Kindergarten Teachers' Understandings and Implementation of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences in China

Abstract

Chinese kindergarten teachers are gradually changing their understandings of teaching and learning. The changes in understandings are due to the implementation of education reform, which is a contributing factor in the adoption of western pedagogy in China. This study focuses on teachers' understandings and implementation of western pedagogy in both public and private kindergartens in China. Specifically, it examines the theory of multiple intelligences (MI theory), looking at the ways kindergarten teachers understand and approach the theory. The Interconnected Model of Professional Growth (IMPG), which consists of four domains (external domain, personal domain, domain of practice, domain of consequence), provides an analytical framework. Through the mediating process of reflection or enaction between domains, findings of teachers' understandings and implementation of MI theory demonstrated the change of teachers in understandings or practices. A qualitative case study was selected as the research approach to generate an in-depth understanding of the topic in the study. There were seven participants in total. Four teachers were from a public kindergarten while the other three were from a private kindergarten. The data of semi-structured interviews illustrated the teachers' understandings of MI theory, and their report on MI theory in practice. Observations of the research sites and teaching practices of the teachers were conducted. These data were used to understand the context and facilitate teachers' reflective thinking during the post-observation interviews. Also, documents were collected to provide further information about the Chinese education policy, the research sites, and the teachers' teaching. Evidence from the three sources was analysed and categorised into different themes attached to each domain of the analytical framework. The findings revealed that all the teachers' understandings of MI theory were based on their existing notions of teaching, which reflected what is advocated by education policies in China. An unexpected finding was that children's intelligences were clearly identified by the teachers in the public kindergarten, but not for the teachers in the private kindergarten, who used an MI -based textbook in the domain of practice. However, there is a similar finding of teacher change in understandings in the two kindergartens. This thesis argues that the introduction of new educational theories or approaches should be grounded in teachers' practices and the context in which their teaching will be embedded to facilitate teacher change both in understandings and practices.