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Abstract
Drawing from the professional experience of one “zhijiao” teacher in the southwestern border of China, this study uses a narrative method to describe and analyze the growth and development of an effective teacher serving in a rural and remote school with a high concentration of ethnic minority students. Qualitative data for this single case study were generated through interviews with the selected teacher and her colleagues and students. Specifically, the study examines the teacher’s professional philosophy and beliefs, professional knowledge, and professional skills. It illustrates how these domains relate to the teacher’s effectiveness. The study also discusses possibilities for better preparation and development of teachers serving the most disadvantaged areas in China.
Notes
1 The “Supporting Teachers Through Substituting” program recruits and assigns graduates with a bachelor’s degree in education from normal colleges to schools in mountainous or remote areas. The enlisted college graduates serve as substitute teachers, so that the substituted teachers have the opportunity to attend the normal colleges where the substitutes are recruited for professional training and study. The length of the substitution is generally one semester. The new graduates use the substitution as an internship, and the substituted teachers can take a break from their full-time teaching to receive additional professional development in colleges.
2 The “Western Plan” is also known as the “Program of University Student Volunteer Service for the West.” The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League and the Ministry of Education recruit a certain number of recent graduates with either a bachelor’s degree or a postgraduate degree. The application is voluntary. The admitted members are organized and assigned to the West to carry out 1–3 years of voluntary service in fields such as education, public health, and poverty alleviation.
3 “Special Post Teachers” is the abbreviation of “Special Post Plan for Teachers Teaching in Rural Compulsory Education Schools.” It involves open recruitment of college graduates to teach in schools of compulsory education grades (i.e., grades 1–9) of rural high poverty areas to universalize compulsory education and eliminate illiteracy. Another goal of the program is to solve the problems of insufficient teaching staff, to optimize the teacher pipeline, and to improve the overall quality of the rural teaching workforce.
4 The “zhijiao teacher” refers to the teacher who is publicly recruited by Chinese government agencies of different levels or social organizations to support the education of underdeveloped areas. College graduates voluntarily sign up for the recruitment programs, and the recruited members are assigned to schools in hard-to-staff areas to engage in educational and classroom instruction work. Most of the recruited members become classroom teachers.
5 The name of the participating teacher, and the name of her school, county and city, are kept anonymous in this paper to ensure confidentiality.
6 This teacher was not originally included in the interviewee list. He assisted with the logistics of the researchers’ site visit but was able to provide insightful observations about the subject of this study during casual conversations.
7 These are small schools in geographically isolated and rural areas where just one teacher teaches small cohorts of students across multiple grades and multiple subject areas.
8 The Water-Splashing Festival typically falls in April and it marks the beginning of the traditional new year on the Buddhist calendar for the Dai ethnic group in Yunnan. The festival is also an important event in Thailand.
9 New Crops Festival usually falls in May and is designated for celebrating the new crops in the farmland and praying for a good harvest. It is an important event for the Wa ethnic group in Yunnan.
10 Tsinghua University is the top and the most prestigious university in China. Each year about 3,330 freshmen are enrolled and the admission rate is around 0.9%.
11 The Alpha Egg is a robot that uses artificial intelligence to assist students with learning. It is equipped with camera, has the speech recognition function, and can access educational resources through the cloud platform.
12 Seewo Whiteboard is an interactive multimedia teaching platform developed by Seewo for the IT needs in classroom teaching. It takes the multimedia interactive whiteboard tool as the core of its application and provides a variety of functions such as cloud-based courseware, material processing, and subject teaching for lesson preparation and teaching.
13 An open lesson is a public demonstration lesson provided by a teacher for other teachers to observe, learn, and critique. It is an important professional development activity for teachers in China.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Yaling Sun
Yaling Sun is a professor of education at Yunnan Normal University, Yunnan, China.
Yanling Li
Yanling Li is a doctoral candidate of education at Yunnan Normal University, Yunnan, China.
Xianxuan Xu
Xianxuan Xu is a decision analytics researcher in the Virginia Department of Education, Richmond, Virginia, USA.
Nana Song
Nana Song is a doctoral candidate of education at Yunnan Normal University, Yunnan, China.
Qianyao Wen
Qianyao Wen is a master degree candidate at Yunnan Normal University, Yunnan, China.