Understanding Preschool Teachers' Self-Regulated Learning in China

• In Event: 77.045 - Changing Policies Changes Practices: Narratives of Early Childhood Education in Contemporary China

Abstract

The State Council of China (2010) has set up an ambitious goal to achieve universal preschool education by the year 2020, resulting in a deficit of one million new teachers in 10 years (Feng, 2010; Zhuang & Cheng, 2012). To achieve this target, all the universities in China have started to train preschool teachers even without qualified teacher educators and needed resources. This ‘great leap forward’ in teacher education has made progress as well as problems. As a gatekeeping measure, the Professional Standards for Preschool Teachers (2011) was issued and all the inspiring and in-service teachers were encouraged to do Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) for their professional development. SRL is a mechanism that involves effective learning strategy, self-efficacy and learning attitude, and could promote teachers’ learning motivation, strategy and self-monitoring (Vermunt & Rijswijk, 1987; Zimmerman, 1990). However, whether Chinese preschool teachers are capable of doing SRL and how they could do it are both unknown. Therefore, this study aims to examine Chinese preschool teachers’ SRL and to review the appropriateness of this teacher education policy.

Altogether 1192 in-service preschool teachers were randomly sampled from the participants of “National Training Plan for Preschool Teachers” in 2015 from 18 provinces in China. They were invited to complete the Preschool Teachers’ Self-Regulated Learning Scale (PTSRL), which was developed from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich & de Groot, 1990). This five-point Likert scale has 80 items in three constructs: learning motivation, learning strategy and self-monitoring. Its reliability and construct validity have been examined and both are satisfactory: α=.981 (GFI=.964, NFI=.977, CFI=.979).

We have three key findings. First, 47% of the participants ranked below the average level in SRL, indicating that almost half of the preschool teachers surveyed in this study performed very bad in SRL. This finding implies that the teacher education policy in China needs to be reviewed and revised immediately. Second, there was a significant effect of education level, showing that the higher educational level, the better SRL results. Most of the teachers with lower education level (associate degree, diploma, high school) were suffering from the policy of self-regulated learning and tended to have lower self-efficacy. Third, many (11.16%) of the Chinese preschool teachers had to carry on both administrative and teaching workload and thus had no time or energy to do SRL. This finding indicates that the teachers need to be released from heavy workload to get some time and space for SRL.

This is the first large-scale survey to understand preschool teachers’ self-regulated learning in China. The results indicated that the new teacher education policy might not be so successful in promoting in-service teachers’ SRL. These problems, however, might not be unique in China. Therefore, this study will not only lay a foundation for future studies on Chinese teachers’ professional development but also provide a reference to be compared with teachers in other countries.

Authors

• Ying Hai, Shenzhen University

• Dandan Wu, Macquarie University

• Tian'E Liu, Hubei University of Arts and Science