Teacher Educator And Teacher Autonomy

Teacher education plays a very important role in English teaching. In the 1990's, the elementary English teaching in China began a new age. Implementation of qualification education, promulgation of Full Time Junior Secondary School English Syllabus for 9-year Compulsory Education and adoption of new coursebook published by China and the U.K jointly raise a great challenge to teachers' qualification in secondary schools. Therefore, innovation of teacher education is the key point to the development of English teaching.From the view of pedagogy, the object of foreign language teaching is the human being. Since the pedagogic object is concrete and changeable, there is no scientific method suitable for all objects and the object in different period. But at present, many teachers' colleges and universities have still adopted teacher training stressing on training discrete and immutable teaching skills. This model, which treats the student teacher as passive recipient, does not follow the development of modern education. The goal of teacher education is to foster teacher autonomy of future teacher, that is, the ability of teacher professional self-development. Teacher education emphasizes to give full play to the student teachers initiative and to develop individual professional competence so that the student teacher can suit the changing teaching objects and environment. Hence, Liu Runqing (1996) states that "From a long-term point of view, teacher education, whose content is wide, is much more effective than teacher training, which just focuses on teaching skills."The teacher educator is the most important and active factor in teacher education. Under the condition which there is no innovation to curriculum and no special syllabus for teachers' colleges and universities in the whole country, the teacher educator should fully play his important role. Facing the new content of teacher education, it is necessary that the teacher educator reconsider the role relationship between the teacher educator and the student teacher and the roles which they take in teacher education.