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Аннотация. В статье анализируются проектные способности воспитателей с точки зрения постановки педагогических задач, выбора содержания программы обучения, выбора подхода к обучению, учебной оценки.
Ключевые слова: дошкольное образование, воспитатель, педагогическое проектирование, Китай 

1. Problem-posing

The basic aim of instructional design is to establish an effective teaching system for solving the practical teaching problems. [1] The systematicness and complexity of instructional activity decide the great significance of instructional design which is directly related to the quality of teaching and studying. As Van Patten (1989) pointed out, doctors are in charge of health, architects are in charge of space and instructional designers are in charge of people’s behaviors. [2] Reigeluth (1999) also indicated that the theory of instructional design could give clear instruction help people’s study and development. [3] Researchers pay more attention to instructional design and consider it as a multi-disciplinary study which ranges widely. However, in our country, the study of instructional design still has some defects which only provide the process of instructional design rather than the concrete solution. [4]

In these years, although kindergarten helps teachers improve instructional design via teaching and research activity, teachers still have many defects in course of instructional design, such as teachers’ carelessness on lesson plan (Wen Yuzhen, He Yan, 1994), general objective expressment (Lv Xiuying, 2003), subjectively arbitrariness of teaching evaluation (Yang Zheng, 1997), etc. Therefore, the aim of the research is to reveal the current situation and existing problem of instructional design of kindergarten teachers, inquire the reasons that cause these problems, and efficiently help teachers improve instructional design on that basis.

2. Survey objectives and methods

This survey aims at researching the ability of instructional design of kindergarten teachers via questionnaire, interview, and naturalistic observation.

Questionnaire is designed according to the instructional design procedures and factors, which conclude four aspects: a. writing of instructional target; b. choosing ability of activity contents; c. utilizing ability of activity methods and approaches; d. the mode of activity assessment. Moreover, taking social activity Children’s Day as example, every teacher is required to write train of thought of activity design and a concrete teaching process. In order to follow the disciplines of short answers short sampling, the research takes six kindergartens which are run by government and enterprises in some city, releasing 210 questionnaires, of which 198 are efficiently returned. Recovery rate is 94%, effective rate is 100%. Then these questionnaires are analyzed by SPSS10.0.

Interviews mainly focus on the ideas of instructional design activity. The research randomly interviews six teachers.

Via observing the activity process organized by teachers, the research studies teachers’ ability of random and flexible teaching. Observe five teaching activities.

3. Result and analysis

3.1 Expression of teaching target

Taking teaching contents as a carrier, teaching target is to combine the kids and available resource in order to identify the requirements according to the content standard. It controls the whole process of teaching and decides the fundamental direction of teaching and studying. [5] Yelon (1996) also pointed out that teaching target should be observable and measurable so that people could make sure whether the behavior appears or not, whether it is partial or not. [6] From the questionnaires, it is not difficult to find that ninety-five teachers think they could write the clear and concrete teaching target in the process of instructional design and they could analyze the diversity of children’s social development of the class before the instructional design activity in order to make teaching more pointed. 96.8% of teachers could divide children into different levels according to children’s emotional and social development. In the process of designing social field target, 16.84% of teachers think that social knowledge is the most essential aspect, 36.84% of teachers consider that socially emotional aspect should be placed, 25.26% of teachers think that social behavior should be positioned. However, only 10.52% of teachers hold that social knowledge, social emotion and social behavior all should be focused.

The following are the target-writing examples of several teachers:

Teacher1: Happy Children’s Day

a. To make kids understand the background and significance of Children’s Day;

b. To tell stories about childhood in order to make kids cherish today’s happy life.

Teacher 2: Celebrate Children’s Day

a. To make kids know that International Children’s Day is the festival of all the children in the world.

  1. To let kids fully experience the happiness of festival in the convivial meeting.

Teacher 3: Celebrate Children’s Day

a. To let kids understand the significance of Children’s Day.

b. To make cards in order to exercise the practical ability.

From the expression of teachers’ teaching targets, we could find that teachers have already gone out the misunderstanding of focusing on knowledge rather than emotion. However, most teachers always couldn’t cover emotion, reorganization and behavior at the same time, but only pay attention to the development of two of them.

Besides, the result of questionnaires reveals that 100% of teachers analyze the common characteristics of kids in class before instructional design; 98% of teachers analyze the diversity before instructional design; 95% of teachers analyze the current development level of kids. All these show that most teachers consider about the existing experience of kids. While in further interview, some teachers don’t fully consider the current experience and skill of kids. When talking about the teaching design ideas of the theme, most teachers point out that the problem is difficult. They could only think about one or two concrete teaching plan rather than extending ideas about the theme.

3.2 Choosing ability of teaching contents

Content choosing is a very important but most complicated work of teaching de sign. Teaching material is the concrete carrier of teaching strategy (Sheng Qunli, 1998).[7] Via the research, it is not difficult to find that material supporting needs further design and choice of teaching target. While designing and choosing teaching materials, teachers consider many factors such as the age of children, teaching target and teaching contents, etc. this reveals that teachers have already realized the value of material supporting to kids’ development. But there still exists two extremes. One is the underestimation of kids’ ability, which causes the singleness of materials and the restriction of kids; the other one is the abundance of supporting materials, which causes the inconsistence of teaching targets. Gu Changming (2001) pointed out that to design constructed materials concludes two aspects of choosing materials and combination. Choosing materials is to select the teaching materials which could arrive at the certain teaching target; combination is to arrange and use the materials scientifically. [8] The research reveals that 96% of teachers think that they design and select teaching materials according to teaching contents and targets. However, at the same time 73% of teachers think that the more materials they have, the better it is. But they are lack of the conscience of constructive design and combination of teaching materials. Such as the teaching plan of a teacher as following:

Name: bustling with beating drums and striking gongs

Target:

a. To know the forms of performance at the festival and express the cheerfulness.

b. To follow the music and perform by randomly selecting instruments.

Preparation:

Bass drum, tambourine, flute, accordion, triangle, block, castanet, kettledrum, cymbal and gong.

Procedure:

……

Performance

The teacher lets kids select instruments; each has one instrument in his hands; the kids perform Carmen Overture with their instruments.

In the process of observation, kids are happy to select. They keep looking and trying different instruments in an exciting situation concerned little with teacher’s explanation of performance. From that, we could find out that teacher’s abundance instruments causes the inconsistence between teaching target and the gist of celebrating Children’s Day. It also indicates that the teacher neglects the guiding action of teaching purpose in teaching and materials designing. Meanwhile, it reveals that the teaching materials are lack of structure.

In the survey, 69.89% of teachers lay particular stress on native culture when they design the course contents. In the content selecting of social activity Children’s Day, it mainly contains: the origin of Children’s Day, experiencing the happiness of festival via sports meeting and theatrical performance, spending the holiday with families, spending the holiday with other kid of the kindergarten, and cultivating kids’ eating custom and practice by organizing buffet at the festival. Only one fourth of teachers introduce that in what forms people celebrate Children’s Day in the other countries of the world. The theme is set as Different Children’s Day to introduce the situation of the kids in poor countries on Children’s Day in order to call people’s sympathy.

Content selecting doesn’t place particular emphasis on exploring value but the feeling of kids. Only 26.88% of teachers pay attention to the forming of kids’ thinking patterns and exploring ability in teaching. From the interviews, we could observe that when Children’s Day is coming, the teaching plans of every kindergarten only contain the contents concerning with the festival. The activities are processed according to Children’s Day but lack of other relevant activities. Actually, the social activities concerning with Children’s Day are abundant, which could help kids use their brains and hands simultaneously, explore what significant thing kids should do on Children’s Day, such as making cards for parents and little fellows by themselves.

3.3 Ability of using methods and approaches

In the activities of kindergarten, selecting and using appropriate teaching methods helps kids a lot in the aspects of cultivating abilities and enhancing qualities. The survey tells people that 98.93% of teachers think they could design a situation which draws kids’ interests in every activity; 98.93% of teachers think that they could design many interactive sections between kids and teachers; 93.61% of teachers consider that they can fully utilize the resource of parents and communities. Therefore, from the concrete plans of Children’s Day, we could observe that teachers always use things that draw kids’ interests to leading them into the situation or use games to motivate the studying interests of kids.

In the concrete organization, teachers get rid of the traditional teaching patter of lecturing kids to master social criteria. They utilize many interesting forms to motivate the enthusiasm of kids. For example, in a movement called I am a chickabiddy -- love brushing teeth, the first step of the procedure is to watch the video of protecting teeth; the second step is to enjoy Tooth-Brushing Song; the third step is to show the teeth models and illustrate the correct brushing ways according to the lyric; next is to let kids practice the postures; the last step is to let kid perform the rhythm of brushing. In this activity, teachers do not simply tell kids how to brush their teeth but show them videos, songs and actions in order to enhance their social knowledge and behaviors via their interested ways. These teaching methods are suitable for the kids who are in the acting and thinking stage.

3.4 Assessment approaches

Teaching assessment is to describe and identify teaching effects by certain regulations according to the requirements of teaching targets. It is an indispensable section of teaching with an aim of checking and improving teaching and studying. [9]The survey says that 58.51% of teachers think that a general evaluation rather than detailed separate evaluation should be made after the activity. This kind of concept is incorrect because kids’ self-estimation is low; they need teachers’ assessment according to their situations. If teachers only set an evaluation on kids’ general sociality, many kids would not know how they perform, and what else they should do next. This seriously influences the teaching effects. It is also inconsistent with the ideas of teaching design. This kind of concept restricts teachers’ assessment ability of teaching design.

In the aspect of evaluating kids, 12.63% of teachers mainly evaluate kids’ social cognition; 38.94% of teachers mainly evaluate kids’ social affection; 29.47% of teachers mainly lay particular stress on kids’ social behavior; and 16.84% of teachers think that the evaluation should be carried on from two or three perspectives of social cognition, affection and behavior. We all know that the evaluation relies on teaching target. The relating coefficient of target locating inclination and evaluation locating inclination is 0.739. That means teachers basically make evaluation on kids according to their own social target. This situation is optimistic. However, in the practice of Children’s Day, we see that no teacher clearly declares their way of evaluation in the practice, which is easy to make the evaluation blind, single-faceted, subjective and random. In the interview, when teachers are asked how they assess kids whether they arrive at the teaching goals, the answers are generally ambiguous. They evaluate by observing and questioning which lack of individualization and abstraction. When teachers are talking about next teaching after evaluation, their answers are vague and pointless. 

4. Conclusion and suggestion

4.1 Highly notice the writing of teaching design plan. Teaching plan is an essential reference of teaching. Writing teaching plan is an important section before teachers’ instructional activity. The quality of teachers’ instruction and kids’ study always depends on the quality of teaching designs which are not judged by feels but analyzing and creating kinds of environment and situation to promote kids’ efficient study in the process of teaching. In the aspect of target designing ability, teachers should analyze the kids’ divergence and difference of social development before teaching in order to make clear and concrete teaching goals and divide study goals into different levels on the basis of kids’ emotional and social development. Moreover, when teachers design the target or goal, they not only locate the target in the aspect of social knowledge, but also locate them in the aspects of affection and behavior. Regarding the choice of social contents, the universality of the contents, native culture and the infiltration of multi-culture, as well, should be paid more attention. 

4.2 Pay attention to kids’ random generating interests in respect of teaching mode. Regarding the ability of method design, we could observe that nearly all the teachers care about kids’ interests by which to design and organize the activity in the research. Teachers could change their own teaching methods on basis of kids’ interests in the process of teaching. The social education method teachers like using most is the role-playing method on which kids are all interested and making instruction by games and festival entertainment in kindergarten. Nearly all teachers lay great stress on their functions of models in the social activities. Most of them would consider the resource of parents and communities to let kids develop their sociability in the real society.

4.3 Correctly understand the modes of teaching evaluation in the process of teaching design. Regarding the design ability of teaching evaluation in social activities, we do not see the design about teaching evaluation or assessment from the example of Children’s Day. In the interview, many teachers don’t know that they have to take evaluation into their consideration while designing. In fact, teaching evaluation is an essential or indispensable part of teaching design. Nursery teachers should thoroughly realize the significant functions of evaluation in the process of teaching design and they have to make evaluation and form a concept of developing evaluation at any time according to kids’ characteristics in teaching. Evaluating kids’ behavior in activities in time could provide teachers a basic direction of the following teaching so that the teaching would suit for all the kids well. 

4.4 Gradually form a teaching conscience of reflection. Teaching design is not a linear procedure but a helix developing process. Teaching design is not immutable but always adjusting with the changing of kids’ backfeed. This kind of adjust relies on teachers’ self-reflection of which the supporting power derives from the thorough cognition. Teachers could carry on self-reflection via making teaching postscripts, teaching notes and teaching reflection diaries in order to improve their own design ability of teaching continuously. 

Reference

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