Comparative Study Of Sino-American Undergraduate Student Teaching From The Perspective Of Teacher Professional Development

Student teaching has specific meaning to Teacher Professional Development. How to examine the problems of student teaching from the perspective of teacher professional development is an innovative and important theme.Taking Chinese Capital Normal University, Northeast Normal University and American Michigan State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison as study objects, this paper does characteristic analyses on their student teaching purposes, contents, main participants and assessment methods of elementary teacher education.According to the study, obvious differences exist. Student teaching in China has four features:(1) student teaching purposes focus on developing professional ethics and identity and enhancing teaching and research abilities;(2) time and content settings of student teaching show theory-applying value orientation;(3) student teaching is assigned by school uniform and managed in the form of practice teams;(4) student teaching grade evaluation method and the proportion division of participants’responsibilities are clear. American student teaching features are as follow:(1) based on teacher education standards, student teaching advocates multicultural education and reflective teaching concept;(2) student teaching pays attention to optimization of the holistic course structure, which achieve interactions between theoretical guidance and educational practice;(3) student teaching assignment respects the will of individuals, focus on the building of research community;(4) student teaching adopts standardized summative assessment, and also focuses on diversification process evaluation.On this basis, further comparison and analysis of the function of Sino-American educational practice in promoting student teachers’ professional development are completed from four dimensions which include horizontal professional ethics, knowledge, abilities and their vertical dynamic changes. In allusion to problems in Chinese student teaching, four reform suggestions are put forward by referring to the effective experience of American student teaching:(1)based on student teachers’ professional development needs, student teaching should develop and constantly revise its stage objectives;(2) student teaching should focus on the integration of educational theory curriculum and subject curriculum and achieve student teachers’ professional development by reflection;(3) student teaching should build equal and mutually benefited teaching and research community to provide profession development platform;(4) student teaching should improve student teacher evaluation methods and establish systematic student teaching evaluation mechanism.