Teacher training needs and their influencing factors: A case study of 13 Chinese border school teachers

Abstract

Teacher training is not only the way to improve the quality of teachers in China's border areas, but also one of the collaborative paths to promote the high-quality development of regional education. Teacher training needs to provide a practical reference for specific service teacher training. Through conducting semi-structured, in-depth interviews, and using the grounded-theory three-level coding method for discourse analysis, this study explores teacher training needs and their influencing factors and how such factors influenced teacher learning and the development of teaching communities in border areas, in China. In the coding process, the researchers used MAXQDA (20.4.0) for auxiliary analysis. This work has constructed a model of teacher training needs and its influencing factors. Teacher training needs in border areas include training format, training content, training intensity, training opportunities, and training practicality. The factors include subjective factors, organizational development, institutional environmental factors, and field culture factors. According to the results of the model analysis, we put forward these optimization strategies: provide special mental health courses and counseling services for border teachers; carry out school-based training to form teachers' learning community; plan special training and create an international influence of border education, which would enhance teachers’ sense of professional honor and improve the perception threshold of achievement.