Self And The Other:Research On Self-understanding Of Kindergarten Teachers’ Identity

With the introduction of relevant national policies,Chinese preschool education has achieved great development,but it still faces that the construction of teaching staff lags behind,kindergarten teachers loss.The main reason is the lower identity.The historical brand of appellation,the report of "child abuse" incidents,professional questioning,and gender stereotypes and so on,make the identity of kindergarten teachers falls into crisis.Self-understanding is the premise and basis of the realization of kindergarten teachers’ identity,which helps kindergarten teachers to awaken their individual consciousness,and helps them to pursue the meaning of individual existence in their self-reflection.Combing the study of teachers’ identity,it is found that more research focus on the national macro policy,school reform and so on,less from the perspective of self analysis of teachers’ identity.Research of kindergarten teachers’ identity is more from the perspective of social construction,rarely from the kindergarten teachers’ selfunderstanding micro situation to explore.Previous studies have pointed out the important influence of self-understanding on identity formation,but how kindergarten teachers understand their own identity and how the self-understanding of identities is different is need to be further explored.The study is helpful to clarify the factors influencing self-understanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity,and explore the favorable factors to enhance the self-understanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity,so as to promote the identity of kindergarten teachers.Based on this,a narrative research was used to carry out on 38 kindergarten teachers,and the interview method was used to collect data.Using the classification method to analyze the bottomup data and confirm the hypothesis from the bottom-down by sorting out the academic history of the relationship between self and the other,it is finally found that the relationship between self and the other affects the self-understanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity and presents four types:self-empoverment,the other’s empoverment,mutually exclusive and symbiotic empoverment.The four types have their own unique representation.Their attitudes towards the other are different,strong and weak in understanding,positive and negative in understanding results,and active and passive in the process of understanding.the first is the self-empoverment,kindergarten teachers do not accept the idea of the others,giving themselves energy,self-understanding of identity is the most active and positive;The second is the other’s empoverment,positive understanding of identity is not high,mainly influenced by the others,and accept the others’ effect;the third is mutually exclusive,kindergarten teachers are not accepted and excluded by the others,active and positive self-understanding of identity is the weakest;The fourth is the symbiotic empoverment.,the kindergarten teachers accept and promote the other,have a high intensity of identity proactively positive self-understanding.The four type’s self-understanding of identity has different performance in descriptive,assessment,normative,motive,time,and relationship components.However,they also show four common characteristics on self-understanding of identity,including situational,historic,practical,and experienced.Analyzing the influence factors of self and the other on four identity selfunderstanding,it is found that the self-factor is stronger than the other in “self-empoverment”,the self critically reflects on others and stimulates individual feelings to empower themselves;The other factor is stronger than the self in “the other’s empoverment”,others empower the self by strengthening the sense of organization,stimulating the sense of responsibility,and triggering a sense of mission;The positive self factor in “mutually exclusive” type is masked by the negative other factor,in the face of institutional oppression,stereotype threat,deprivation of autonomy,the self passively confront against others through resigning and switching;The self and others in“symbiotic empowerment” complement each other in a positive energy way,forming a joint force to work together on the self-understanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity.In the process of dynamic development,the self-understanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity shows synchronicity and diachronic,necessity and contingency,single persistence and compound transformation,clarity and ambiguity.In the formation mechanism,former understanding is the key on whether the self and the other’s understanding of identity reach an agreement or not;visual integration promotes the harmony between the self and the other’s understanding of identity;distance reflection creates the conditions for the self and the other’s understanding of identity;self and the other’s meaningful self-understanding of identity is achieved in continuous cycle of interpretation.Self-understanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity is the result of the interaction between self and social environment,pre-job education environment,family living environment,kindergarten environment,etc.In the formation process of identity understanding,the sudden influence of key people and things and the interweaving effect of various environmental factors make the self-understanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity may be transformed at any time,and the key lies in the individual perception and experience of kindergarten teachers.The research found that self-understanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity owns the“otherness”.The “otherness” is a kind of subjectivity both concluding the ethical and reflective characteristic and is formed in the process of interacting with others.The “otherness” does not shift from for me to for him.It is a kind of subjectivity of facing oneself and reflecting on oneself from the other.The connotation of the “otherness” emphasizes the importance of the other,pointing out that there is a game relationship between self and the other,and it acts on the selfunderstanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity in different ways to empover.The relationship on exclusiving the other,the relationship for the other,mutual exclusive relationship and the symbiotic relationship act on kindergarten teachers ’individual value,self-efficacy,influence power and self-decision-making power in reverse empowerment,one-way empowerment,mutual exclusive and two-way empowerment,thus affecting the self-understanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity.Reconsidering self and the other in self-understanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity,it is found that the others are not the weak,and the men should not be understood differently as the "others" in the group of kindergarten teachers.Whether the existence of the others limits the play of self-understanding or not,which depends on the formation of individual value judgment,especially the good relationship formation in the value judgment.Only through the transition from the relationship of "self-other" to "us",can self and the others truly dialogue,and realize the real self-understanding.Making full use of the "other" factor can enhance the positive self-understanding of kindergarten teachers’ identity.Others should enhance the care for kindergarten teachers and create a preschool-friendly society;the competent authorities should raise the entry threshold and cast off the "bottom" thinking logic;preschool teaching and research workers should strengthen the subject confidence in preschool education and promote quality of preschool education of university;kindergarten should optimize the working environment and handle properly three important relationships between teachers and children,kindergarten and family,colleagues.Kindergarten teachers themselves should treat the "the other" rationally,enhance the personal reflective practice of thenmselves and generate the practical wisdom of identity self-understanding.