Teachers’ Tacit Experience And Its Externalization

Teachers’ tacit experience,as an objective existence,guides teachers’ professional practice(thinking and action)with the state of “using but not knowing”.It’s alive,rich,and concrete,but it’s also largely incomplete,fragmented,unexamined,even irrational.As objective educational resources,it is the intrinsic requirement of educational development to make full use of them.By means of investigation method and case analysis method,this paper explores the reality of teachers’ tacit experience and the way to make teachers’ tacit experience externalization,hoping to provide a new possible path for teachers’ professional development.This research reports the existence state,source,and application form of teachers’ tacit experience,as well as the exploration process of several methods for the externalization of tacit experience.First,this paper reviews the relevant topics of teachers’ experience,teachers’ tacit knowledge and teachers’ tacit experience,determines the connotation of teachers’ tacit experience,distinguishes the concepts related to teachers’ tacit experience,and analyzes the existing state of“try to figure it out but can’t”,“want to say clearly but can’t” and “immobility”.Then,by reference and adaptation of foreign teachers’ tacit knowledge scales,the scale of teachers’ tacit experience is formed in line with the reality and cultural background of China,and the survey of Chinese teachers is carried out to find out the realities of Chinese teachers’ tacit experience and the influence factors of its generation and development.Then,based on the results of the investigation and the case study,two typical methods and their basic procedures of teachers’ tacit experience are determined: the Socratic method and reflective writing.Finally,according to the internal and external factors that may affect the process of externalization of teachers’ tacit experience,some suggestions are put forward to improve the level of externalization.The initial teachers’ tacit experience scale originally consisted of eleven problem situations.Through the evaluation of each situation options by seven senior teachers,and the calculation of the Kendall coefficient of concordance,the senior teachers reached relatively consistent views on the treatment methods attached to the eight situations.With this as the benchmark,combined with the item analysis of the scale,the final teachers’ tacit experience scale is formed.Through the analysis of the questionnaire results,it is found that teachers’ tacit experience comes from the educational practice.Gender,teaching age,school property and the role of head teacher/non-head teacher have no significant effect on teachers’ tacit experience level.The teaching age can positively predict the level of tacit experience.The longer the teaching age is,the higher the level of tacit experience is.Practices such as the writing of educational notes,the daily professional dialogue,the participation of learning community and the interaction with parents of students have a significant positive effect on the improvement of the level of tacit experience.The more often these actions are taken,the richer the tacit experience will be generated and developed,and the greater the level of tacit experience will be enhanced.Through the analysis of two cases,it is found that the Socratic method under the collectiveinteraction dimension and the reflective writing method under the individual-understanding dimension can obviously promote teachers’ tacit experience externalization.The basic procedure of the Socratic method is that midwifery elicits tacit experience and stimulates the elicitation of tacit experience by asking questions.The function of irony is to examine,revise and supplement tacit experience,and to clarify and organize it through questioning and guidance.The basic step of the reflective writing is to have a “purpose-means-process-result” reflect on an experience of educational practice by means of textuality,and to realize the understanding,explanation,and rationalization of this experience in the connection of the four basic procedures.This process makes the tacit experience externalized,so that teachers can obtain systematic experience or knowledge.Based on the above findings,this study suggests that the teachers’ tacit experience scale can be used to measure the realistic level of teachers’ tacit experience in China,and the Socratic method,reflective writing method,mentoring and report making can promote teachers’ tacit experience to be externalized.At the individual level,the teachers keep making progress,move forward from spontaneity to self-consciousness,spurt out their own strength and energy,and provide endogenous power for the externalization of self and other teachers’ tacit experience.At the organizational level,taking the path of optimization,from complement to development,and providing adequate external support to normalize the practice of externalization of teachers’ tacit experience.The two aspects resultant force can realize the aletheia of the process of externalization of teachers’ tacit experience.