilities, self-awareness of professionaldevelopment, and their in-service training. Through the analysis, the following problemswere concluded: first, rural preschool teachers’ educational idea did not accord with theirbehaviors; second, their professional knowledge and ability were very limited; third, theirself-awareness of professional development was very weak; fourth, their in-servicetraining had little effect. The study then analyzed the factors which influence ruralpreschool teachers’ professional development from autonomous development and in-service training of preschool teachers. The factors included preschool teachers’ lackingof motivation to develop themselves autonomously and in-service training neglectingpreschool teachers’ personal demands. In the end, with the view of constructivism, somesuggestions have been put forward from four aspects: first, to stimulate preschoolteachers’ initiative of their professional development; second, to improve their ability ofteaching reflection; third, to cultivate their cooperation awareness and ability; fourth, tostrengthen their practical action.