Research On Teacher Autonomy In College English Language Teaching

Teacher Autonomy (TA) is a new interest in the domain of foreign language learning in the later stage of research on Learner Autonomy (LA). Ever since the middle of 1990s, TA has been mentioned in the fields of foreign language teacher education (FLTE) and teacher development. TA was firstly introduced into Second Language Teaching (SLT) in 1995 by Little, and then it was attached great attention by researchers of foreign language teaching (FLT) in Europe, while in China, researchers didn't begin to pay attention to TA until early 21st century, and the first article of researching on TA in college English language teaching (CELT) was published on Foreign Language World in 2005. As Benson (2006) rightly argued that TA had not been well-researched in FLTE, and the research on the concept of TA was the most important and also the most difficult one in the research on autonomy, TA was widely studied in the fields of teacher education, teacher training and teaching reform of FLT. And its research contents were changed from the introduction of the concept of TA and its related theories to the interaction between TA and LA (empirical researches) in accordance with the present situation of FLT in China. In addition, in recent years, there comes out some theoretically exploratory and empirical researches on TA by taking TA as an independent research object and aiming to only promote TA in the professional development.There are several empirical researches of TA in CELT in China, but no one takes TA as a separate research object in China. Due to this situation, the researcher carries out a study on CEL teachers in Southwest Petroleum University (SWPU) to investigate the present situation of TA in CELT. Before carrying out this investigation, by gathering and analyzing former researches of the concept of TA, the researcher tries to define TA as the process in which a teacher could gain practical effectiveness through some methods based on their professional awareness and expectation. Thus, the questions in the questionnaire are divided into four major aspects:a. professional awareness and expectation; b. purposes of TA in professional development; c. methods chosen for TA in professional development; d. practical effectiveness from TA. Meanwhile, five teachers from different stages of teaching experience are asked to be interviewed privately and separately aiming to prove the objectiveness of the questions formulated in the questionnaire as well as reflecting the reality of teachers' thoughts of TA and professional development and even lived experiences.There are some research findings from the result of this investigation. Firstly, teachers'quality is much higher than ever before, and most of the teachers have high awareness and expectation of promoting their professionalism autonomously. Secondly, teachers prefer to gain awareness of their individual value through TA with the methods of autonomously using the on-line information and resources more often. Lastly, almost all the teachers believe that TA has great practical effectiveness for both students and themselves.