Investigative Research On Professional Development Approaches Adopted By Chinese Teachers In Singapore's Private Childcare Centres

The Ministry of Education(MOE)has been looking into raising the standards of early childhood education and preschool teachers in Singapore.This led to the introduction of a structured professional development roadmap for teachers outlined in the Continuing Professional Development(CPD)Framework.Privately-owned childcare centres,which form a large portion of the preschools in Singapore,play an important role in the reform of the early childhood education system.As the early years is a critical period for language development,the standard of the Chinese language acquired at this stage has a huge effect towards the overall Chinese language landscape in Singapore.The quality of Chinese teachers has become the key to the success of Chinese education during the early childhood period.In this paper,the professional development of Chinese language teachers in private preschools is analyzed,and the relationship between theories and practical implementations is studied.Firstly,referencing to existing scholarly researches and studies on preschool teachers' professional development,this study outlines six main approaches that teachers can adopt to develop their professionalism.These six approaches are namely “participating in ‘on-the-job' training”,“observational learning”,“participating in curriculum planning”,“learning communities within the school”,“reflective teaching strategies” and “mentoring programs”.To investigate and study the professional development of C childcare centre's Chinese teachers,a questionnaire was designed.Through this questionnaire,qualitative data was collected to evaluate the Chinese teachers' perceptions on their professional development progress.The questionnaire also allowed for the obtaining of an objective and detailed information.Secondly,after collating and organizing the questionnaire responses,the results helped to elucidate the Chinese teachers' basic understanding of the aforementioned six approaches,their motivation and frequency of adopting these approaches as well as the specific activities and effectiveness of each approach.Results revealed that the Chinese teachers in C childcare centre mainly adopted “participating centre's curriculum planning” and “reflective teaching strategies” for their professional development.Although all the participants agreed unanimously that “participating in on-the-job training” is the best approach for their professional development,they were however given little opportunity to practice.Furthermore,results showed that participants also displayed little understanding towards the other approaches like “observational learning”,“learning communities within the school” and “mentoring programs”.Finally,the aforementioned professional development approaches were then classified into three orientations namely “Reflective orientation”,“Rational orientation” and “Ecological orientation”.Through the analysis of these orientation based on C childcare centre's teachers,recommendations were spelt out with the intention to expand the teachers' professional development as well as to hopefully motivate the adoption of continuous professional development by the other private childcare centres.