A Study On Pre-service Teachers’ Explicit And Implicit Stereotypes Toward Left-behind Children

The stereotype is the social public’s cognitive representation of specific groups’ thoughts,facts and imagination.Left-behind children are generally regarded as the typical representatives of the disadvantaged groups.In the report of the 19 th National Congress of The Communist Party of China in 2017,"Caring for Left-behind Children" was included in the top ten people’s livelihood issues in the new era.The group of left-behind children received the general attention of the whole society and also faced the danger of negative stereotypes(Ren Yunchang,2008).With the lack of family education and emotional companionship brought by parents’ going out,the importance of teachers in the study and life of left-behind children is becoming more and more prominent.Pre-service teachers are an important part of the teacher team,as well as an important reserve force for the voluntary service of left-behind children’s care and education and teachers in rural schools.So,what kind of stereotype do pre-service teachers have about left-behind children? Based on this,this study will discuss the stereotype of left-behind children by pre-service teachers from the perspective of explicit and implicit stereotypes and the relationship between them.This study adopts the self-compiled questionnaire on pre-service teachers’ stereotypes of left-behind children and the method of The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure(IRAP).Taking pre-service teachers as the research object,this study is divided into two studies to explore the status quo and correlation of pre-service teachers’ stereotype of left-behind children from both explicit and implicit levels.In Study 1,from the perspective of explicit stereotypes,this paper adopts the free association method to form a questionnaire on the stereotype of left-behind children by pre-service teachers and analyzes 480 survey data.From the perspective of implicit stereotypes,study 2 used the adjective pairs in the explicit stereotype measurement as attribute words to compile the IRAP experimental program,obtained the measurement data of explicit stereotypes and implicit stereotypes of 60 pre-service teachers,and analyzed the characteristics of implicit stereotypes of pre-service teachers and their relationship with explicit stereotypes.The main results are as follows:(1)there are obvious and explicit stereotypes of left-behind children among pre-service teachers.Compared with un-left-behind children,the evaluation of left-behind children is more negative.Besides,pre-service teachers have bipolar characteristics of the overt stereotype of left-behind children,that is,the stereotype of left-behind children has both positive and negative components.They believe that left-behind children are characterized by loneliness and inferiority,and they also believe that left-behind children are capable,hardworking,considerate and independent.According to the analysis of variance,the gender,grade,registered permanent residence and other demographic characteristics of pre-service teachers have no significant influence on the explicit stereotype of left-behind children.Whether pre-service teachers have left-behind experience and the frequency of their contact with left-behind children have a significant impact on their explicit stereotype of left-behind children,that is,pre-service teachers who have left-behind experience and have been in contact with left-behind children have a more positive evaluation of left-behind children.(2)it is found by the implicit relationship assessment test that pre-service teachers have a negative implicit stereotype of left-behind children.(3)Implicit and Explicit Correspondence(IEC)correlation analysis shows that there is no significant correlation between teachers’ explicit and implicit stereotypes of left-behind children,indicating that teachers’ explicit and implicit stereotypes of left-behind children conform to the hypothesis of inconsistency theory/separation theory.Conclusion: there are explicit and implicit stereotypes of left-behind children among preservice teachers,and there is no correlation between them.The results of this study enrich the related research on the stereotype o f left-behind children in the outside groups and provide an empirical basis for the research on the educational intervention of the stereotype of left-behind children.To be specific,the intervention education of left-behind children stereotype can be conducted from the following three aspects :(1)the establishment of left-behind children education and training courses in the pre-service teacher training program;(2)the school organizes practical activities of caring for left-behind children to increase the opportunities for pre-service teachers to communicate with left-behind children.(3)research and practice on service learning intervention of negative stereotypes for pre-service teachers who have no left-behind children’s life experience and contact experience.