Study On The Approaches Of College English Teachers' Self-directed Development In The Context Of Blended Learning Communities

Learning communities in face-to-face settings have been identified as one of the important approaches to promote teachers' self-directed development.The importance of online learning communities in promoting teachers' self-directed development is more and more significant with the constant development of Internet and communication technology(hereinafter ICT for short).Educators and researchers both at home and abroad have explored the functions of offline or online learning communities in accelerating teachers' self-directed development,but have seldom conducted the research from the perspective of blended learning communities: the combination of online and offline learning communities(hereinafter BLCs for short).Moreover,researchers and educators pay increasing attention to the research topics,including the construction of BLCs,teachers' autonomous teaching and teachers' personalized learning.However,there are few studies conducted with regard to the approaches to promote teachers' self-directed development in the context of BLCs.The primary goal of this study is to explore the overall level of college English teachers' self-directed development,the relationship with demographic variables,the aspects that college English teachers focus on during the process of seeking approaches to promote self-directed development,the approaches that college English teachers adopt to promote self-directed development,and the influential factors in the context of BLCs.This study mainly investigates the following three questions: 1)the overall level of college English teachers' self-directed development,and significant relationship with demographic variables in the context of BLCs;2)the aspects that college English teachers focus on during the process of seeking approaches to promote self-directed development in the context of BLCs;3)the main approaches college English teachers adopt to promote self-directed development,and the internal and external factors that affect their self-directed development in the context of BLCs;This study employs qualitative and quantitative methods to probe into the research questions.The quantitative data is collected from a survey questionnaire designed to explore the overall level of the college English teachers' self-directed development andthe aspects that college English teachers focus on in the context of BLCs,with overall41 valid samples being collected in this way.To fulfill the purpose of exploring the details in depth,qualitative data is collected by means of classroom observation,observation and transcription of teachers' performance in QQ groups,and semi-structured interview.The participants selected for qualitative study are three college English teachers who teach the course of English listening and speaking.According to the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data,the results are listed as follows:1)According to the analysis of the questionnaire,the overall level of college English teachers' self-directed development in the context of BLCs perceives relatively high,above the medium level(M = 3.8050).And it has no significant difference in age,gender,academic degree,years of teaching as well as professional title.2)College English teachers mainly focus on the following four aspects during the process of seeking approaches to accelerate self-directed development in the context of BLCs: the ability to use the Internet,the ability to conduct scientific research,the ability to solve problems,and the ability to teach autonomously.3)The main approaches that college English teachers adopt to promote self-directed development in the context of BLCs are autonomous teaching,cooperation(the cooperation between teachers and students and the cooperation among teachers),personalized learning,and scientific research.However,college English teachers are affected by both internal and external factors.According to the qualitative data analysis,the positive internal factors include emotional support,high activeness;whilst the negative internal factor covers weak sense of community.And the positive external factors cover easy access to learning resources and flexibility in time and space;and the negative external factors cover the incompleteness learning system,lack of pertinence.