| University teaching culture is the culture which reflects whether the university attaches importance to teaching. It is the core of university culture, including teaching material culture, teaching system culture and teaching spiritual culture. Teaching material culture is the material carrier of teaching system culture and spiritual culture. It consists of all kinds of teaching facilities and teaching conditions, including teaching environment, teaching equipment, teaching infrastructure and teaching staff of a school. Teaching system culture is a kind of culture regulating the behavior of teachers and students. It mainly includes teaching management system, teaching ethics, code of conducts, etc. Teaching spiritual culture, forming in the long-tern teaching activities, is teaching beliefs, teaching attitudes, teaching ideology and values shared by the teacher community. As the core and soul of teaching culture, it is the highest form of teaching culture. Teaching culture implies a school’s basic teaching atmosphere and teachers’ attitudes and behavior toward teaching. In the possession of unique guiding, edifying, cohesive and incentive functions, teaching culture affects teachers’ teaching concepts, teaching behavior as well as teaching atmosphere and teaching values of the colleges and universities in an unconscious way. It plays a significant role in the quality of higher education. Therefore, all colleges and universities should try their best to strengthen the construction of teaching culture. Only in this way can we improve the quality of higher education.After analyzing the questionnaire investigating on teachers from six universities, including Nanjing University, Southeast University, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing Tech University and Nanjing University of Information Science & technology, it’s found that university teaching culture is on the decline. Three aspects of university teaching culture——material culture, system culture and spiritual culture show different levels of decay. As to material culture, universities give priorities to research other than teaching when allocate resources, implying the fall of university teaching culture. As to system culture, compared to teaching, personnel management systems of universities pay more attention to research. What’s more, lacking effective teaching incentive system also indicates that university teaching culture is falling into decline. As to spiritual culture, the lack of teaching enthusiasm and unwillingness of cooperation show the decline of university teaching culture.Based on literature analysis and questionnaire survey, this paper concludes that it is the deviation of social guiding ideology, defects of school educational philosophy and system and teachers’ requirements of professional development that result in the decline of university teaching culture. On this basis, in order to provide theoretical and practical reference for the construction of university teaching culture, this paper puts forward following suggestions of reconstructing university teaching culture. Governments should increase the education investment to provide material support and guarantee for teaching activities and our society should improve the university evaluation system. Universities should treat teaching as its central task, construct comprehensive service support system for teaching and strengthen the construction of teaching team. Moreover, universiti es should also establish teachers’ teaching development center and build a reasonable incentive and constraint mechanism. As to teachers, they should not only have a firm professional faith and develop cultural consciousness, but also attach importance to their demonstration effect and establish cooperative teaching culture. |
