Teacher Professional Development: The Relationship Between External Drive And Self - Development

In the field of teachers’ professional development, more and more researchers have realized the problems caused by the sole external-driven professional development, and have begun to advocate teachers’ self-directed development. However, there are still some other researchers pointing out that self-directed development may lead to teachers’ slack and laziness in their professional development. Thus, the quality of teachers’ professional development will be jeopardized. Considering all these extant problems, many researchers maintain that teachers’ self-directed professional development, and external-driven professional development should be combined and their cooperation may promote teachers’ professional development greatly. Therefore, to explore how external-driven and self-directed professional development can work together, become a brand new and important research topic.In this study, the researcher has adopted many research methods, such as: literature study, questionnaires, interviews, case studies, observation and focus of investigation. Using these research methods, the researcher has collected rich quantitative and qualitative research data. Based on the data, the researcher analyzes the characteristics of external-driven professional development and self-directed development, points out the conflicts between them, and also finds the potential active interaction between them. Aimed to solve the problems existing in teachers’ professional development, this study explores the potential approaches and strategies to effectively integrate the external-driven and self-directed teacher development, and provides new model and direction for the future teachers’ professional development.First of all, this study finds that external-driven professional development is a "double-edged sword”. On the one hand, if the external-driven professional development activities are designed properly, they can not only arouse teacher’s consciousness of self-directed development, but also enhance teacher’ ability to conduct self-directed development. On the other hand, because of external-driven professional development is organized by the school or the government, it is very easy to become mechanical and formalized. Teacher’s self-directed development will also be adversely impacted. This study also shows that many teachers are willing to make good use of external-driven professional development activities, and cooperate them into their self-directed development. Some of them even go further to participate in making the rules for external-driven professional development. Under this situation, the dilemma of external-driven development has been changed, and teacher’ self-directed development has been promoted greatly.Second, through the case study on two typical teachers: Mr. Deng and Ms. Zhu, this study further finds that: 1) The external-driven professional development should be less and high-qualified. Only in this way, it can promote teacher’s self-directed professional development; 2) The external-driven professional development should combine with practice, then it can effectively stimulate teacher’s self-directed development; 3) Teacher’s self-directed professional development needs theoretical support and training; 4) Students’ instructive challenges and liberal school management can effectively promote teacher’s self-directed development; 5) Experts’ guidance and the support of related resources can play a critical role in teacher’s self-directed development; 6) Teacher’s self-directed development can often promote teacher’s external-driven professional development. Finally, this study also indicates that school schedules, the quality of students, the evaluation system of examination-oriented education and many other factors can also impact teacher’s external-driven and self-directed professional development.Based on the above findings, in order to promote the corporation between the teacher’s external-driven and self-directed professional development, this study offers the following suggestions: increase the number and frequency of the effective external-driven professional development activities; enhance the weak points of teacher’s professional development; offer extra training to vulnerable teachers; reduce the frequency of external-driven professional development activities; eliminate inappropriate teacher’s professional development programs; reduce the credit requirements for teachers; strengthen the training on teacher’s research methods; increase teacher’s full-time learning opportunities; strengthen experts’ guidance on teaching and research activities; establish competition mechanism for teacher’s professional development programs through marketing; give teachers the freedom to choose their training projects, according to their needs of professional development.In addition to the above suggestions for external-driven development, teachers also need to be realize their own initiatives in the professional development. They should increase their professional knowledge through constant learning. They also need to produce new knowledge and set up learning community, to promote the self-directed professional development. Finally, the society should provide a more friendly environment for teachers’ professional development, through the reform of school management system.