2007 Volume 16 Pages 109-118
Teachers' main roles are generally thought to be teaching and evaluation in their classrooms. In addition to these, a teacher is required to take on three new roles in the Period for Integrated Study: "team-player" in a collaborative teaching unit, facilitator for collaborative work with local people, and co-learner with his/her pupils. However, these three new roles have been paid little attention in previous research, which did not deal with this issue or relate it to the success of their educational practice in the Period for Integrated Study.
This paper discusses the relation between these new roles of teacher and successful practice in the Period for Integrated Study based on the results of the questionnaire responses of 623 primary school teachers and 304 junior high school teachers.
From this survey, some important findings are drawn. First, there was a good chance of teachers achieving success in the Period for Integrated Study if they played these three roles fully even when the teaching environment was not very supportive to their educational practice. Second, among these three roles, that of co-learner with pupils was strongly connected to the success of his/her educational practice. Third, parents' support was an important element both for teachers and pupils. Fourth, conducting school-based workshops at regular intervals was a key factor for the success of practice, especially in junior high schools.
These results suggest that it is important to create an educational community formed by the teachers and local people in order to support educational practice and to share information about the children. The teachers' new roles discussed above may also help them to create an educational community.
For the Period for Integrated Study to be more successful, the policy regarding the Period for Integrated Study and teacher education for the above new teacher roles needs to be reviewed taking these points into consideration.
