Primary And Secondary Schools In Instructional Design Perspective

This thesis, based on the teaching practice in the Chinese primary and middle schools, aims at systematically examining and exploring the problems existing in the instructional designs and thus offering some detailed suggestions for the primary and middle school teachers and administrators. The first-hand data were obtained by means of questionnaires, on-the-spot class attendance, and interviews undertaken in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Hubei and other eight provinces. The data are primarily gained from 1509 effective questionnaires, interviews with and class presentation by 16 teachers, and the interviews with 3 school administrators from different provinces. The research, taken as a whole, uncovers the following problems existing in the present-day instructional design in Chinese primary and middle schools, which can be summarized as follows: the teaching checks of many schools only focuses on the external respects; the students' differences are neglected in the design and practice of teaching; the role of objectives are ignored in instructional objective designs; teachers fail to supplement or delete some content appropriately on the basis of the textbooks; the initiative of the students is overlooked in the selection and adoption of teaching methods; the educational function of modern media and teaching facilities is not fully realized.The first part gives a brief introduction of the research object, research methods, the selection of subjects and the processing of the data.The second part, by means of a quantitative analysis of the questionnaire results, a qualitative explanation of the case studies and a comparison of the viewpoints of different groups, presents a systematic perspective of the problems in the instruction design in the schools. To be more specific, this part consists of the following: 1) the major problem of the evaluation of the instructional design is that school teaching check focuses on the extrinsic aspect, as can be shown in the fact that some teachers copy the teaching plan for the teaching check, and that school checks stray away from the teachers' development objectives; 2) the negligence of the student differentiation is a big problem in instruction design and implementation, which can be attributed tothe fact that some teachers fail to attach importance to the distinction between the parallel classes, or pay little attention to the backward students, and that some take no notice of the student differentiation in the arrangement of the teaching advance; 3) another major problem in the instructional objective research is the ignorance of the role of objectives, because some teachers fail to note the significance of the instruction objective to the study of students, or copy the instruction objectives, and some overlook the guidance role of the curriculum standards; 4)failure to add or delete some teaching content properly is the main problem in content selection, for the selection of the content is divorced from the reality of the students, the content is irrelevant to the teaching objectives, and some teachers fail to add or delete some teaching content properly; 5)the ignorance of the student initiative is a serious problem in the adoption of the instruction method, as some teachers ignore the student inquiry, or pay no attention to the student response in teaching, and some discussions are only superficial; 6) a problem in the selection of teaching media is the lack of the awareness of the instructional function of the modern media in that some teachers seldom employ media facilities or just use some simple media.The third part are some detailed suggestions to cope with the problems mentioned in the preceding part: 1) the schools should offer training opportunities and support to the teachers rather than attach too much importance to the check of the teaching plan; 2) the teachers should lay emphasis on the analysis of the student differentiation; 3) a detailed and clear instructional objective should be designed; 4) the teaching content can be modified appropriately to meet the...