Teachers' conceptions of excellent teaching and its relationships to self-reported teaching practices
Highlights
► Survey validated new Teachers' Conceptions of Excellent Teaching inventory. ► Chinese middle school teachers identified 5 factors for excellent teaching. ► Student-oriented ideas of excellence were endorsed more than examination success. ► Excellence factors predicted similar importance of factors of teaching practices. ► The professionalism factor predicted both examination and student-engagement practices.
Introduction
China is going through massive education reforms in order to prepare more students for success in the 21st century (Feng, 2006). A key to the success of the reforms is the quality of teachers and their teaching methods (Zhang & Collis, 1995). Chinese teachers tend to rely heavily on traditional forms of teaching highly focused on school examinations, hence, the success of the reforms depends in part on changing how teachers carry out their pedagogical role (Gao & Watkins, 2002). Research in China has shown that unless teachers realize the need for a new approach to teaching and challenge their traditional views of the nature of learning and teaching, real change is unlikely to occur (Gao, 1992; Gao et al., 1989). As Liu (1995) claimed: “Changing the conceptions of teaching and schooling is now the key to improving students' quality” (p. 9). Thus changing how teachers conceive of teaching appears to be urgent in the current Chinese educational context. However, first it is important to understand teachers' current conceptions of teaching excellence.
Excellent teaching is considered the basis for enhancing student learning, achieving school effectiveness, improving teacher evaluation, and designing and improving teacher education programs (Betoret & Artiga, 2004; Skamp & Mueller, 2001). It would be useful to understand how teachers conceive of excellent teaching and how their conceptions relate to teaching practices as a way of informing education reforms in China. It may be that a clearer understanding of how excellent teaching relates to teaching practices will contribute to improved teaching and student learning.
Section snippets
International perspectives of excellent teaching
Researchers have been investigating the very best teaching for decades. A variety of terms have been used: for example, ‘good’ (Watkins & Zhang, 2006), ‘effective’ (Witcher, Onwuegbuzie, & Minor, 2001), ‘highly accomplished‘ (National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), 1987), ‘excellent’ (Kane, Sandretto, & Heath, 2004), and ‘qualified’ (Darling-Hammond & Youngs, 2002). Despite the variation in terminology, all of the studies seem to be describing a similar set of attributes
Method
This study was based on two pilot studies from the same sample population (Chen, 2010). One was a qualitative study that independently explored how Chinese middle school teachers, students, and principals conceived of excellent teaching. The findings were used to construct the questionnaires of excellent teaching and teaching practice in Chinese middle schools. The other study was a quantitative study to explore teachers' conceptions of excellent teaching using trial versions of the
TCET model
Initial analysis identified five factors of excellent teaching: Examination-oriented, Developing Lifelong Learners, Student Focused, Being Responsible For Engaging Students In Learning, and Being A Professional Learner. However, it was clear from inspection of factor inter-correlations that the examination-oriented factor was relatively independent of the four other factors that were highly inter-correlated. Hence, a hierarchical model with two dimensions and five first-order factors was
Discussion
This study answered two research questions about the structure and relationship of teacher conceptions of excellent teaching and the importance of various teaching practices. The survey of Chinese middle school teachers established further the usefulness of the teacher-centered vs. student-centered continuum (Kember, 1997) in understanding teachers' thinking. The teacher-centered conception of excellence was the most weakly endorsed and was very much focused on examinations. While this
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