Psychology
2013. Vol.4, No.11, 864-869
Published Online November 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/psych) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/psych.2013.411124
Open Access
864
The Relationship between Consciousness of Professional Role and
Work Autonomy of Rural Teachers from Sichuan Province
Tianmei Zhou1*, Jiewei Chen2, Li Luo3
1School of Educational Science, Neijiang Normal University, Neijiang, China
2School of Foreign Languages, Neijiang Normal University, Neijiang, China
3School of Geography & Resources Science, Neijiang Normal University, Neijiang, China
Received August 15th, 2013; revised September 16th, 2013; accepted October 15th, 2013
Copyright © 2013 Tianmei Zhou et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons
Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
The paper has discussed the characteristics of consciousness of professional role of rural teachers and
the relationship between consciousness of professional role and work autonomy. By randomly sam-
pling, a survey is conducted among 265 primary and secondary school teachers from Sichuan province.
It is found that the whole consciousness of professional role of rural teachers from Sichuan province is
above average; the role consciousness of their collaborators and facilitators is the highest; the role
consciousness of their social and economic status is the lowest. From the characteristics of different
groups of teachers, there is no difference in gender, teaching age and education background, but there
are significant differences between teachers of urban and rural areas, backbone teachers and non-
backbone teachers, teachers in key middle schools and non-key middle schools, and among teachers
who teach Chinese, mathematics, foreign languages, Politics, History, Chemistry, Biology, Geography
and teachers in primary and middle schools. Consciousness of professional role of teachers is signifi-
cantly related to work autonomy. That is to say, consciousness of professional role of teachers can
positively or negatively predict work autonomy.
Keywords: Rural School Teachers; Consciousness of Professional Role; Work Autonomy
Introduction
Professional role is divided according to the role of groups
and is the role of the social members playing in professional
positions (Ding & Zhang, 1992). Consciousness of professional
role, the individual’s ideology, is the realistic, clear, stable and
organized reflection to the job, which refers to awareness, cog-
nition and understanding to individual’s professional role status,
professional role norms, professional role behavior (Feng, 2006).
For the connotation of teacher professional role consciousness,
most researchers regard that it is teachers’ cognition and under-
standing of their professional role, that is, the teachers’ aware-
ness of role is their own cognition to the teachers’ professional
norms and is the social role expectations reflecting in the tea-
chers’ mind (Jiang, 2008); The more comprehensive defini-
tion is Liang Yuhua’s view. He regards it as the teachers’ per-
ceiving, cognizing, understanding and experiencing to their own
role status, corresponding role behavior standards and role play-
ing (Liang & Pang, 2005). It includes three basic structures:
cognizing and understanding their role positions, understanding
their norms, as well as cognizing and experiencing the role
playing role. They influence and interact mutually and form a
whole that cannot be separated.
Many practices and studies have found that teachers’ educa-
tional concept is one of the important factors to improve the
teachers’ diathesis and educational conduct, especially the pro-
fessional role of teachers which has influence on the teachers’
professional development, and even the children’s growth and
development. Most studies have focused on the research that
how the teacher’s role consciousness “should be”, but ignore
the research on the status quo of the teachers themselves and
their opinions. Even if there are some studies about it, fewer re-
searchers have investigated rural middle school teachers’ pro-
fessional role consciousness. So, the research is to investigate
the status quo of the rural middle school teachers’ conscious-
ness of professional role and to provide targeted strategies for
the rural teachers’ pre-service education and teachers’ on-the-
job training. The research will be beneficial to guide teachers in
rural areas to correctly perceive themselves, examine their atti-
tude towards profession, and find profession’s significance for
themselves. It will also help enrich the education of researches
in rural teachers in our country and provide empirical evidence
for the research on the specialization of teaching profession.
Job autonomy is that the job gives the individual of freedom,
independence and discretion to schedule work and to decide
how to work, which is one of the five core characteristics of job
(Fang & Ding, 2007). It refers to “the degree the individual
gains freedom, independence and discretion in work schedule
and working program decision” (Menlo Hackman & Oldham,
1980). In the field of education, the work autonomy of teachers
is also very important. It is the autonomy to their own subjec-
tive world or inner self, which is their psychological character-
istics to adjust positively and control the educational and tea-
*Corresponding author.

T. M. ZHOU ET AL.
ching activities driven by intrinsic motivation, under the guid-
ance of certain social norms and educational purpose (Yao &
Shen, 2010). A lot of studies show that teachers’ work auto-
nomy has close relationship with their work motivation, satis-
faction, stress, job burnout (or separation from service), anxiety,
specialization, creativity, sense of responsibility and so on
(Yang, Xia, & Huang, 2009). Teachers’ consciousness of oc-
cupational role occupies the core status in the teachers’ educa-
tional concept, which affects teachers’ other educational con-
cepts and education behaviors directly. So, the second purpose
of this study is to investigate the close relationship between
teachers’ professional role consciousness and teachers’ work
autonomy as well as the prediction effect.
Methods
Participants
The researchers collected 280 questionnaires and 265 are va-
lid. In detail, there are 45 elementary school teachers, 177 jun-
ior middle school teachers and 43 senior middle school teachers;
119 male teachers and 147 female teachers; 191 rural teachers
and 69 urban teachers. There are 85 samples selected randomly
from Neijiang rural teachers and 180 selected from Sichuan
“national training of the backbone teachers in disaster areas’
rural junior middle schools”.
Research Materials
Teachers’ professional role consciousness questionnaire: The
study adopts the self-designed questionnaire of middle school
teachers’ professional role consciousness. The questionnaire
includes 3 parts, 6 dimensions, and 23 items. Three parts in-
clude teachers’ cognizing and understanding of their role status
(social economic status, knowledge imparter and executor, re-
searcher and curriculum developer, collaborator and facilitator),
understanding of their role norms as well as cognizing and expe-
riencing of the role playing. The six dimensions are role con-
sciousness of social and economic status, role consciousness of
knowledge imparter and executor, role consciousness of re-
searcher and curriculum developer, role consciousness of col-
laborator and facilitator, consciousness of professional role norms
and consciousness of professional role experience. In the pre-
sent research, every factor of the scale’s α coefficient is be-
tween .54 to .89 and half reliability is between .56 to .84. The
whole scale’s α coefficient is .90, and half reliability is .85. It
means that the questionnaire has good reliability. Exploratory
factor analysis shows that the rate of the 6 factors’ cumulative
variance contribution is 60.79%, which proves its validity. It is
a five-point Likert scale. The minimum score of each tested
item is 1 point, and the top score is 5 points. Higher values in-
dicate higher degree of professional role consciousness appro-
val.
Teachers’ work autonomy questionnaire: The study adopts
Teachers’ work autonomy questionnaire developed by Yang
Bing et al. (Yang, Xia, & Huang, 2009), which contains 28
items, 6 factors: the autonomy of school operation management,
the autonomy of professionalization and curriculum reform, the
autonomy of classroom teaching, the autonomy of student per-
formance assessment, the autonomy of carrying out extracur-
ricular activities, and the autonomy of student behavior man-
agement. The Cronbach’s α coefficients of the questionnaire
and each dimension are: .89, .89, .75, .74, .91, .70 and .94, the α
coefficient of the whole questionnaire is .90; the 6 factors’ cu-
mulative variance contribution rate is 55.36%. Both the relia-
bility and the validity of the scale meet the requirement of psy-
chometrics. The questionnaire uses Likert-5 points scoring sys-
tem from 1 to 5; the higher the scores, the stronger job auton-
omy.
Demographic variables questionnaire: This questionnaire
mainly records personal data, including gender (male and fe-
male), region (urban and rural), teachers’ titles (primary tea-
cher, secondary teacher, senior teacher), teaching subjects (Chi-
nese, Math, English, Politics, History, Chemistry, Biology, Geo-
graphy, and so on), school types (key and non-key middle
schools), teacher’s types (backbone or non-backbone teachers).
Procedure and Data Analysis
In the form of questionnaire investigation, investigators were
assumed by the trained principals or class teachers. Question-
naires were retrieved on the spot after teachers finished. The
data are processed by SPSS12.0 statistics software.
Results
The General Situation of Rural Teachers’
Professional Role C onsc iousness
Mean comparison found that overall, the average score of the
consciousness of rural teachers’ professional role (3.77 ± .52) is
greater than 3. The six-dimension scores of rural teachers from
high to low in turn are as follows: role consciousness of rural
teachers’ collaborators and facilitators (4.35 ± .84), conscious-
ness of occupational role norms (4.34 ± .71), role consciousness
of knowledge imparters and executors (3.80 ± .68), role con-
sciousness of researchers and curriculum developers (3.70 ± .74),
consciousness of professional role experience (3.26 ± .82), role
consciousness of status (3.08 ± 3.08). It shows that Sichuan ru-
ral teachers’ recognition of consciousness of professional role is
above average. The recognition of role consciousness of their
collaborators and facilitators is the highest and the recognition
of consciousness of their economic and social status is the low-
est.
The Comparisons of Sichuan Rural Teachers’
Consciousness of Professional Role among Different
Groups
The rural teachers’ role consciousness of collaborators and
facilitators and understanding of role norms are obviously hi-
gher than urban teachers’. To the contrary, the rural teachers’
role consciousness of status is obviously lower. There are no re-
gional differences in role consciousness of knowledge impart-
ers and executors, role consciousness of researchers and curri-
culum developers and consciousness of occupational role expe-
rience. Rural backbone teachers’ consciousness (role conscious-
ness of knowledge imparters and executors, role consciousness
of researchers and curriculum developers, role consciousness of
collaborators and facilitators, and consciousness of professional
role norms) is obviously higher than the non-backbone teach-
ers’. The key middle school teachers’ consciousness (role con-
sciousness of researcher and curriculum developers, role con-
sciousness of collaborators and facilitators and consciousness
of occupational role norms) is distinctly lower than the general
middle school teachers’. The role consciousness of knowledge
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T. M. ZHOU ET AL.
imparters and executors and consciousness of professional role
norms of the rural teachers who teach Chinese, Math and Eng-
lish are distinctly higher than those teachers who teach Politics,
History, Chemistry, Biology, Geography and other subjects.
There are no differences in consciousness of professional role
between the primary school and middle school teachers, except
for role experience.
To investigate the consciousness differences between prima-
ry and middle school teachers, and teachers with different titles,
the researchers use LSD post hoc tests (Table 1) and find that:
the consciousness of professional status of rural senior high
school teachers is distinctly higher than primary and secondary
school teachers’ (P < .05), but role consciousness of knowledge
imparter and executor is significantly lower than theirs. For the
role consciousness of knowledge imparter and executor, role
consciousness of collaborator and facilitator, and consciousness
of professional role norms, secondary school teachers’ are sig-
nificantly higher than primary and senior high school teachers’
(P < .05). For the role consciousness of collaborator and facili-
tator, and consciousness of occupational role norms, primary
school teachers’ are distinctly higher than senior high school
teachers’ (P < .05). Additionally, senior teachers are signifi-
cantly higher than teachers in the second rank of teaching in the
role consciousness of collaborator and facilitator as well as con-
sciousness of occupational role norms (P < .05).
Correlations between Rural Teachers’ Consciousness
of Professional Role and Work Autonomy
The result (Table 2) shows that there are significantly posi-
tive correlations between teachers’ role consciousness of status
and each dimension of work autonomy, and between conscious-
ness of occupational role experience and each dimension of work
autonomy. And other dimensions of professional role con-
sciousness are positively related to the autonomy of student
performance assessment, of student behavior management, of
carrying out extra-curricular activities and of class teaching,
and are negatively related to the autonomy of school operation
management and of professionalization and curriculum reform.
On the basis of the above correlation analysis, the researchers
apply regression analysis to put dimensions of work autonomy
as the dependent variables and dimensions of professional role
as predicting variables. The result (Table 3) shows that teach-
ers’ role status, researcher and developer, collaborator and fa-
cilitator, role norms, and role experience can significantly pre-
dict the different dimensions of work autonomy. Specifically,
teachers’ role consciousness of status can significantly and po-
sitively predict five dimensions (except class teaching) of work
autonomy (between β in .207 ~ .475, P < .05); role norms can
positively predict two dimensions of autonomy of student per-
formance assessment and the autonomy of carrying out ex-
tra-curricular activities( between β in .287 ~ .305, P < .01), and
can negatively predict the autonomy of professionalization and
curriculum reform (β = −.304, P < .01; teachers’ role experi-
ence can positively predict two dimensions of carrying out ex-
tra-curricular activities and class teaching (between β in .167
~ .270, P < .05); teachers’ role consciousness of collaborator
and facilitator an positively predict two dimensions of auton-
omy of class teaching and the autonomy of student behavior
management (between β in .286 ~ .420, P < .001); lastly, teach-
ers’ role consciousness of researcher and curriculum developer
can negatively predict the autonomy of school operation man-
agement (β = −.279, P < .01). The total explanation rate of tea-
cher’s role consciousness to different dimensions of work au-
tonomy is 5.1% ~ 18.1%.
Discussion
Charact e r i st i cs of Rural Tea c he r s ’ Co n s c iousne s s o f
Professional R ol e
This study shows that the overall approval of Sichuan rural
teachers’ consciousness of professional role is on the average,
role consciousness of collaborator and facilitator being the hi-
ghest and consciousness of social and economic role status be-
ing the lowest. It states that due to the dynamics and rapid change
of the modern social knowledge, teachers are no longer the ow-
ner and imparter of the knowledge. Rural teachers have chang-
ed their role cognition on authority representatives and pure
knowledge imparter of knowledge. They gradually set up the
equal consciousness that the students are the facilitators of the
study, and that they are the students’ mentors and facilitators on
study. In the meantime, implementation of new curriculum re-
form in our country has obtained certain achievements in the
recent ten years; however, in the process of implementation,”
the teachers’ participation is far from what reform advocates
expected”, which means teachers should become a researcher
and developer of the new curriculum, but not merely the recei-
vers, practitioner and consumer of the new curriculum (Wu,
2009). Additionally, because of the restrictions of their own ob-
jective conditions and subjective factors, rural teachers cannot
or are unwilling to actively participate in the new curriculum
reform, rural teachers’ approval of the consciousness as the role
of curriculum developer and researcher is not high, and they
can’t grasp the role norms accurately and comprehensively. The
teachers are also full of confusion on the role norms, which are
their own role rights, responsibilities, and conduct standards. At
the same time, salary is a special concern for the teachers. In
recent years, salary increases year by year, but rural teachers’
income growth is so small that many teachers can’t feel the
change of the income and they are not satisfied with the income
gap between urban and rural areas (Zhang & Ye, 2010). Addi-
tionally, because of rural teachers’ work environment and wor-
king pressure, their approval of consciousness on the social and
economical status is the lowest.
From the perspective of different group characteristics, the
rural teachers’ consciousness of professional role has no signi-
ficant difference in gender, teaching aging, and education back-
ground, but has prominent difference in the urban and rural
teachers, backbone and non-backbone teachers, key schools and
non-key schools, Chinese-Math-English and other subjects’ tea-
chers as well as primary and middle school teachers. 1) The
consciousness differences between urban and rural, key and
non-key schools may be related to the strong enforcement of
new curriculum reform and the high social expectation to the
urban and key school teachers. These make the teachers con-
stantly reposition and adapt to their professional role, so that
urban and key middle school teachers’ approval of conscious-
ness of researcher and developer, collaborator and facilitator,
and role norms are significantly lower than rural and non-key
middle school teachers’. 2) The consciousness of professional
role for the rural backbone teachers is significantly higher than
the non-backbone teachers’, which is due to backbone teachers’
own diathesis, more training and study opportunities. On the
ne hand, the backbone teachers have good ideological and o
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T. M. ZHOU ET AL.
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Table 1.
Comparison to Sichuan rural teachers’ professional consciousness.
Scale 1 2 3 4 5 6
City 3.30 ± .60 3.61 ± .97 3.53 ± .74 4.04 ± .94 4.00 ± .88 3.30 ± .75
Country 3.00 ± .71 3.86 ± .95 3.75 ± .75 4.46 ± .77 4.46 ± .58 3.26 ± .84
t 2.95** −1.78 −1.93 −3.54*** −5.13*** .30
Backbone Teachers 3.08 ± .67 3.94 ± .82 3.88 ± .64 4.64 ± .50 4.59 ± .40 3.22 ± .82
Non-Backbone Teachers 3.07 ± .70 3.52 ± 1.103.33 ± .81 3.73 ± 1.04 3.79 ± .87 3.35 ± .79
t .12 3.46** 5.74*** 9.47*** 9.97*** −1.21
Key Middle School 3.17 ± .61 3.65 ± .93 3.48 ± .74 3.97 ± .92 3.88 ± .87 3.30 ± .75
Non-Key Middle School 3.05 ± .70 3.83 ± .95 3.78 ± .72 4.46 ± .78 4.48 ± .58 3.24 ± .84
t 1.23 −1.35 −2.82** −4.14*** −6.16*** .55
Chinese-Math-Foreign Teachers 3.09 ± .69 3.87 ± .92 3.75 ± .73 4.40 ± .85 4.42 ± .66 3.24 ± .84
Other Subjects Teachers 3.11 ± .68 3.50 ± 1.303.51 ± .70 4.13 ± .80 4.10 ± .78 3.35 ± .75
t −1.8 2.3* 1.92 1.87 2.48* −.77
Primary School Teachers 2.94 ± .76 3.79 ± 1.253.53 ± .84 3.82 ± 1.18 4.06 ± .88 3.38 ± .98
Junior Middle School Teachers 3.05 ± .68 3.88 ± .83 3.84 ± .68 4.65 ± .49 4.58 ± .40 3.21 ± .81
Senior Middle School Teachers 3.34 ± .49 3.31 ± .95 3.20 ± .69 3.45 ± .84 3.40 ± .80 3.32 ± .62
F 3.33* 5.51** 12.62*** 57.33*** 66.69*** .89
Teachers in the Second Rank of Teaching 2.98 ± .76 3.69 ± 1.013.61 ± .81 4.20 ± .99 4.23 ± .78 3.19 ± .76
Teachers in the First Rank of Teaching 3.10 ± .64 3.86 ± .92 3.74 ± .71 4.42 ± .76 4.37 ± .67 3.31 ± .80
Teachers of High-Ranking 3.21 ± .57 3.88 ± .81 3.84 ± .58 4.53 ± .52 4.52 ± .48 3.29 ± .95
F 1.93 1.04 1.64 3.13* 2.72 .55
Note: 1 = consciousness of status; 2 = consciousness of knowledge imparter and executor; 3 = consciousness of researcher and curriculum developer; 4 = consciousness of
collaborator and facilitator; 5 = consciousness of professional role norms; 6 = consciousness of professional role experience.
Table 2.
The correlation values between rural teachers’ consciousness of professional role and work autonomy.
Scale 1 2 3 4 5 6
Autonomy of School Operation Management .287*** −.081 −.109 −.143* −.143* .155*
Autonomy of Professionalization and Curriculum Reform .181** −.102 .030 −.106 −.153 .078
Autonomy of Student Performance Assessment .244*** .155* .201** .247*** .256*** .099
Autonomy of Student Behavior Management .227*** .316*** .266*** .391*** .361*** .128*
Autonomy of Carrying out Extra-Curricular Activities .227*** .265*** .228*** .265*** .254*** .285**
Autonomy of Class Teaching .177** .174** 180** .282*** .259*** .194**
Note: 1 = consciousness of status, 2 = consciousness of knowledge imparter and executor; 3 = consciousness of researcher and curriculum developer, 4 = consciousness of
collaborator and facilitator; 5 = consciousness of professional role norms, 6 = consciousness of professional role experience.
political quality, noble teacher’s ethics cultivation, healthy
body and mind diathesis, solid professional knowledge, syste-
matic education theory, practiced business skills, and con-
sciousness of actively carrying out creative teaching (Xie,
2010); On the other hand, in the recent ten years, our country
provides backbone teachers with training and study opportuni-
ties through kinds of channels, which develop their personal
theories that help them criticize and rethink the role, promote
understanding and grasping of the role recognition, and even
are good for achieving the accordance between role behavior
and role playing, between educational thinking mode and prac-
ical teaching mode. 3) The rural Chinese-Math-English teach- t

T. M. ZHOU ET AL.
Table 3.
Factors and parameters of regression analysis for teachers’ professional role consciousness predicting work autonomy.
Dependent Variables Independent Variablesβ R2 (adjusted) t F
Autonomy of School Operation Management 1
3
.479
−.279
.069
.104
4.82***
−3.09*** 13.17***
Autonomy of Professionalization and Curriculum Reform 1
5
.308
−.304
.025
.051
2.75**
−2.67** 6.89***
Autonomy of Student Performance Assessment 5
1
.287
.274
.059
.104
3.68***
3.49** 13.89***
Autonomy of Student Behavior Management 4
5
.420
.266
.142
.181
6.57***
3.42** 25.91***
Autonomy of Carrying out Extra-Curricular Activities
6
5
1
.270
.305
.207
.068
.107
.120
3.16**
3.18**
2.08*
11.23***
Autonomy of Class Teaching 4
6
.286
.167
.078
.097
4.12***
2.40* 13.07***
Note: 1 = consciousness of status; 3 = consciousness of researcher and curriculum developer; 4 = consciousness of collaborator and facilitator; 5 = consciousness of profes-
sional role norms; 6 = consciousness of professional role experience.
ers’ consciousness of professional role is higher than other sub-
jects’ teachers which may be related to the current educational
system. Under the current educational system, students, parents
and schools pay more attention to Chinese, Math and English
than other subjects, which makes the Chinese-Math-English
teachers’ status higher than other subjects’ teachers and ap-
prove more their consciousness of professional role. 4) The sur-
vey shows reasons for a significant difference in the conscious-
ness of professional role between primary and middle school
teachers. Firstly, from the point of the demands of students de-
velopment, senior high school education is the important stage
of the whole basic education that is not only the basis for fur-
ther study to the students and lay a solid foundation for stu-
dents’ lifelong development, but also the key period to cultivate
high quality human resources. So, senior high school teachers
have higher consciousness of role status than primary and jun-
ior middle school teachers. In the meantime, senior high school
students’ sense of independence and critical thinking is in the
developing period, so the consciousness of senior high school
teachers as the imparter and practitioner of knowledge and tea-
ching material is lower than primary and junior middle school
teachers’. Secondly, maybe quality education is carried out
more fully and education reform reflects more lively in primary
school. While the entrance examinations are prior in junior and
senior high school, and evaluation system has not changed too
much today, primary school teachers truly feel the changes of
the whole atmosphere in classroom, curriculum, and school
brought by the teachers’ role transformation, so their under-
standing of the consciousness of cooperator and facilitator, and
professional role norms is significantly higher than senior high
school teachers’. 5) There is no difference in gender, teaching
aging and education background in rural teachers’ conscious-
ness of professional role, which shows teachers from every age
bracket are faced with the approval of teacher’s professional
role. The reasons are that (Shen, 2005): on the one hand, from
the perspective of teachers’ professional development, teachers
will encounter difficulties and setbacks in the professional de-
velopment process, and will experience hard times which create
doubt, negation and other imbalance mentality to the original
approval of professional role, and even professional burnout for
some teachers. On the other hand, the educational reform and
the transformation of the teachers’ role are strongly advocated
in recent years, which may be a new problem for every teacher.
Especially today when the society develops rapidly and net-
work technology is widely used, old teachers or bachelor-de-
gree teachers are faced with the psychological stress brought by
professional role transformation and anxiety produced by pro-
fessional approval that can not be established, so their problems
are never smaller than a young or college-degree teacher’. All
these require teachers to establish or improve the approval of
the professional role.
The Relationship Analysis between Consciousness of
Professional Rol e and Work Auton om y o f the Rural
Teachers
This study shows that the higher the consciousness of job
status, the better the role experience, the stronger the teachers’
work autonomy, which can positively predict the teachers’ work
autonomy. That is because self consciousness is the medium to
take part in various social practice activities. If the teachers
improve their consciousness of professional role, the initiative
of self shaping will be enhanced and the education-teaching au-
tonomy which is the intrinsic psychological motivation for the
teachers to work will get more attention.
This study results show that there are negative correlations
between five dimensions of consciousness (consciousness of
imparter and executor, of researcher and developer, of collabo-
rator and facilitator, of role norms) and two dimensions of work
autonomy (work autonomy of school operation management,
work autonomy of professionalization and curriculum reform).
In the meantime, rural teachers’ consciousness of researcher
and developer as well as role norms can negatively predict the
work autonomy of school operation management and work au-
tonomy of professionalization and curriculum reform. Maybe
that is because under the current system of education manage-
ment in our country, schools apply administration management
and the leaders determine and execute the school operation ma-
nagement, so teachers as the researcher and developer can en-
hance the teaching related work autonomy in student perform-
ance assessment, student behavior management, carrying out
extra-curricular activities, and class teaching, and can weaken
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T. M. ZHOU ET AL.
the autonomy of school operation management. In the mean
time, because of kinds of tests and entrance examinations pres-
sure in different stages in primary and middle schools, teachers
can not appropriately understand and grasp the consciousness
of role norms, and so lack autonomy of teacher professionaliza-
tion and curriculum reform.
Acknowledgements
This article is Sichuan province philosophy and social sci-
ences key research base, one of the achievements for the project
of Sichuan teachers education research center, Sichuan rural
teachers’ professional role consciousness research (TER2009-
017).
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