The professional teacher in classroom, school, and society

Introduction

By the 1970s, large authorities were criticized about interfering the function of markets and the ability of the persons to run their ain personal businesss. Managerialism and marketization of the public services was the chief impression of ‘new public direction ‘. In order to better the efficiency and effectivity in the populace sector, different schemes such as internal audit and quality confidence have been introduced. ( Aucoin, 1990 ) As instruction is one of the cardinal public services in Hong Kong, it can non hedge from the tidal force of marketization. The reform is related to the transportation of duty from the authorities to the school. In other words, there is a alteration in the nature of the authorities engagement with a position to going more competitory and providing for the demands in the market, and the ever-changing universe. Efficiency, answerability, quality and efficient usage of resources have become the ‘yardstick ‘ in measuring the public presentation by society, authorities and schools. Those standards have made a great impact on instruction at all degrees.

Policy of Decentralization in Schools

In an effort to advance ‘quality instruction ‘ in schools, Hong Kong authorities introduced the thought of a school-based direction theoretical account with a position to conveying about decentalisation. This policy based on a premise:

• when a market mechanism is in topographic point in the instruction system, s
• chools will go antiphonal and accountable to the populace,
• and therefore will choose for better-quality public presentation. ( Brown, 1995 )

Decentralization allows schools flexibleness to apportion resources. Marketization enhances the power of parents as they provide the demands. Diversity of school was decreased and hence the competition between schools is violent. The functions of instructors and pupils have to alter harmonizing to the above-named factors.

Parental Pick

Parental pick is one of the cardinal influences of the educational market. Restructuring instruction by the authorization of parents and pupils through picks in instruction is the cardinal thought under acceptance of a market-oriented attack. In Hong Kong, most of the parents are fond of English Medium Secondary Schools because they believe in the myths of better educational services inside them. Presently, instruction is considered as a sort of commercial merchandise instead than larning to larn. The whole schooling system can be regarded as a trade good market controlled by civilization of quality. Furthermore, schools are the mills for “ value-addedness ” while the pupils ‘ acquisition results are the trade goods within the market. Parents are the goaded force and exert great force per unit areas to school in order to bring forth better reactivity and academic effectivity.

Diverseness

In the aftermath of the economic restructuring of Hong Kong into a service economic system, there was a great alteration of the prevocational and secondary proficient schools in 2000. Education and Manpower Bureau revamped and enriched the proficient course of study by stressing more on concern and technological facets every bit good as linguistic communications. ( Education Department, 1997 ) The differences between secondary proficient schools and mainstream secondary schools became bleary.

Furthermore, inclusive instruction is introduced and implemented. Students with particular educational demands ( SEN pupil ) are encouraged to have instruction in ordinary schools every bit far as possible. This policy increases the learning diverseness of pupils inside chief watercourse schools. This follows with increasing demands of resources and teacher re-training. In the world, nevertheless, there is unequal support and resources. Under an inclusive instruction system, schools can merely have $ 10,000 subsidies for every SEN pupil. Compared with the original system, schools can enroll one instructor and learning aid for every 15 SEN pupils.  Merely 6 % of instructors agree with adequate support under the bing system. ( Education Convergence, 2002 )

In the past 15 old ages, the diverseness of schools is reduced due to revamping secondary proficient schools and inclusive instruction. More and more schools became mainstream schools. Normally, those schools focus on academic facets instead of developing pupil ‘s possible since academic accomplishment of pupils is an of import public presentation index under cognition base society. Students ‘ endowments are ever buried.

Competition

Under marketization, competition becomes much more serious than earlier. From the fact that the figure of pupils entry to secondary one lessening dramatically, schools which did non get adequate figure of pupils might be closed by the authorities. In order to hedge from this procedure, different schools principals utilizing different schemes to pull pupils to analyze their school. The schemes including give different subsidy or even hard currency to the new pupils. Harmonizing to the research, some instructors were forced to advance the school. The promotional activities including be aftering different activities, some even serve as salesmen on the street to advance the school. We believed that these should non be the responsibilities of instructors. The direct result is teacher can non pass equal clip on the lesson planning or fixing resource for pupils. This implies that learning quality in footings of pupil larning result may deteriorate due to the deficit of readying.

Second consider competition between pupils. Hong Kong is a cognition based society. Under the construct of marketization, educational success implies competiveness, which farther elaborates to money and high socio-economical degree. We argued that the ultimate end of instruction should non be served as a tool to mount up to higher socio-economical degree. If marketization continues, the purposes of instruction would go training pupils to accomplish academic success merely and in uniformity. We argued there would be two possible result of this uniformity. The first result is we would lose out value instruction. Previously school non merely concentrate on academic country, but besides the whole individual development of pupils. The teacher can hold flexibleness to learn different country of cognition, but non constrained to the examinational stuffs. But under marketization, we focus on the acquisition result and competitiveness between pupils instead than value. It seems that the value instruction is no longer of import in modern society. Therefore we argued this may be one of the accounts of the happening of different societal issues.

The 2nd possible result of uniformity is the changing of features of pupils. After marketization, we focus more on the competition every bit good as public scrutiny. Therefore different accomplishments such as communicating or coaction may be omitted in the course of study. From the illustration of the maestro alumnus in a Chinese university, indicated that our current educational system maintains preparation pupils in this mode. This in bend pupils can merely execute well in the test merely, but can non use the cognition in the existent state of affairs or utilizing different accomplishments to work out jobs.

The Effects of the Reform of Educational System on Instructors

In fact, the workload of instructors was really high before the reform of the educational system. Teachers have more than 30 periods per hebdomad and it was one of the highest Numberss around the universe ( Cheng, 2004 ). Furthermore, the figure of pupils per category normally is really high and it is about 40 per category. It may to a great extent increase the workload of instructors.

Under the reform of the educational system, the workload of instructors is farther increased. In yesteryear, the instructors could still manage their work. It was because of the standardised course of study, lower in-class diverseness of pupils and the comparatively teacher-centered instruction manner. However, under the reform of the educational system, the stria of pupils was changed from 5-band system to 3-band system. In other words, the intra-school diverseness of pupils became much higher. This may ensue in the dramatic addition in the trouble and cost of learning and direction of schools. Ultimately, instructors have to pay more attempt to cover with the jobs in learning, conselling and resources allotment. As the diverseness of pupil additions, the original high quality schools and pupils become second-rate since the resources have to be shifted to cover with the jobs of less able pupils.

As mentioned antecedently, inclusive instruction is one of the of import policies under the reform of the educational system. It aims to include some SEN pupils into the normal categories so that SEN pupils can accept the legitimate instruction. This may increase the intra-school diverseness of pupils and the operating cost of schools. Besides, excess back uping resources should be needed. However, a batch of schools don’t run into the standards to suit the SEN pupils and are forced to make so. Under the state of affairs of high work load and ‘big category ‘, instructors really have non adequate clip and energy to take attention of the SEN pupils. As a consequence, the SEN pupils finally get no benefit.

The reform of the educational system involves the alteration in the instruction schemes and the usage of the instruction tools. In order to do the instruction more effective, instructors have to take a batch of preparation classes about the alteration of the course of study, the application of information engineering and etc. Besides, some instructors have to complete the graduate student sheepskin of instruction. Teachers have to pay excess clip and energy on their surveys. In add-on to the workload and day-to-day responsibilities in school, instructors may experience collapsed. As a consequence, the success of the reform of the educational system may be hard to be achieved since instructors really have no clip and energy to take attention to the diverseness of the ability of pupils and aid pupils ‘ growth.

Decision

In decision, marketization have its ain advantages such as bettering the efficiency of acquisition and instruction in footings of learning result. Nevertheless, the purposes of instruction and value instruction are neglected in the current marketized educational system. We believed that the disadvantages overwhelm the advantages and this is non a good pattern to our following coevals.