A Narrative Study On Four English Teaching Researchers’ Professional Knowledge Development

Teaching researchers are professional teachers who work in the Bureau of Education. Their duties include researching and instructing teaching. It is a long time that the teaching researchers are playing an important role in promoting the quality of teachers and their teaching at all grades, for they are responsible for researching, giving instructions for teachers’ teaching, organizing teacher education and training, and compiling textbooks and teaching materials. Under the circumstance of new curriculum reform, teaching researchers’ professional development, especially English teaching researchers’ professional development, is challenged. Teaching researchers’ professional level falls behind the demand of new curriculum reform. Teachers’ professional and students’ overall development are in some way determined by teaching researchers’ professional development. It largely influences the quality of education. Therefore, it is necessary to find out teaching researchers’ professional development, especially their professional knowledge structure, professional development path and problems.In this thesis, the researcher interviews four English teaching researchers from different districts including X District, Y District, Z District and municipal level, who are separately responsible for different learning phases. The researcher conducts interview method and does a narrative study. The researcher tells four stories about the four English teaching researchers, including their learning and working experiences, beliefs, critical events for their professional knowledge development and some problems they encounter.The investigation reveals that there are many similarities among the four English teaching researchers, which in a sense can stands for the current situations of teaching researchers’ professional development in Yunnan province. From the four cases, the researcher believes that teaching researchers have similar knowledge structure, a common developing path, and some internal and external problems they encounter during their teaching and researching. Finally, the thesis gives some suggestions to facilitate the development of teaching researchers’ professional knowledge.