Cross-school Practice And Professional Understanding Of Exchange And Rotating Teachers Within The County

In China,teacher exchange and rotation is an important initiative implemented to balance educational resources and promote educational equity,which encourages teachers to move across schools to stimulate the vitality of the teaching staff and enhance education quality.In order to explore the professional experience and meaning construction of exchange and rotating teachers during their mobility experiences,this study selected an urban primary school and two small-scale rural schools in H District of a city in Anhui Province as field sites.21 teachers on exchange rotations were selected as interviewees and observation subjects through a snowball sampling method,and their motivations for exchange rotations,cross-school experiences and understanding of the teaching profession were investigated in a more complete way.The following three main findings emerged from the study.Firstly,teachers’ participation in an exchange rotation is an important decision in their careers,and the motivational component of teachers’ professional perspectives can be partially seen through their decision-making process.At the individual level,teachers choose to participate in exchange rotations in order to exert their desired effects;at the school level,teachers’ choice or acceptance of participation in exchange rotations is related to their identity experience as members of the original school;at the societal level,the framework set by the teacher exchange and rotation policy and objective reasons such as changes in school distribution also contribute to the policy mobility of teachers.Secondly,when faced with specific realities in different schools,teachers on exchange rotations strive to master their professional tasks in a way that is consistent with their task perception: adjusting to the way they work,maintaining interpersonal relationships,being compatible with their work environment,and ultimately boiling down to a professional consensus on remaining productive and providing a good education for their students.In the process of concrete practice,teachers reflect on their responsibilities and duties,which in turn present different educational thinking between urban and rural areas and between schools.Thirdly,in the process of cross-school practice,teachers are also generalizing their experiences,understanding themselves as teachers,and constructing descriptive,evaluative,and future-oriented understandings of meaning.The descriptive self-image of the teacher is a unified body of moral,cultural and personality images.With professional commitment at its core,teachers’ self-image develops a meaningful coherence before and after exchange rotations;motivated by differences in different aspects of the self,teachers renew their self-image through example and learning in context;and when teachers lack a sense of control over their working conditions and experience limited professional efficacy,their self-image takes on an aspect of vulnerability.Teachers’ evaluative self-esteem is a multilayered experience of intertwined efficacy,emotion and morality,with two opposing aspects: positive and negative self-esteem,arising from their search for self-affirmation and social recognition.To maintain positive self-esteem,exchange and rotating teachers seek professional collaboration,self-compensation and self-development in order to gain a stable sense of self-worth.Teachers’ future-oriented self-understandings show two different tendencies: focusing on limitations and focusing on opportunities.Teachers on exchange rotations who focus on limitations perceive limited time,opportunities and self-development possibilities and show lower levels of occupational future time perspective,while teachers who focus on opportunities express a subjective desire to focus more on professional development and competence enhancement and show higher levels of occupational future time perspective and higher levels of professional identity.In response to the findings,the following recommendations are made to safeguard the professional development of exchange and rotating teachers and to optimize policy implementation: for individual teachers,it is necessary to constantly update the ability structure,enhance the professional adaptability and improve the resilience.For schools,the rights and interests of exchange and rotating teachers should be actively protected,and professional support should be provided for the smooth transition and follow-up of teachers.For the district,it is important to provide an institutional platform for the expression of the interests of exchange and rotating teachers and to improve the incentive and guarantee mechanisms for them.In the light of the realities of teacher distribution and school layout in this district,it is important to create conditions for the training of through-train teachers in primary and secondary schools,and to increase support for small-scale rural schools.