Study On County-Level Backbone Teacher Panel Supporting School-Based Training With The Ict: Experiences From Unicef-China Cooperation Project Entitled 'Smile'

Currently, the major challenges of primary and secondary in-service teachers' continuing education in China probably include three parts. First, how to deal with the conflict about time distribution for teachers between working and learning triggered by a large number of out-of-school training programs. Second, how to combine theoretical study with practical improvement to enhance the quality of classroom teaching effectively. Third, how to promote the common development of faulty based on school unit. To overcome these challenges, it is urgent for China to explore in-service teachers' continuing education pattern, which is characterized by school-based training, community-based practice, guidance for subject teaching, a combination of teaching research and training. United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and China's National Centre Educational Technology (NCET), Ministry of Education have a long-term commitment to improve K-12 School education quality. With the advancement of information and communication technology in recent years, they both are attempting to further utilize ICT to improve teacher training, which expect to offer high quality and professional support for a wider range of teachers. Since 2012, they have made a joint cooperation project entitled "Skills, Motivation and Imagination for Learning Excellence (SMILE)", which aimed to use ICT to support teachers training. The project focuses on the development of primary school students and subject teachers in isolated areas and ethnic minority areas. The project has involved 1,400 teachers in 88 schools in two counties in West China. It has made a continuous cultivation on innovative teaching methods such as inquiry teaching, game-based teaching, project-based learning etc. The project helps teachers learn how to strengthen students' cognitive ability and social life skills by inquiry learning method and promotes comprehensive development of learning ability, practical ability, innovation ability for pupils in rural areas. The article is in reference on the basis of the introduction of In-service Teachers' Continuing Education System, the challenges facing in-service teachers and the existing advantages in coping with those challenges. Then, the article makes a detailed analysis of main status of SMILE project and its hierarchical hybrid training pattern, and "Lesson Study Pattern" supported by ICT. Furthermore, the article analyzes the achievements of the project. Finally, the article highlights the construction situation of "County-level Backbone Teacher Panel" and its team-building activities, which play a prominent part in offering professional support for local teachers by using ICT. County-level backbone teacher panel, developed on the basis of SMILE project, a team of educational specialists with localization and grass-rooted feature, is built on excellent teachers, county-level instructors in teaching research office, county-level audio-visual educators etc. With the assistance of national expert group, they offer supporting services for training work, such as, network-based remote guidance, network learning monitoring, sustainable on-the-spot guidance of school-based training and delivering training activities into school etc. to push county level school-based teacher training forward.UNICEF and NCET will further explore k-12 School on how to launch school-based teaching research and training with the aid of ICT, mainly in the form of Lesson Study from the perspective of organizational learning. It can achieve common development of all school teachers and promote organizational culture, which will also improve the overall quality of teaching and learning.