Research on Teachers’ Professionalization and the Development of Normal Education in China

Abstract

In a broad sense, the professional development of teachers’ profession means that teachers’ profession has its own unique professional requirements and characteristics and has a special training system and management system. In a narrow sense, professional development of teachers’ profession refers to the process of professional development of teachers in the whole career, which means that teachers acquire educational expertise and skills by virtue of professional organizations, implement professional autonomy, show professional ethics, and gradually improve their teaching quality as a professional educator after lifelong professional training. In other words, it means the process of professional development from “ordinary people” to “educators”. Essentially, the development of teachers’ professionalization is the process of teachers’ individual professional development, the process of teachers’ continuous acceptance of new knowledge and the process of increasing their professional ability. The professionalization of teachers in China has mainly gone through three stages: the cultivation stage of seniority and clergy, the normal education stage of teachers’ professionalization and teachers’ professional qualification certificate stage. Historically, the professional development of teachers’ profession is closely related to the birth and development of normal education, which is accompanied by the emergence of social division of labor and the development of social productivity. The professional development of teachers’ profession in China must be based on the improvement of teachers’ professional status, the improvement of teachers’ academic qualifications, the improvement of teacher training system and the optimization of curriculum structure. Educational and academic nature, closed orientation and open non-orientation are important characteristics of teachers’ professional development in different periods. Teachers’ professional development must combine the professionalization of normal education with the systematization of pedagogical subjects. At the same time, it promotes the renewal of teachers’ educational and teaching concepts, and further promotes the effective solution of the contradictions between educational and academic nature, closed orientation and open non-orientation.