A Study Of English Teacher Autonomy In Senior Middle Schools In Gansu Province, China

Teacher autonomy has become one of the important contents of English teacher professional development. New English Curriculum for Chinese Junior/Senior Middle Schools (Experimental Version drafted by the Education Ministry of the PRC) puts forward higher requests to not only students, but also English teachers. Teacher autonomy has been referred to as "teachers' control" including freedom from external control over their own teaching. Teacher autonomy is one of the most effective ways of supporting teacher education, as well as improving and expanding their professional preparation and practices. Since teacher autonomy is a relatively new and multifaceted concept so that there is no systematic and explicit exploration on it, to say nothing of teacher autonomy in English teachers in northwest China where education is the relatively under-developed with its small scale and low level in China.This study aims at investigating the current degree of teacher autonomy in English teaching in Gansu province and tries to give some suggestions and coping strategies. Firstly, the author gives the general literature review on teacher autonomy and the research about it. Then, the author makes the research design and gives the research questions. And the questionnaire, interviews and classroom observation are adopted to investigate the general degree of teacher autonomy in Gansu, China. The empirical study is based on the hypothesis that the degree of teacher autonomy of English teachers in senior high schools in Gansu province is significantly correlated with and gender, professional titles, highest degree held and years of teaching experience. The subjects are 285 English teachers from the different schools in Gansu province. In the process of analyzing the research data, the SPSS is used.After a brief review of research on teacher autonomy and a description of methodology for the study, findings are discussed under four research questions which include the general knowledge about teacher autonomy of English teachers in senior middle school in Gansu China, their current degree of teacher autonomy, the relationship of teacher autonomy and independent variables as school age, gender and grade and the main coping strategies to the development of teacher autonomy.The results show that the current state of teacher autonomy of English teachers in Gansu is very unsatisfactory, including teaching autonomy, assessment autonomy, school management autonomy, professional development and curriculum autonomy. Though they learn a little about teacher autonomy from their teaching experience and self study, they are lack of systematical knowledge about teacher autonomy, so their teaching is not ideal. The degree of teacher autonomy varies not only according to the person, place and time but also according to external influences. So the author tries to find the relationship between teacher autonomy and gender, professional titles held, years of teaching experience and highest degree, and the data indicates that there is no significant correlation between them.Based on the findings, the last part gives the coping strategies to promote teacher autonomy and the author gives advices to teachers themselves and education authorities. This study will draw more attention to the significance of teacher autonomy, encouraging English teachers in Gansu province to develop their autonomy in their professional development.