In July 2023, the Ministry of Education issued the "Opinions on the Implementation of the National Excellent Primary and Secondary School Teacher Training Plan", organizing 30 "double first-class" universities in China to cultivate high-level educational talents for primary and secondary schools. This project is of strategic significance for implementing the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education and speeding up the pace of scientific and technological innovation in the country. In our opinion, the ideal characteristics of graduate students of the "National Excellence Program" should include the following three aspects.
Based on the educational complex and career potential of lifelong teaching. The graduate students of the "National Excellence Program" cultivated by the state relying on the "double first-class" universities should establish a long-term career pursuit of teaching and loving teaching. According to the current policy and implementation process, the 30 pilot universities of the "National Excellence Program", including Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nanjing University, have significant advantages in terms of industry influence, resource allocation and geographical location. However, it should still be noted that primary and secondary education is first and foremost an art of communication and getting along. Whether they have the patience, carefulness and enthusiasm necessary to become excellent teachers, and whether they have the professional potential of teachers still need further attention in the training process. We hope that the graduate students of the "National Excellence Program" will have a profound educational complex and career potential, and truly serve the cause of primary and secondary education in the future.
Scientific literacy and innovative spirit for the cultivation of top-notch innovative talents. The pilot schools of the "National Excellence Plan" are mainly concentrated in colleges and universities with strong disciplines of science and engineering, aiming to make use of the resource advantages of well-known universities to empower science education in primary and secondary schools, improve the training level of top-notch innovative talents, and provide intellectual guarantee for a strong country in science and technology.
Needless to say, the current training system for science teachers in primary and secondary schools in China has not yet been perfected, and the professional quality of many science teachers is difficult to meet the requirements of the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education. To a certain extent, science education in primary school is a mere formality, which fails to truly activate students' scientific thinking. At the secondary school level, some science subject teachers lack the teaching and guidance to understand the essence of science and understand the true meaning of science, which makes it difficult to truly stimulate students' spirit of exploration, innovative thinking and critical thinking ability.
The graduate students cultivated by the National Excellence Program should not only have solid scientific knowledge and pay attention to the cutting-edge trends of science and technology at home and abroad in a timely manner, but also strengthen the cultivation of heuristic and first-class teaching ability, and be able to intuitively and visualize advanced scientific knowledge, and implant the seeds of science in the hearts of primary and secondary school students.
Practical ability and leadership temperament to serve basic education. Among the 30 pilot universities of the "National Excellence Plan", there are only 6 traditional normal colleges, and most of the pilot universities are well-known comprehensive research universities or science and engineering universities in China, which have rich academic resources and can provide a solid guarantee for students' academic research. However, these colleges and universities have relatively insufficient resources and experience in cultivating students' teacher literacy.
The National Excellence Program requires graduate students to systematically complete teacher education modules including educational practice while completing academic courses, which effectively solves the problem of insufficient training in the practical ability of non-normal graduate education and teaching, so as to achieve academic literacy and teacher literacy go hand in hand.
In addition, the "National Excellence Program" has changed the status quo of training excellent secondary school teachers by high-quality normal colleges in the past, and top domestic universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Nanjing University will participate in the high-level teacher training for graduate degrees, and the quality of teachers will be greatly improved. It is foreseeable that in the next 10 or 20 years, the helmsmen of some primary and secondary schools can be produced from these outstanding talents. Therefore, it is suggested that pilot colleges and universities should set up elective courses to cultivate talents with leadership temperament, such as education management, speech and eloquence, so as to reserve talents for future education.
In short, we expect that the graduate students of the "National Excellence Program" should be able to undertake the historical mission of strengthening the country in education, science and technology, and talents, adhere to long-term and lifelong teaching, and have scientific literacy and humanistic spirit in the future basic education.
The authors' affiliations are Jiangyan Middle School of Jiangsu Province).
China Teacher Daily, 13th edition, January 31, 2024
Author: Zhou Jianwen Sun Youxin.