| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 教育研究所 === 91 === Abstract
This study utilized the method of life history to document the life of a special education teacher in junior high school. Special education teachers have been getting some problems in their educational environment, including hard teaching, poor support, and "being seen as a peculiar profession by others". "Being seen as a peculiar profession by others" means that holding some fixed biased views in their minds, others can easily misunderstand special education teachers. If we want to really understand special education teachers, it is better to let them voice for themselves. Through this way, the mood, thought and action of special education teachers can be understood, and the problems of special education can be found. The purpose of life history study is to give special education teachers space of voice, and find out some deeper meanings. By looking into the life history of the special education teacher, we hope to obtain something meaningful like how the teacher views her life, how she interacts with the environment and what dilemma she encounters. Besides, because the approach of life history study is new, the investigator cannot help paying attention to: when I am requested to explain the preceding research purpose, what is the feedback of its value and meaning?
Based on the data which are collected through observation and interview, the life history of the special education teacher, Miss King, is represented in the current thesis. The findings and conclusions of the study are listed generally in the following.
1. Miss King’s educational ideas come from her life experience. That is to say, no matter how she views special education students, no matter how she views herself as a special education teacher, even no matter how she views herself as a human being, in her consistently changing process of teaching, the involvement of life experience is evident. In other words, family experience, work experience and personal life experience obviously interact with one another. Moreover, we must notice the fact that Miss King did not learn to be a special education teacher in any teacher''s college, so we suggest that teacher''s colleges should take two points into account. One is that what types of people are interested in taking teacher''s training curricula to be a special education teacher and what kind of personal life background will each of them bring into the learning experience? The other is that since these types of people take teacher''s training curricula, what kind of impact will they make on the profession?
2. From the work experience of Miss King, we know that there is a large gap between ideal and practice of special education. The limited development of special education is due to lack of the administrative cooperation. "Back to the mainstream" is related to the adjustment and reform of the whole education system. Because the existent education environment incurs crisis feeling in every special education teacher, we cannot help but to think─When special education teachers are trained, are they also provided with a carefree teaching environment?
3. Life history which encourages teachers to voice for themselves lays its meaning and value in presenting the fact that the action and thought of a person cannot be cut off whether in public area or in private area, and that shows a person can easily be affected and influenced by the environmental structure. Apart from the fact that we can pessimistically see what a teacher only can do for the moment, on the other hand we can find out the resources that aid a teacher''s profession. Take Miss King as an example, in order to enhance her teaching profession, she needs more support such as more diverse and more practical teacher''s training curricula, the aid and cooperation of school system, the endeavor of college professors to help materialize various sets of education reform, and being understood and supported by others. What she needs is not different kinds of paper evaluation. Once the need is naglected, regardless of a teacher''s profession, the identity of a special education teacher is becoming weak. On the other hand, life history not only presents one passive aspect of a person reflected in the structure, but it also brings forth the other active aspect of a person spontaneously responding to the environment. Through narration, Miss King constructed her life meaning, her special education ideals and when she said that she was in the phrase of self-realization, when she wanted to express her active aspect of creation by means of the environment and documents, when she bravely faced the unknown future, in fact she has regained power and proved self value in such a life review. In such a moment that she actively expressed her life history, she was no more manipulated by the environmental structure, but she obtained the courage to the incoming challenge. Therefore, life history not only makes teachers voice, but also promotes them to find out the voice of themselves. Meanwhile, in this way, the personal power of every teacher is sure to spring up..
|
|---|
