Tailor-made Continuing Professional Development For Teachers In Primary And Middle Schools In Britain

The quality of school education has close relation to teacher's quality, and the enhancement of teacher's quality mainly depends on teacher professional development. Since the year of 1980 that teacher professional development was the topic of World Education Yearbook, teacher professional development gradually becomes the focus of people's attention. The British government has paid great attention to in-service teacher professional development since 1970s,it was called In-Service Training at that time,and the training mainly followed the way of"from outside to inside"and"from up to down",which focuses the external supply of training. In 1980s teacher professional development was called In-Service Education and In- Service Education and T raining of Teachers (INSET), group professional status and development were cared more,the primary and middle school became the base of training. After 1990s teacher personal development and professional autonomy were cared more , teacher training is widely called Continuing Professional Development (CPD). Moreover,in order to enhance the effect of CPD,they take actively measures to tailor CPD to meet individual teacher's need. This article describes tailor-made CPD in the UK by analyzing what to tailor, how to tailor, why to tailor and the effect of tailor-made CPD in the UK. The author hopes to seek the valuable measures to improve teacher professional development in China on the basis of analyzing tailor-made CPD in Britain.This article includes five sections: The first section is introduction,which presents the reason to choose this topic and the research situation on the topic in China and foreign countries at present. Moreover,the core and related concepts in this research were introduced in this section. The second section introduces the connotation, the significance and the historical evolution of CPD in Britain. The third section describes the tailor-made CPD by analyzing what to tailor, how to tailor ,why to tailor in the UK. In this section the author tries to analyze why to tailor CPD on the view of the theory of free market, traditional empiricism philosophy, utilitarianism ethics and drive factor. The forth section describes the effect of tailor-made CPD in Britain . Its merits include concerning teacher's need, professional autonomy, career period and practical teaching. At the same time,it also faces some problems, such as: the contradiction of the need of teachers ,school and government; the negative influence of free market on CPD. Moreover,the auther reflects on tailor-made CPD on the view of humanity theory. The last section describes the situation of CPD in China on the basis of the research on teacher professional development in Sichuan province and Henan province. The author gives some suggestions about improving teacher professional development in China.