Rebuilding School Culture and Promoting Teachers'Professional Development Rebuilding School Culture and Promoting Teachers'Professional Development

School culture is an important carrier for teachers' professional development.It is also a double-edged sword that can either promote or hinder the professional development of teachers.The improvement of teachers' professional development fundamentally lies in the reconstruction of school culture.School culture is derived from the school system because the system creates the environment that determines professional development.The improvement of school culture is achieved through learning because learning can create a solid platform for teachers'professional development.Principals should rebuild their relationships with their schools and teachers,while teachers should rebuild their relationships with other teachers and their students as well as between their own practices and educational theories.

Principal Leadership Constructs School-based- curriculum and Shapes School Culture for Teaching and Learning: Rooting on Core Competence

Rooting on the context of accelerating and rapid societal change and global competence trend,this study explored the meaning of core competence,roles of schooling for cultivating students to be holistic person and strategies for shaping competence-oriented school campus culture.The related literature this study reviewed include the meaning of core competence,curriculum program and teaching design for oriented competence in schools,strategies to shape school culture for teaching and learning of oriented competence,and integrated comment.In order to achieve the research purposes,this study adopted the interview and document analysis to collect data.According to the literature review,interview,document analysis,result and discussion,this study proposed conclusions in the following directions:1)The meaning of core competence;2)The main point of global competence;3)School is a learning organization and learning base within competence oriented school campus;4)Principals play the roles of vision leadership,instructional leadership and curriculum leadership;5)Teachers play the roles for shaping competence oriented school campus culture;6)The strategies of shaping competence oriented school campus culture;7)The process and related factors of constructing school-based curriculum.Finally,researchers proposed reflection for this study.

Teaching Reflection of Culture Teaching in Middle School

Ⅰ.The Problem of English Culture Teaching Nowadays,there are still many problems in English culture teaching.The author will analyze the problem in English culture teaching from teachers and students.1.The problems of teachers For implementation of the task of integrating culture and foreign language teaching,the role of teachers proves to be a key issue.However,few teachers

An Analysis of the Development of Middle Leaders in Chinese Secondary Schools:The Role of the Principal

Numerous studies conducted on educational leadership have generally emphasized the role of principal,whereas,research on middle leadership remains limited[1].The purpose of this paper is to explore and investigate the development of middle leadership and seeks to fill in the gap by providing the analysis from a Chinese context.The author found that middle leaders are positioning at a challenging role,in which they are required to take charge of responsibilities of both a leader and a teacher,and in the meantime,they also need to negotiate between the senior leader,the colleagues.and subordinates.Furthermore,personal factors such as self-awareness and resilience are discovered to be pivotal for middle-leadership development.Apart from that,the principal plays a critical role in establishing collaborative school culture that facilitates the development of middle leaders based on the influences from the school’s history,culture,and policies.

Schoolbag as a Mirror:The Transformation of Chinese Children’s Schooling Experiences in Songs over the Past 70 Years

The practice of integrating songs into educational research is seen as an emerging phenomenon,focusing on students’existential situation from the perspective of culture.This paper explores the connections between the songs selected and children’s life experiences in different periods between the 1950s and the present.There exist numerous songs involving the theme of schoolbags over the past 70 years.In 14 typical popular songs,the cultural implications of schoolbags roughly fall into four categories,namely political,emotional,playful,and visionary,each respectively reflecting different degrees of weight captured by the song originators.Accompanied by the diversity of musical rhythms and melodies,the musical images of schoolbags may vary in terms of phenomenology and schooling culture.The nature of schoolbags in songs keeps changing,closely related to the micro-political experiences of the singers.Therefore,as a teaching resource outside the classroom,popular songs exert a greater influence on students’spiritual cultivation than formal knowledge.

Schools' Flood Emergency Preparedness in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan

Pakistan is highly exposed to climate-induced disasters, especially floods. Flooding history shows that educational establishments have been disproportionately hard-hit by flooding events. In Pakistan, school safety and preparedness is still a choice, rather than a mandatory requirement for all schools. But schools in Pakistan do have a responsibility to keep safe the students in their care,especially during and after the catastrophic events. This implies the need to maintain the environment in and around school property, so as to minimize the impacts of floods and to have the mechanisms in place to maximize a school's resilience. This study examined the emergency preparedness activities of 20 schools in four districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province that had recently been severely affected by floods. Through face to face interviews and a structured questionnaire(n = 100) we collected data on the four pillars of emergency preparedness:emergency planning, preparation measures, safe school facilities, and hazard education and training. The study revealed that the majority of the sample schools hadexperienced more than one natural hazard-induced disaster,predominantly flooding, yet despite this had not undertaken adequate emergency preparedness activities. There are particular gaps with regard to plans for students with disabilities, the continuity of school operations after a disaster,the presence of maps to identify evacuation routes, the availability of emergency equipment and resources, disaster preparedness guidelines, and psychological first aid and crisis counseling. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,and threats analysis that our researchers carried out indicates that, although schools in the survey have taken many steps towards flood preparedness, many weaknesses still exist and there remain significant opportunities to strengthen the preparedness level of many schools. The goal of this study is to inform policy decisions that improve school safety in Pakistan and to suggest the priority areas for future school disaster preparedness and management efforts.

Technology Integration into the Language Classroom:Developmental Trajectory of Beginning Teachers

This study adds to the current literature on teacher technology integration with an investigation into five beginning teachers’technology use in the language classroom in their first two career-entry years.The longitudinal interview study reveals that these teachers went through a developmental trajectory of technology use towards using it for more diversified instructional purposes and with a greater orientation towards student learning over the years.The study also finds that the teachers’developing understanding of technology use intertwined with their growing teaching competency and identity.It further finds that school culture not only had a direct influence on their technology use but also moderated the influence of teaching competency and identity on the nature of this technology use.This study concludes with suggestions for promoting research on the support needed for beginning teachers and the school culture in technology use.