On Dynamics Of Teachers' Productive Learning

Teacher learning is a topic which is both old and new. In ancient times, teacher learning was characterized by self-fostering and natural growing. In modern times, it turned into "others-fostering". With the influence of the Life-long Learning Tide and the New Curriculum Reform, teachers'everyday learning is becoming part of teachers'basic life, and how to make their learning productive appears to be a necessary research topic. Although there was increasing research on teachers' effective learning and students'learning, little research on teacher learning has been done. Although researchers in the field of the pre-service and teacher education deal with teacher learning, they tend to focus on how to "teach" teachers, rather than how teachers learn, without mentioning their everyday learning. Therefore, it remains a new program. This article attempts to use Socio-cultural and Activity Theory(SAT) to demonstrate the dynamics of teachers'productive learning. The outline is as follows:First, it analyzes the common teacher learning ways in the frame of Vygotskian theory, trying to tease out their shortcomings in their orientation and views of learning dynamics. As to the former, it shows that teachers pay too much attention to the skills of knowledge transmission, but neglect the dynamic teaching situation. As to the latter, it shows that they hold dualism and "either-or" thinking ways in understanding behavior and mental, individual's conception and public knowledge, and the interaction between individual and their colleagues. Consequently, they have improper learning views.Secondly, the article deals with the orientation of teacher learning, and argues that teacher learning should be oriented toward teachers'wisdom growth. It is teachers'task to help students to become practical and creative, which suggests that teachers should change into the participant of students' activity from the mere knowledge transmitter. The change of their roles requires teachers of becoming the Wise Teachers. The Wise Teachers emphasize resource and are able to deal with resource. They are active in discovering, bringing, and creating resource to produce the essential situation. In addition, they use the resource to interpret and respond the situation to help students develop their ability of discovering and solving questions. The Wise Teacher is another type of teacher different from the Transmitting Teacher, rather than the more advanced stage of the Transmitting Teacher. He highlights his participation into students'activities. Actually, the participation is a process of using wisdom. Therefore, to become the Wise Teacher is not an objection far beyond common teachers'ability. On the contrary, it could be reached by any teacher who would like to change their teaching way. If they regard teaching as participation, they would be wise. The process of teachers'becoming wiser and wiser is called teacher learning. The growth of wisdom mainly include the following three abilities:the ability of creating situations based on teachers'awareness of resource, the ability of interpreting situations oriented by cognitive flexibility, and the ability of responding situation characterized by interaction and generation.The growth of teachers' wisdom is difficult to achieve by the learning ways based on the Simple Thinking. So the article probes the origin of the Simple Thinking and its challenge in modern times, suggesting that SAT is a proper theory to deal with this problem.SAT goes beyond the limitation of the Dualism and builds its own views of learning based on its reinterpretation of the mind. It circles around the Zone of Proximate Development (ZPD), and enriches itself in its continuous development. It takes learning as a journey of the mind's crossing ZPD, which is a process of "from outside to inside". This process involves continuous reconstruction of practical model, generation of individual theory and participation of the community's practice. It not only demonstrates the common dynamics of the general learning, but also shows the basic way of teachers' growth of wisdom.The following question that the article has to explore is how the teacher learning process develops, that is, what the dynamics of teacher learning is like. In the whole, it is an integral process including the continuous reconstruction of practical model, the generation of individual theory, and the participation of the community's practice. It consists of such stages as bringing in new concept, internalization, transformation, externalization and customization, presenting the trend of spiral ascending.As to the specific dynamics of teacher learning, it can be described in the following three dimensions. First, the formation of teachers'individual theory is a process of the meeting of scientific concepts and everyday concepts. Second, the teacher learning through individuals'interaction is a process of one teacher's moving close to another, while the teacher learning through the interaction between individuals and the whole community is a process of the extension of their understanding of the object. Third, the construction of teaching practice takes the process of action research. In short, teacher learning is done by using, through cooperation and by exploring. Based on the dynamics of teacher learning, the article suggests the principals of integration, interaction and continuity.Finally, the article focuses on teasing out how to improve the traditional teacher learning ways, bring in new learning ways, and integrate them, so as to improve their efficiency.