China’s Equitable Education Challenge: Constructing Hybrid Pathway to Rural Teacher Education in Impoverished Areas

• In Event: Teacher Education and Equitable Approaches

Proposal

The divide between teacher education courses and rural field experience leaves rural teachers' professional needs unmet. This study explores the construction of teaching communities as hybrid spaces as a pathway to effective rural teacher education. Using the concept of third space as a lens and cultural-historical activity theory as a tool, the study explored boundary-crossing ways to integrate academic, practitioner, and cultural knowledge to form various teaching communities supporting rural teachers' learning. To investigate the effects of the teaching communities, data were collected from more than 2,000 survey questionnaires and 23 interviews with rural teachers in 51 poverty-stricken rural areas in central China. Findings show that teaching communities benefit rural teachers' professional development. The majority of rural teachers believe that the pathway offered by teaching communities will:
1. Narrow the gap between the theory and practice of teacher education.
2. Be sensitive to the difference between urban and rural and enhance the cultural adaptativeness of rural teacher education.
3. Strengthen teaching interaction, targeted guidance, and sustainable development
4. Fully integrate modern information and technology into rural teacher education to ensure more rural teachers can access quality resources.
Implications for integrated development of urban and rural teacher education are also discussed.  

Author

• Weifen Dai