Teachers’ Perceptions Of The Impact Of Teacher Collaboration On Teacher Professional Development:a Survey Of Middle Schools Teachers In Changchun, Jilin,China

This study was conducted to investigate teachers’perceptions of the impact of teacher collaboration on teacher professional development, specifically focusing on pedagogical knowledge and skills under the existing conditions of teacher collaboration in the Chinese context. The study also searched for the knowledge about the impact of teacher collaboration on social and personal development. Moreover, the study was basically looking at the available practices of teacher collaboration, conditions of teacher collaboration in Chinese context, impact of teacher collaboration, challenges and opinions of teachers to improve teacher collaboration.The survey research design was employed involving a sample size of one hundred and fifty (150) teachers selected randomly from six (6) middle schools who were responding to structured questionnaires of which, among the six (6) teachers, one from each school were purposefully summoned to participate in interviews. The data collected by questionnaire were analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version17.0whereby frequencies, percentages, mean scores and standard deviations were computed for analysis and discussion of findings and content analysis for qualitative data.The findings revealed the positive impact of teacher collaboration in teacher professional development, social and personal development. Also, the findings indicated to some extent teacher collaboration conditions allow the presence of teacher collaboration in Chinese schools where collective lesson planning is a common practice of teacher collaboration. Further, societal Chinese culture which is based on the doctrine of Confucius is an important condition of teacher collaboration in Chinese schools. Competition among individual teachers, shortage of resources and limited time to collaborate are the main challenges of teacher collaboration which need to be addressed for effective and productive teacher collaboration. Teachers indicated good relationship among teachers and individual commitment as the promising factors for effective teacher collaboration.The study recommends more collaborative culture among school staffs and to discourage competition among individual teachers, serious investment of teacher collaboration by providing learning materials to teachers which should give teachers freedom, community members to deal with teachers’conflicts and integration of democracy into the management structure to guarantee teachers’freedom, accountability and autonomy.