| dc.description.abstract | Since three acts regarding experimental education were announced in 2014, there are more than 90 public schools transformed into experimental education schools in merely six years. The transformation of public schools helps solve the crisis such as abolishment and amalgamation encountered by some rural schools, and also reveals the public′s desire for educational innovation. However, school innovation and reform is not easy. The public experimental schools still need to deal with problems about how to support the school′s transformation and ensure their sustainable development. The experience of how these public schools face difficulties and create new opportunities during the transformation process is worthy of being studied.
This study aims to identify contradictions and expansion when a public school transformed into an experimental education school under the perspective of activity theory. The study reveals the disturbances, contradictions, transformation agency and expansive learning happening in the school during the process of developing the curriculum. The researcher has conducted fieldwork in a public experimental elementary school for more than a year, collecting data including 84 periods of observation, 32 interviews, and hundreds of fieldnotes. In this study, Activity Theory is used as analytical framework for analyzing data with discourse analysis and showing the innovation process in the teacher community.
The results include three main parts: First, with identifying the disturbance in the meeting conversation, this study reveals 5 systematic contradictions: The work-oriented vs. learning-oriented meeting tools; the instability caused by rolling plan vs. stability of the work; the research-oriented vs. tool-oriented of the research and development division; the authority of the new form vs. the localized curriculum spirit; fairness of tasks under flying-geese model, vs. complementarity between faculty members . Second, the study discovers the teachers’ harmonized transformative agency, and expansive learning: Teachers transformed the meeting culture by negotiation and cross-section communication. They also constructed the model of curriculum development, and redefined their object of developing a unique curriculum map, then mediated an authoritative tool to help entire school teachers align with the new object. Third, the results also unfold cultural contradictions between old traditional public schools and innovative experimental schools, and the contradictions caused by parents as neighbour activities.
Based on the results, the study makes two contributions: Firstly, the new understanding about the difficulties and innovation of the public experimental school: To begin with, the main difficulty of school transformation resulted from teachers’ conflicts due to multiple needs. Through collective reflection within teachers’ community and construction of the new cultural tool, it brought innovative opportunities for the school. In addition, teachers developed transformative strategies with harmony and agency. Furthermore, facing with multiple responsibilities and anticipation from outside communities, the school lacked the philosophy of education to guide itself. Secondly, the reconstruction and expansion of activity theory: The study expands the concept tool of transformative agency, and creates new methods to analyze the disturbance and transformative agency.
The study proposes three suggestions for public experimental schools: Firstly, schools are suggested to focus on developing and planning cultural tools before transformation; secondly, schools could take advantage of teachers’ local knowledge during curriculum development; thirdly, teachers should be more sensitive to the clues of agency in the meeting dialogue. There are also three suggestions for future studies: Firstly, investigate the agency for the sustainable development of public experimental schools; secondly, explore the effects of the parent-teacher interaction on the curriculum development; finally, conduct an intervention study and develop a culture-inclusive activity theory. | en_US |