Research On Professional Development For Wulanchabu Secondary EFL Teachers In The Context Of New Curriculum Reform

With the rapid development of economic globalization and information and technology,English plays a very important role in international affairs.Since China entered WTO and successfully held the 2008 Olympic Games,English has been paid more and more attention.This is an opportunity as well as a great challenge for education development.In order to grasp the opportunity,meet the challenge and promote the education development,it is necessary to foster advanced qualified teachers.At the same time,with the education development,teacher development has been a worldwide subject and the idea that a teacher is treated as a specialized profession is a worldwide revolution,so teachers' professional development has been an urgent task.In the early 21^st century,the new education reform began which set a great demand for a teacher's quality,which is also not only a great challenge for EFL teachers for their professional ability,but also a great opportunity for them to develop themselves.In the context of the curriculum reform,whether teachers can conduct such tasks depends on their continuous study in order to adapt themselves to different teaching objectives,local conditions,students' different needs and varieties of pedagogical beliefs and methods.Therefore,to improve the teachers' overall qualifications is much more urgent than ever,especially for those teachers in the western ethnic minority regions and border areas where the economy is less developed and education quality is widely recognized to have lagged behind other regions of the country.Through this paper,the author aims to probe into the status quo of Wulanchabu secondary EFL teachers professional development in the context of the new curriculum reform,explore some effective approaches to promote local English teachers' professional development.ChapterⅠis the Introduction which describes the background,objectives and the overall design of the study.ChapterⅡis Literature Review which defines the meaning of teacher professional development and compares both terms which are teacher training and teacher education.At the same time,it reviews some theories like lifelong learning etc.and provides some new ideas of EFL(English as a Foreign Language) teachers' professional development in the context of New English Curriculum Standard.ChapterⅢis the main part of the study,concerning about the subjects and procedure,main methods of the study and the study results and analysis. The subjects are 175 English teachers from 10 different secondary schools in Wulanchabu.The main methods used in the study are questionnaires,interviews and classroom observations.The problems of the teachers' professional development are analyzed in this research paper.With the results of the questionnaire,interviews and classroom observations of the EFL teachers of secondary schools,the author has found some problems,such as,out-of-date teaching beliefs and teaching strategies, low educational background,deficiency of language proficiency and research ability. ChapterⅣ,according to the results of the ChapterⅢ,are the author's suggestions—approaches to secondary EFL teachers' professional development which are self-learning,reflection,observation and School-Based Teacher Training.Chapter V is the conclusion drawn based on the author's research study,and at the same time,the limitations of the study will also be revealed.