A Case Study On Preschool Teachers' Professional Development

With the calling for educational diversification and individualization, the curriculum reform has established a new management pattern of "nation, region and school" in 1999 in China, followed by an upsurge of school-based curriculum development. Driven by this upsurge, preschool education, an indispensable part of basic education, also faces the challenge which stresses the practicality of curriculum objectives, the democracy of curriculum decision-making, as well choosing and generating curriculum from the needs of kindergarten, teacher and infant. Whether these curricula can be applied effectively in kindergarten depends closely on the professional literacy of teacher, the main body of developing and implementing these curricula. The professional development of preschool teacher is significant to both the development of kindergarten and the promotion of kindergarten curriculum transformation. Correspondingly, the final goal of school-based curriculum development is to promote teachers in their professional field, i.e., school-based curriculum development is just a means, while it aims the teachers' professional development. Based on this assumption, the study took school-based curriculum development in three kindergartens in Shapingba District of ChongQing as cases , studying ways for preschool teachers' professional development, changes in the course of development, and factors for promoting or hindering these changes.Based on the theory study of school-based curriculum development in kindergarten and teachers' professional development, the study begins from the implement of school-based curriculum, probing into teachers' professional...