| With the dramatic development in teacher’s professional development, the initial teacher education level in many main countries worldly has been promoted constantly,leading to the master-level initial teacher education being in the process to be the highest level, which is followed by the changes in the contents of initial teacher education. However, being restricted by the traditional theory of three stages in teacher education research, most of the relevant studies combined the new-built master-level programs in initial teacher education without proper and specific reflection on the differences between the graduate-level programs and bachelor-level programs.Concerning about the previous studies, master level initial teacher education has been isolated and addressed from the other level initial teacher preparation program in this study. In contrast, the full-time professional master degree of education, the most representative master-level initial teacher education program in China, has a relative short developing history which was started from 2009. What’s more, most researches about this topic focused on the situation and the shortages, basing on which many strategies have been raised up. Without enough comparative study on the master degree initial teacher education, few researches have introduced the successful experiences in cultivating graduate-level initial teachers from abroad. To make this research situation up, regarding to the comparability between Master of Teaching Program and Full-time professional master degree of teaching, for examples, the same degree, the same duration and the similar cultivation goals, this study has chosen the Master of Teaching Program as research object and analyzed its social backgrounds, constitutions, process of being carried out, effectiveness and its implications for the development of masterlevel initial teacher education in China.Social backgrounds in three main aspects influenced and motivated the establishment of Master of Teaching Program, such as the constantly promotions in teacher specialization worldly, especially the flourish in graduate-level initial teacher education in USA; secondly, a serious shortage in teachers having been lasted for more than one decade intrigued the motivation to cultivate the leaders of new teachers in next generation; thirdly, abundant resources and beneficial experiences drown from the previous initial teacher education programs in OISE/UT and the successful implement of two-year pilot teacher education program, the latter one provided the valuable experiences for two years initial teacher education because most of the consecutive teacher education programs were completed in one year at that time.The historical and practical necessities not only led to the appearance of the Master of Teaching Program, but also influenced its contents’ designation and process of being carried out. The rationales of its designation contain three different levels’ requirements,among which the professional practical standards released by the Ontario College of Teachers, such as commitment to students’ development, responsibility to promoting professional development and so on, the principles of initial teacher education programs in OISE/UT and the most attractive marketability of this program which intends to combine the rigorous academic study with professional development. Furthermore, in the aspect of program constituents, this program organized reasonable curriculum system, participants with distinguished responsibilities and resources. Its curriculum was designated in accordance to the requirements in merging the fundamental educational theory, teaching practicing ability and educational research ability by combining the educational theory courses, practicum and research courses together so that the promotion in both academic and professional. Besides, many relative participants, such as associate teachers, teacher candidates, faculty advisers and other people, have been involved in and assigned specific responsibilities, which strengthened the efficiency of this educational resources. About the supporting resources, OISE/UT provided the masters of teaching with excellent researches as theory courses instructors,scholarships and internet resources.On one hand, with the help of abundant resources and efficient participants with specific responsibilities, obvious effectiveness in four main aspects have been found out from this program. On the other hand, we could draw a lesson from its effectiveness and distinguished features also in four aspects. Initially, the graduates from this programcould managed a better understanding in high-level professional discourses, develop a much more acceptable standard in educational theory and could be more suitable to formal teaching in school background. This program could also be beneficial to the professional development of partnership schools and also the same to the teachers in schools with their abundant educational theory and advice basing on their observation.Then, there are four distinguished features underlying in this program, such as concrete and practical program goals, combination of educational research and teaching practicing; reasonable curriculum systems and proper arrangement, connecting the theory with teaching practicing; addressing cooperation between different participants and organizing different kinds of resources and applying different assessing and evaluating methods and addressing their functions of assisting the students’ development. As a conclusion, regarding to the shortcomings in full-time professional master of teaching in China, we could learn a lot from its features and make some proper changes in full-time professional master of teaching in China, such as clarifying the definitions between different program goals and features of different programs;refining the curriculum systems and addressing the combination of theory and practicing; assigning specific designations to different participants and maximizing resources and introducing more assessing and evaluating methods and paying more attention to their function in assisting students’ developments. |
PDF Full Text Request