The Relationships Among The Future Time Perspective, Sense Of Academic Optimism And The Professional Planning Of Secondary School Teachers

The professional planning of teachers could reflect their perseverance,dedication and the pursuit of the art of education. Therefore, an improvement in the teachers’competence at their professional planning is undoubtedly a boost in their perseverance,acceptance and their skills in education, and will benefit the course of education. On the basisof what have already been found out by previous researches on this topic, this study hasanalyzed the relationship between the sense of future time, academic optimism and theoccupational planning of teachers and has tentatively made the proposal that academicoptimism serves as a mediator in the teachers’ sense of future time and occupational planning.This study has adopted a self-report measure with322teachers at8secondary schools inCheng Du as the respondents. With the questionnaires of future time perspective, TeacherAcademic Optimism Scale and Professional engagement and career developmentaspirations-PECDA, the author of this thesis paper has come to the following conclusionswith data analysis software such as SPSS and Amos:(1) The average score of future time perspective, sense of academic optimism, andprofessional planning among the secondary school teachers in Cheng Du is2.95±0.15，3.67±0.63，5.29±0.88.(2) Generally speaking, there is no significant gender discrepancy (t=1.83, p=0.68>.05).What is more, there is a significant difference of future time perspective concerning how longthe middle school teachers have been teaching(F=3.65, p<.05). Teachers working no longerthan5years have a stronger sense of future time than those who have worked for more than15years.(3) There is no gender difference among secondary school teachers (t=.688,p=.492>.005). However, there exists a marked difference when it comes to different types ofteachers (F=4.505, p<.005). Novice teachers’ sense of academic optimism and effectivenessare much lower than those of the proficient and expert teachers.(4) There is a marked positive correlation between the future time perspective, academicoptimism and professional planning of secondary school teachers. The teacher’s perspectiveon future time could help us make a predication about their academic optimism(t=5.836, p<.001,△R2=0.093) and professional planning(t=7.516, p<.001,△R2=0.148), and theacademic optimism could help in the predication of professional planning too(t=9.966, p<.001,△R2=0.235).(5) Through the test on the medium effect of academic optimism, this study has foundout that academic optimism does act as a mediator in the teacher’s future time perspective andprofessional planning.