Translating Educator Spirit into Pedagogical Practice: A Framework for Pre-Service EFL Teacher Education in China
Educator Spirit was articulated in China in 2023 as a set of expectations concerning teachers’ public commitment, moral conduct, pedagogical wisdom, professional learning, care for students, and cultural responsibility. Its subsequent incorporation into national policy places a direct task before teacher education: how can a broad image of good teacherhood enter the professional learning of student-teachers? This paper addresses this question through a policy-informed curriculum analysis of a pre-service English as a foreign language (EFL) methodology course. It reads recent teacher-education policy alongside research on teacher identity and professional judgment, and develops four connected areas for curriculum design: professional purpose, ethical responsibility, pedagogical judgment, and relational care. Three course sites—classroom management, assessment, and language-and-culture teaching—are used to show how these areas can be worked through as problems of teaching. The paper argues that Educator Spirit gains practical meaning when student-teachers have to explain and revise decisions about real pedagogical situations. This approach connects value education with subject pedagogy and provides a workable route for curriculum-based ideological and political education in pre-service EFL teacher education.
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