Strategies of Preschool Teachers' Professional Growth in Underdeveloped Region in the East China- A Case Study of Linyi City, Shandong Province

Abstract

With more emphases laid on preschool education in China, infant education as the weak link of basic education has attracted much attention. In the underdeveloped areas, infant education is the weakest part of basic education, promoting the professional development of preschool teachers, which has become the key to improving the level of early childhood education. In this paper, we take Linyi region as the example of core area of Yimeng Mountain Range to study the strategies of preschool teachers’ profession growing. By the ways of the investigation and in-depth interviews, we found the prominent problems, such as little investment in preschool education, backwardness in the educational ideas and the large mobility of teachers in Linyi. In response to this situation, this case proposes the strategies for the kindergarten teachers’ professional development from the perspective of teachers’ growing processin underdeveloped areas for the first time: under the premise of increasing the investment in infant education from the government, the education authorities select the kindergarten teacher with strong sense of infant education into induction , and strengthen the vocational training education from experts and learn by organizing learning communities of new and old teachers , so as to promote the professional growth of preschool teachers. These strategies have certain referential significance for the rapid development of infant education under the circumstance of collaboration with the government, schools and teachers in underdeveloped coastal areas.