Reforming Preschool Bilingual Teacher Education: Findings from Ethnic Qinghai-Tibet Region in China

• In Event: A review of pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes

Proposal

· Rationale and Purpose of the study
China is a nation made up of different ethnic groups and various cultures. Each ethnic minority has their own unique culture. Each group member is responsible to inherit, protect, develop and innovate their own ethnic culture, which is also the foundation for all the ethnic groups to develop in harmony. School education shoulders the mission of individual socialization and inheritance of human culture. As an important part of our national educational system, preschool education should also take on this responsibility.

Preschool education is at the beginning of a student’s academic career. It is one of the core contents of the education system in China. Government document called “The Guidelines of the National Program for Medium-Term and Long-Term Educational Reform and Development” clearly proposing to “enhance preschool bilingual education in ethnic regions comprehensively” and “propelling bilingual education intensively and support the ethnic regions to use the traditional language teaching students.” During this document Chinese preschool education for rural preschool and the undeveloped area needs attention. In China, most ethnic regions are in rural and poor areas, where the development of preschool education is relatively delayed. Due to the unique “bi-cultural” issue in ethnic regions, preschool education development in those areas has hit a plateau. The mission of preschool bilingual education is not only to learn another language in addition to their own, but also to inherit ethnic and regional cultures loaded in the language.

One Chinese scholar studying transcultural teachers mentioned “the teacher is not related to the nationality, with the ethnicity. They inherit the cultural concept, so for the ethnic region, the “bi-cultural” teachers are the basic requirement and they also required possessing the multi-culture educational concept (Wang，2002). The scholars in China pointed that minority bilingual teachers is a special group, they face more challenges on teaching. During their teaching process, they have to cultivate the transcultural adaptability consciously and try to adapt to the culture blending, in this way, they can form their own advantages and promote the teaching. The outside teaching environment and teachers’ own ability are both important to achieve the reformation of bilingual education. (Wang et al., 2008)
The purpose of this study is to develop preschool bilingual education in ethnic regions.

· Theoretical framework
This study proceeds from the perspective of culturology, anthropology, pedagogy, describes the cultural connotation of bilingual education by discussing the relationship between bilingual education and mainstream culture, minority cultural; depicts the connotation of “bi-culture”, “bi-cultural people” through analyzing the "double cultural phenomenon", “bilingual people”; proposes that bilingual teachers should have “dual culture” literacy through the analysis of bilingual teachers and the structure of teaching ability of bilingual teachers. This study suggests that preschool bilingual teachers should have" double cultural literacy ", which is the attitude and concept on the ethnic culture education, possess Tibet Chinese cultural knowledge, and the implementation of Tibetan and Chinese national culture education ability. This study suggests that the preschool teacher education curriculum is the key element to cultivate “double cultural literacy” preschool bilingual teachers, and it is necessary to construct dual culture curriculum system for cultivating preschool bilingual teachers, cultural literacy to promote the growth of bilingual teachers promote and bilingual education in minority regions.

· Methods of data collection and analysis
This study explores interviews, questionnaires, classroom observation, text analysis to study the current preschool Tibetan Bilingual Teacher Education curriculum from the supply and audience side. Selecting the preschool bilingual teachers of Q University in Qinghai Province as the research object, using the method of text analysis to analyze the training program of preschool bilingual teachers education, adopting the method of classroom observation to observe preschool bilingual teachers classroom teaching in Q University, using interviews to interview the preschool bilingual teachers educator and currently students enrolled in preschool bilingual teachers in Q University. Selecting the teachers of preschool education institutions in two Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai as the object of study, and questionnaires and interviews were explored to investigate the teachers' dual cultural literacy.
The study found that the training target of preschool bilingual teachers was lack of national cultural factors, curriculum emphasis on tools and technical value, classroom teaching was neglect of students' life culture. The preschool bilingual teachers had an insufficient understanding of the impact of two kinds of Tibetan and Chinese culture to the local children's development. It was difficult to transform the cultural knowledge to the teaching activities and teachers lack the dual cultural practice ability. This study considered that the key to cultivating bilingual literacy of Tibetan Chinese bilingual teachers is to construct a teacher education curriculum with dual culture characteristics.

· Conclusion
This study holds the value of preschool bilingual teacher education is to inherit the national culture and promote the professional development of bilingual teachers, the bilingual education curriculum for preschool Tibetan Chinese teachers should embody the dual cultural connotations. This study shows how preschool bilingual teachers education double culture curriculum system from the curriculum goal, curriculum content, curriculum implementation and curriculum evaluation, put forward the implementation of dual culture course based on the form of the project inquiry, set double culture problem situation in classroom teaching, to explore the theme as a way of teaching organization. This also shows how the preschool bilingual teacher education dual culture curriculum can be used as a qualitative assessment, mainly based on portfolio and recording methods, and conduct a pluralistic evaluation of dual culture curriculum based on project research.

Finally, this study is basis on the present situation investigation, preliminary construction of the Qinghai-Tibetan region Tibetan-Chinese double culture in institutions of higher learning pre-school professional courses, researchers in combination with the Tibetan district preschool teacher education practice, in the "countries - preschool teacher culture plan from the project team of the rural teacher training research and 2017 district preschool teachers training team replacement off-job training project", try to implement the dual culture courses.

Authors

• Yaling Ma, Qinghai Normal University (Tutor)

• E Ma, Education College of Ningxia University(Tutor)

• Wenfan Yan, University of Massachusetts Boston