Recovering The Heart Of Teaching: Critical Inquiry Of A Teacher's Professional Life

In China, there are a growing number of in-service teachers in junior and senior middle schools that are overburdened and permanently confront with the severe challenges arising from successfully fulfilling the public demands and external technical measurement of their jobs. They are struggling to maintain the psychic and emotional energy essential to their work rather than connect in the face-to-face, voice-to-voice, and heart-to-heart interactions of the classrooms. Further, a good teacher is often depicted by virtue of certain isolated competencies, such as knowledge, skills, and attitudes, while teachers' identity, their spiritual and emotional integrity are often ignored, due to which many of them have lost their initiatives and commitment to teaching. Their teaching mode is rooted in the exam-driven education system and there is no authenticity in this teaching mode. They play the role of transmitting knowledge and took the illusion of regulation, measurement and control.The school environment in which they work has a significant influence on their professional growth. The conditions of her professional life deny them to have choice and control over their professional life. The community of teachers isn't constituted as a community of practice in their school. When the school culture dismisses inner truth and honors only the external world, the teacher loses heart to teach. They seldom recognize themselves as holders of personal practical knowledge of good teaching. They disconnect from students, from subjects, even from themselves. They built a wall between inner truth and outer performance to minimize the danger. We can see that the teachers are tempted to protect their sense of self behind barricades of status or role, to withhold themselves from colleagues or students. The teacher loses the heart to teach. But before arriving at the resolutions to recovery the heart of teaching, we have to first understand the three following questions: (1) how are our English teachers living their professional life? (2) How do teachers articulate their perception of English language teaching? (3) What theoretical guidance they shall follow in the practice of their professional development?Teacher development has been the important issue in education reform. In the history of education, the orientation of teacher development depends on different understanding as to the nature of education. In response, there are different concepts about the teacher's identity. In a general sense, identity is who-we-are that develops in our minds and in the mind of others as we interact in communities. Through reflection and self-evaluation, one's identity is continually informed, formed and reformed in the daily life through interaction with others. The teacher's identity seems to be closely related to the knowledge she/he acquires. With different types of knowledge, teachers formulate different images of themselves, the knowledge-transmitter with the formal knowledge, and the teacher artist with the personal practical knowledge and the authentic teacher with deep understanding in the world. The authentic teacher values the tacit knowledge, which is born of experience but not the product of purposeful action. Teachers are responsible for guiding students inquiring into this world with authentic souls to realize the goal of education- enriching people's lives. In order to make the conception of authentic teacher clear, we explored Confucius and Zhuangzi's educational thoughts. Knowledge transmitters hold the knowledge full of details yet detached from the teacher's life. These teachers speak endlessly yet empty in words. The authentic teachers hold the great knowledge developed and self-acquired in practice and reflection. They do not instruct and enlighten until students burst with eagerness and bubble with excitement.I conducted in this paper a case study on the professional life of a middle school English teacher by drawing on the literatures so far we have on teachers' professional development. The research methods adopted in the study were case study and narrative inquiry and critical discourse analysis. The paper will supply us with critical way of reflecting on a teacher's professional life. By drawing on Western theories on identity, knowledge and discourse as well as Chinese traditional educational philosophy, I intended to gain a better understanding as to the teachers' professional life, intending it to be the stepstone for us to understand the current situation of teachers' professional development. It is intended to address the current problems and needs of our education.