Exploring China School Professional Tutor’ Beliefs About Learning

Abstract

Teacher culture, which upwards inherits the mainstream cultural wills of society on one hand and downwards connects student culture, classroom culture, school culture and so forth on the other hand, is the most dynamic and subjective cultural factor. The education of our nation is under a paradigm transition, but subjective confusion, cognition bias, method deficiency and other problems that exist objectively in teacher culture are very unconformable with the transition, therefore the traditional teacher culture acts as a strong resistance against the reform. Teacher culture is developing from free pattern to self-conscious pattern and this means that teachers will create their dignity and well-being through self-actualization and that they, on a basis of critical introspection and conversational understanding, will break the old habits, promote the teaching culture reform with creative educational practice and reconstruct the cultural ecological field of education. School reform efforts in different parts of the world have focused on students’ learning. In particular, most school improvement programs now aim to ensure that students acquire the high-level knowledge and skills that help them to thrive in today’s highly competitive global economy (e.g., Lee & Williams, 2006). In this regard, school reform programs draw from various contemporary theories and research on learning (e.g., Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Lambert & McCombs, 1998). The basic idea is that all school improvement efforts should be directed at ensuring students achieves high levels of learning or attainment of well-defined curricular objectives and standards. For example, textbooks (Chien & Young, 2007), computers and educational technology (Gravoso, 2002; Haertnel & Means, 2003; Technology in Schools Task Force, 2003), and educational assessment systems (Black & Wiliam, 2004; Cheung & Ng, 2007; Clark, 2001; Stiggins, 2005) are being reconsidered as regards how they can effectively provide scaffolds and resources for advancing student learning. Likewise, the allocation and management of a school’s financial resources are assessed in terms of whether these are effectively mobilized and utilized towards improving student learning (Bolam, 2006; Chung & Hung, 2006; Retna, 2007). The present study aims to initiate inquiry into the possible roles of China school Professional tutor in promoting student learning, by looking into school Professional tutor’ conceptions or beliefs regarding the learning process. Conceptions and beliefs about learning has been an important focus of research among various education stakeholders. For example, research has focused on students’ conceptions of learning (Purdie & Hattie, 2002) as these conceptions are related to the students’ learning behaviors and strategies (Entwistle & Peterson, 2004; Pillay, Purdie, Boulton-Lewis, 2000). Similarly, research has also focused on conceptions and beliefs about learning of teachers (Boulton-Lewis, Smith, McCrindle, Burnett, & Campbell, 2001; Kane, Sandretto, & Heath, 2002; Samuelowicz & Bain, 2001) and pre-service teachers (Bernardo, 2008; Cliff, 1998) as these cognitions are said to guide teachers practices in the classroom (Calderhead, 1996) and may even be related to student achievement (Gao & Watkins, 2004). This study aims to extend this line of inquiry by exploring the beliefs about learning of school Professional tutor in the China. School Professional tutor are not the direct participants in the learning processes in schools, unlike students and teachers. Nevertheless, how school Professional tutor conceive of their roles in promoting student learning is likely to be shaped by their own conceptions regarding the learning process. If school Professional tutor are to be effective agents in facilitating students learning, they should have a deep and principled understanding of the processes of learning, and the factors that may promote or hinder these processes. In this study, we inquired into the beliefs about learning of practicing school Professional tutor in six different regions of the China by asking them to assess different statements regarding the learning process and indicate their agreement with such statements. Their responses were analyzed using principal components analysis in order to reveal the structure of their beliefs about learning, and possible options for school Professional tutor in relation to the various dimensions of the learning beliefs are discussed.Â