An overview of the Zhejiang Model of Teacher Training

Abstract

The quality of teacher training directly affects the quality of primary and secondary school teachers’ professional development and indirectly affects the quality of primary and secondary school education. With an interest in teacher development, this paper presents an overview of the Zhejiang model of teacher training, with specific reference to the training of Chinese language teachers. This paper analyses the guidance of government’s teacher training policy, the design of training programmes, the qualifications for teacher-training institutions, the composition of trainer teams, the improvement of training management, financial support of teacher training programmes and the change of the organisational mode of teacher training programmes. Through examining the case of the training programme for Chinese language teachers, it was found that current teacher training practice in Zhejiang Province aims to follow the country’s education reform policy. Teachers are allowed to make their choices about which training programmes to attend. All the training institutions are open to competition. The improvement of the quality assurance mechanism is the guarantee for the success of the practices of free choices of teachers and free competition of institutions.