Teachers’ Professional Development in China

Abstract

In recent years, school-based research conducted by teachers in many schools has focused on looking for, designing, or implementing efficient classroom teaching models. Designed to study teaching materials and to control the time deployed for teaching and learning, the implementation of teaching models or focusing on one of teaching strategies, such as students’ homework or teachers’ research—animated by China’s national curriculum reform—is dedicated to improving students’ academic performance. There is little attention to teachers’ inner selves. Researchers and principals talk; teachers listen. Teacher research is often designed to ensure everyone is complying with the required procedure. In such compliance, subjective experience—including suffering and confusion—is always ignored and the self is suspended. “Methods” and “models” have become regulatory straitjackets to control teachers. It is now time to reflect on the value of school-based research in the era of curriculum reform. In my view, schools should undertake “inward school-based research” situated in the lived context of their own schools. Such research aims to construct multiple platforms for dialogue to incorporate research in the exchange of ideas and the construction of cooperation among teachers so that they can begin to study their own and shared individual experiences. In such research, autobiographical consciousness can be cultivated.