| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 教育研究所 === 100 === Teachers are the most important elements of teaching, and teacher cultivation is the most crucial task in the establishment of departments of education nationwide. The chief objective of all such institutions is to cultivate excellent teachers. Therefore, the importance of knowing how to become an excellent teacher goes without saying. The present study focuses on the above knowledge by exploring the experiences of teachers who have won the Teaching Excellence Award in order to provide examples for others striving to become excellent teachers.
This study adopted the interview method and recruited ten teachers who won the Taipei City 2010 Teaching Excellence Award as participants. Due to the diverse nature of the stories of these award-winning teachers, it was hard to unify them into a single framework. However, when viewed from a more distant perspective, we are still able to make out the main features of the phases that these teachers went through. We were also able to identify three phases of teacher development based on a literature review: adaptation and establishment, professional growth and development, and professional maturity. These three main phases were then used as a framework to better understand the helpful stories of these award-winning teachers. The stories can in turn provide real life proof for the concept of each phase. In addition to discussing the theories related to these phases and proving them with actual examples, the current study also used “teaching career development” as a theme and incorporated six influencing factors relating to the professional development of teachers to illustrate the professional development stories of nine award-winning teachers. This research not only contains discussions on the theoretical concepts, but also presents specific, real-life stories.
The reasons behind becoming a Teaching Excellence Award winning teacher are viewed from the “teaching professionalism development” perspective, and explored through the six important influencing factors identified via literature review, specifically, “family,” “the course of education prior to high school,” “educational professional training,” “school system and environment,” “professional growth,” and “personal features.” The award-winning teachers were interviewed with the above six factors in mind, and conceptual content was then further extracted through their answers.
Lastly, the study used “the teaching career development of the Teaching Excellence Award winning teachers” and “the important factors influencing career development” as the overall perspective themes and concluded the following:
1. The most important factor among the six influencing factors is the personal feature of devoted effort;
2. The family-of-origin parenting effects are profound;
3. Hardships encountered during childhood are not necessarily detrimental and can even become beneficial in the future; the key lies within the way one directly confronts these hardships;
4. “Not objecting” is the most fundamental way of expressing support in married families;
5. The behaviors and attitudes of the teachers in the past are important references for teaching conduct;
6. Educational professional training seems relatively unimportant to the course of education professionalism development from the participants’ point of view;
7. The school system and environment is a good place to acquire and accumulate teaching abilities;
8. A teacher’s professional growth begins with teaching and expands to the full display of the teacher’s function and role;
9. The subjects showed exceptional activity in contributing to their own professional growth when compared to others;
10. Professional growth in general lacks clear overall systematic and organized planning;
11. Proactive and positive attitudes are very important personal features.
In conclusion, based on research results and discussions, many helpful suggestions were made regarding the process of becoming an excellent teacher. Itemized suggestions for teachers, schools, education policies, and future research aspects were included.
Keywords: Teaching Excellence Awards, teaching career development, teaching professionalism development, interview method
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