Function Scope And Development Path On Teacher Training Institutions At County Level In Hunan Province

As Chinese saying goes, “It takes ten years to grow trees but a hundred years to people. The teachers are the base of education.” Namely, better teachers indicate the better education. The prefectural teacher training institutions, as the basic training institutions for elementary and secondary school teachers, have made great contributions to the development of the teachers since their establishment. Along with the social development, the requirement for the teachers’ quality rise as well: the teachers with high morality, experienced skill, balanced knowledge and energetic power are demanded. The paper,based on the examples from Hunan province,has conducted an empirical research on the function and development route of prefectural teacher training institutions in hopes of providing the theoretical and practical references for the resolving the dilemma of the prefectural teacher training institutions.Besides the textual analysis, the paper also adopts the questionnaire investigation and interview investigation. Through the questionnaire and interview, the researcher had a preliminary research on the basic situation of the prefectural teacher training institutions in Hunan Province. The interviewees mainly consisted of the principals, middle-level cadres, teachers and assistant staff of the institutions. Through the research, the problem that the status of prefectural teacher training institutions have been marginalized; the infrastructure is under-developed; the teachers’ professional quality are low; the prefectural teachers’ high-quality education resources are combined but not integrated; the function of the institutions is deficient and misplaced; the primary and secondary function of the institutions are confused; the core function--training has not achieved the fixed target.As the problems in the prefectural teacher training institutions, the paper proposes that the local government must play its educational role and the relevant administration should provide necessary support. Second, the teachers education resources in a prefecture should be integrated and reassigned and the relevant institutions should cooperate with the integration. Next the internal management system of the training institutions should be reformed and its self-construction is crucial. During the process, the prefectural teacher training institutions should play the role of organizer, participant, researcher and server, taking the responsibilities of organizing, training, researching and serving functions in the development of elementary and secondary school teachers.