On Senior High School Teachers' Reflective Journals And EFL Teachers As Researchers

It is a trend to use the reflection to advance the development of teachers'profession in the reform of education, and new English curriculum standards also calls for doing so. The new development of reforming the new courses of English clearly calls for senior high school English teachers to improve their specialized capability and creative consciousness, including the reflection on their teaching and research on the challenge of teaching situation. And they should change their former ideas of education and achieve the teaching aims and tasks creatively to meet the new demand of the development of teachers'profession with their great efforts during the process of the development of society. In order to keep pace with the development of society and new demand of the teacher, teachers should also spare no effort to seek for an effective, creative teaching method to become an innovative research-based teacher. An excellent teacher can no longer be presumed to follow prescribed routines and principles of knowledge without constantly individual reflection. In the past, the attention has been paid to the process of training EFL teachers, not be paid to the individual reflection. The argument in this paper is that teachers'reflective journal can contribute a great deal to the cultivation of"EFL teachers as researchers".On the basis of this situation, this paper argues reflective teaching journals can contribute to EFL teachers'self-development and the training of"EFL teachers as researchers", hoping to arise teachers'awareness of self-improvement and devote them to the teaching career actively. The meaning of "reflection" not only stopped in "reflective thinking", but also related to action, and teaching journal which is more rational and viable can improve teachers' research ability, and finally achieve the win-win situation of teaching effect and teachers'development. And this thesis discusses the current state of teachers in senior high school English teaching and the functions of reflective teaching journal in promoting teacher research ability.Firstly the paper tells something about the current situation of EFL teacher education in China, the innovation of EFL teacher education in China, notion of teaching journals and the significance of the cultivation of"EFL teachers as researchers". Then it takes an overview of educational psychology theories underlying reflective teaching: cognitive psychology, social constructivism where reflective teaching is based on. This study investigate the current state of teacher research ability in senior high school English teaching and the functions of teacher reflective journal in promoting teacher to become a research teacher. The author analyzes the feasibility of applying teacher's reflective journal in senior high school English teaching to promote teacher's research ability and how to use it. Then the questionnaire and interviews are adopted to investigate the current state of teacher research ability and teachers'reflective journal in high school English teaching. The subjects are 121 high school English teachers from four different levels of high school. At the same time, a case study which lasts 12 weeks is carried out to explore the functions of teacher reflective journal in promoting EFL teachers to be Researchers. The results of the study show that the general degree of teaching reflection in senior high school English teaching is very low. Teachers only have a high degree of reflection in a narrow range of choices. Moreover, the case study shows that reflective teaching can promote teachers to become researchers. It can raise teachers'self-consciousness of research and thus improve their research ability.