A Study Of Mathematics Teachers' Professional Development

The teacher's professional development, which is characterized by improving teachers' inner professional quality and professional practice, has become the central topic of teachers' specialization and is gradually becoming the focus people attach importance to and one of central issues among contemporary educational reform. The implementation of quality education in mathematics and spreading of new mathematical curriculum in our country set an even higher demand on mathematical teacher's professional quality. But the present situation is that mathematics teachers can not meet the demands. Consequently, it is urgent to study how to improve mathematics teachers' professional quality.On the basis of former relevant study, the paper explores a new structure of mathematical teacher's professional quality, which consists of mathematics teachers' beliefs, knowledge, abilities, professional morality and self-awareness of professional development, and each of them is composed of some sub-items..Then, based on the structure, 115 mathematical teachers in service were chosen as subjects of the study to investigate how they improve their professional quality by means of questionnaire. Investigation data was analyzed with SPSS 11.0 and the results were the following:1. Mathematical teachers mainly obtain knowledge and ability relating to teaching (including general teaching knowledge, mathematics teaching knowledge, practical knowledge of teaching and mathematics teaching abilities) through three channels: their teaching experience and rethinking of the experience, communication with colleagues and visiting other teachers' classes;2. What contribute most to teachers' general knowledge and basic abilities are their experience as a student, and experience as a teacher and rethinking of the experience;3. Their experience as a student, and experience as a teacher and rethinking of the experience also make greatest contributions to mathematical teachers' belief, professional knowledge, mathematical abilities and professional morality.4. Mathematical teachers' teaching experience and rethinking of the experienceare the most important channels for the teachers to obtain research abilities, creative ability and self-awareness of professional development. In addition, "reading professional books " also plays an important role.5. Mathematical teacher's sex has no remarkable effect on their evaluation about different channel's contribution to the improvement of professional quality. But teaching period, professional titles and diploma have notable effect on their evaluation.