On Teachers' Experiences And Their Professional Development

The professional development of teachers is not only the eternal subject of teachers' research, but the important category in the instruction theory. At the background of the basic curriculum reform, the research on how teachers can develop with the new curriculum is of great practical significance. Teachers' professional development refers to the development and change through their careers who are in the primary or middle school, which are manifested both in their teaching actions and in their educational ideas. It is a process that will last through the life and has the characteristics of dynamics, practicality and personality.Teachers' professional development is not of the abstract or narrow meaning in the profession, but roots from realities and closely relates with their experiences. The experiences affected teachers' growths refer to the critical persons or the critical incidents in their careers. Experiences are characterized with personality. However, as the person is the consequence of the society, he cannot escape from the impact of society. Therefore experiences are also featured by the time and the homogeneity of the teachers' profession determines their commonness. Thus teachers' personal experiences affect both their attaining of the practical knowledge and their reflection.As a case study, this thesis selects Mr. He, a retired Chinese teacher in a middle school as the subject. After several in-depth interviews, the stories of his professional development are collected and then arranged and analyzed. Through these processes, the critical persons or the critical incidents are found out. Kurt Lewin's life space theory has expounded that personal behaviors are the result of the interaction between the individual and the environment. So this theory is adopted to analyze why Mr. He's had become such way. Life space is all facts that determine one person's behaviors in a certain time. It includes not only the visible things such as man, physical environment, but the invisible feeling and conception etc.The stories of Mr. He's professional development tell us that the critical person is his Chinese teacher Chen Jufang in the junior middle school and the critical incidents include his teaching practice, the Great Cultural Revolution and two heavy diseases. Miss. Chen had effected on Mr. He's professional choice and his view of students and teaching. The effects of critical incidents are as followings: Firstly, teaching practice changed Mr. He's partial view on knowledge and learning, which made him persist in learning in life. Secondly, the Great Cultural Revolution hampered Mr. He'sprofessional development. Finally, cerebral haemorrhage as one of the two heavy diseases made Mr. He feel the care from his school, which let him work harder, but the other disease forced him to retire earlier. All these effects came from Mr, He's life space that had been overlapped, changed and renewed.The inspirations from the stories of Mr. He are they as follows: 1,Teachers' personal experiences are important to their professional development. 2.Teachers should well deal with the relationship between personal experiences and their professional development. 3.The promoting and the researching of teachers' professional development should take teachers' experiences seriously. The curriculum reform is the critical incident to many teachers, so they should take the opportunities and improve their professional development.