Exploring The Practice Of English Open Class In Rural High Schools In Fujian Province: A Case Study

With the further implementation of the New Curriculum Reform, it poses immense challenges on English teachers and demands their continual development as they are the agents for implementing the new ideas. Nowadays more and more educational researchers and experts have come to realize that the best way of teacher development for middle school teachers, especially in the rural areas is to do research situated within real classrooms with teachers confronting real problems in the classroom teaching. Open Class is frequently held in China as a demonstration of a teacher's pedagogical skill and a means for teacher development. But due to a lack of theoretical support and practical research, phenomena of various alienations and misunderstandings about it emerged, which impeded teachers'development to a certain extent. Under this background, by drawing on the theories of classroom observation and teacher development, this study intends to attain a better understanding of the status quo and teachers'perceptions on Open Class in RHSs. Specifically, this paper attempts to ask:1) how Open Class in RHSs is carried out; 2) how the English Teachers in RHSs view Open Class; 3) what are the problems existing in Open Class; 4) what factors hinder the successful implementation of Open Class.The present researches on Open Class mainly focus on its types, significance, problems and the strategies on how to solve these problems. And these researches are not thorough and systematical and few of them are related to English subject, especially concerning RHSs. Furthermore, most of the articles on it are just forefront teachers'criticism to it and lack theoretical bases. So in order to explore the characteristics of Open Class which are conducive to teachers'professional development, such as reflective, collaborative and constructive, this thesis first claims that the theory of Community of Practice (COP), Adult Learning Theory (ALT), Social Constructivism Theory and Reflective Theory serve as the theoretical bases of Open Class.This thesis attempts to gain an in-depth exploration into the Open Class practice in RHSs, so the author employed qualitative research and case study for data collection and analysis. During her progress of data gathering from May to September of 2009, the author tried to get herself inyolved in their Open Class practice to get as many data as possible by various means like participation observation, interviews, documents concerning it from the files distributed to Dean's Office and the teaching and research office(TRO).The study finds that there exists a severe formalism in Open Class in RHSs. Although the regulations and the procedures on Open Class are reasonable, systematical and scientific, most activities are not carried out according to the regulations. The school authority doesn't have effective management in the Open Class practice. Teachers'level of positive attitude towards it is less encouraging. They view it as a kind of formalization and conduct it just as a task to be completed perfunctorily. Teachers wish Open Class is primarily for teachers'professional development, but they perceive the staff appraisal as the primary purpose in practice. During the practice of Open Class, there exist many problems. Before Open Class, teachers lack collaboration among them and have no purposefulness for observation. During observation, teachers have no strong awareness of research and don't know the skills on how to conduct classroom observation scientifically for research purposes. Additionally, teachers haven't fully understood the spiritual essence of the Course Standard of the New Curriculum and most teachers'reflection level is low. After observation, teachers haven't fully realized the great significance of the feedback discussion and they seldom point out the shortcomings of the open lesson, which results in a severe formalization in it. Moreover, feedbacks are not provided timely after observation. Based on the results above and detained analysis, the author explored and analyzed the factors that influence its implementation and teachers' perceptions on it as follows:backward administrative management, teachers'low awareness of TPD and capacity of research, isolationist culture in the school, lack of good understanding of the new English Curriculum Standards, lack of funds and incentive measuresThis thesis ventures to provide an alternative way of understanding the Open Class practice. Meanwhile, it illuminates new perspective for investigating Open Class and teacher education in rural areas. Further improvement in terms of research methods and data analysis is needed in future studies.