A Case Study On Teacher Collaboration In School-based Teaching Research In A Junior Middle School

With the development of the society and education,teacher collaboration has become the important approach of promoting the professional development of teachers,which has won much attention.Especially since the 1980 s and 1990 s,teacher collaboration has entered the scene of educational reform and become the focus that researchers and policy formulators keep paying attention to.Under the background of curriculum reform of the Mainland of China,the collaboration form of school-based teaching research has become the main mode of the professional development of domestic teachers and profoundly influenced the professional development of teachers.Then,in the concrete teaching research activity,what is the role of teachers in collaboration? What kind of collaborative relationship do teachers establish with others? What kind of system and custom do teacher cooperation follow? What are the influences of teacher collaboration in school-based teaching research on teachers’ teaching? There are the problems to be solved in this research.This research mainly adopts the qualitative case study research method and reviews the collaboration issues of school-based teaching research of teachers from the four dimensions,including role,relation,rule and result.The research conducts the field investigation of 2 semesters in HS middle School in Shanghai and mainly collects materials through interview,participatory observation and text analysis.During the investigation,the researcher observes the operation of daily activities in the school,participates in the teachers’ school-based teaching research activities in the school,observes and records the collaboration performance of teachers in the activity,collects the text materials in terms of school culture,system of teachers’ professional development and teachers’ school-based teaching research activities and also interviews the teachers of different positions,different disciplines and different teaching years.On this basis,the researcher codes and analyzes the collected materials and finally forms the paper by combining their field experience and feelings.The research firstly observes teachers’ form and operation logic in the collaboration activities of school-based teaching research from the perspective of role.First of all,among the collaboration activities of school-based teaching research,the teachers play multiple roles such as “teaching practitioner”,“researcher” and “collaborator”.In their eyes,“collaboration” is of universality.Teachers of positive attitudes more easily become the collaborative objects.Secondly,teachers of different roles assume their own task labor division,they usually select partners based on external requirements,in collaboration,there exits the separation of “learning and doing”.Thirdly,teachers realize role conversion in different practice situations;teachers’ role in the same teaching research group is relative adhesive.Teachers’ role follow the task conversion in different topic groups.In the concrete cross-discipline topics,the role conversion process of teachers may go through multiple stages such as conflict eruption period,development improvement period and plateau maintenance period.By investigating teachers’ teaching research collaborative issues from the perspective of relation,it finds that the collaborative relationship between teachers is restricted by both administration and profession.The overall collaborative atmosphere of the school is harmonious,and the teachers expect simple interpersonal relationship.In the collaboration of school-based teaching research,the collaborative relationship between teachers is "close to each other",and also attaches importance to "important others".Out of the influence of objective factors such as accountability system and time,teachers’ collaboration presents the low efficiency form.In the power relations,The principal has achieved the leadership of teachers through a rigid-flexible coupling way,and the experts and teachers have established a different relationship with each other.The leading teachers in the school play an authoritative role model.In the emotional relations,the "face" problem of maintaining interaction is closely related to the collaboration between teachers,and will affect the quality of collaboration to some extent.Trust is the foundation of collaboration.Teachers should deal with the crisis of trust correctly.Teachers’ school-based teaching research collaboration under the rule dimension is mainly from the explicit system and the recessive custom.First of all,the explicit system plays a dual role in the teaching research collaboration of teachers.On the one hand,the system provides various resources for teachers’ collaboration,and "forces out" teachers’ collaborative behavior.On the other hand,the system regulation is not powerful,the collaborative research is "conscientious work",the driving force of value and meaning is stronger.Secondly,teachers’ value orientation,attitude,and school ritual or periodical activities have subtly influenced the collaborative activities of teachers’ school-based teaching research.Seen from the result,the teachers’ collaborative activities in school-based teaching research work bring some changes in teachers’ teaching,such as,the choice for individual teacher’s education teaching idea,teaching resources and sharing,the classroom teaching mode,the emotional attitude to the teaching and students.On the other hand,the group of teachers,taking the "English teaching research group" as an example,realize the common development of teachers through a clear and reasonable division of tasks based on different roles and following the shared rules.In school-based teaching research collaboration,different types of teachers have different teaching performance.The new teacher is struggling to learn and to grow,Among young teachers,some teachers have the ability to identify and reflect,and some teachers relax themselves.For the middle-aged teachers,some of them grow up to be exemplary leaders,and some of them are conservative and retired.In the school-based teaching research collaborative activities,we should use a dynamic,complex and systematic perspective on teacher collaboration,establish the four elements of linkage system on teacher collaboration,in this system,teachers’ role is the precondition,teacher relationship is the basis,system and customs is the guarantee and the change of teaching is an important power of the teachers’ collaboration.We should also properly handle the individuality and commonness,the relationship between autonomy and specification.In the specific measures,we should grasp the dynamic nature of the teacher’s role and help teachers to realize collaboration in various roles.Focus on the study and promotion of the value and significance of school-based teaching research and promote the establishment of open and flexible cooperative relations among teachers;Play the role of virtual network learning community and informal micro-community and pursue the equal exchange and cooperation of teachers;We should build a culture of collaboration among teachers and maintain the continuous progress of cooperation activities.