Kindergarten Teachers’ Professional Development On The Basis Of Children’s Self-organized Play

Nowadays more and more educational researchers attach great importance to kindergarten teachers’ professional qualities. Although many approaches aimed to enhance teachers’ professional qualities have been applied into kindergartens, the effect is not good. Kindergarten teachers still confuse about how to get growth in the practice. They still can’t teach well. They are busy in decorating environment and feel exhausted. They have to transform different activities in hurry as the schedule of daily life. And they feel hard to communicate with parents about what is good for childrea Among the reasons for the ineffectiveness, kindergartens neglect the importance of understanding children.In order to prove the hypothesis, teachers in XZ kindergarten in Shanghai are selected as the object and many research methods, such as observation, interview and textual analysis are used to collect information about teachers’professional development in XZ kindergarten.Before doing research on outdoor self-organized play, XZ kindergarten paid more attention to the teaching ability like others, but neglected the quality of understanding children, After doing research on outdoor self-organized play, teachers’beliefs on children and children’s play are changed. They find that children are the capable learners. So they start to record children’s play stories, analyze the concrete growth in play and reflect their educational actions in past On the basis of understanding children, teachers begin to change their beliefs and actions in teaching classes, decorating environment, taking care of children’s daily life and communicating with parents. They gradually become the specialized persons who can understand children well, have the consciousness of professional autonomy, do well in reflecting themselves, study initiative ly and have the sense of researchThere are five conclusions. To start with, kindergarten teachers can find true children in true play. Second, they can understand children well on the basis of finding them. Third, teachers will reflect their educational actions in the past when they really understand children. Fourth, teachers will have the self-consciousness of profession after reflecting on their educational actions. Last but not least, the professionally practical abilities will be enhanced with the construction on the self-consciousness of profession. Therefore, play is not only the way that children grow and learn, but also an approach to the professional development for kindergarten teachers.