From Competent To Excellent: Teacher Professional Development Research,

In the late 1990s, Shanghai built a number of experimental and model schools in order to meet the needs of Shanghai becoming a modern international metropolis. The high starting point, high requirement and high quality in running these schools promote the improvement of the level of the basic education in Shanghai. The young teachers growing up with these schools also become mature gradually. Their professional development becomes one of the factors in restrict the development of these schools. Providing guidance to these teachers' professional development will not only promote the development of these schools more rapidly, but also gain experience for teacher training in the future. Therefore, the study of these young teachers' professional development is essential and urgent.With the experimental and model school's--WeiYu High School's teachers' professional development as the investigation objects, this paper explores the strategy of teachers' professional development. It will be divided into five parts.The first part of this paper introduces the background of the research question, the situation of studies in teachers' professional development in China and other countries, and this paper's content, ideas and methods. The second part of this paper which mainly based on the literature is the rationale of this paper. It summarized and made an analytical study of high school teachers' professional development theory, features of qualified teachers and excellent teachers at different stages.The third part analyzed the data from questionnaire survey with the statistics software SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science). It shows that modern educational idea and scientific research writing are two aspects which those teachers have the strongest will to develop. This also provides empirical basis for formulating the strategy of teachers' professional development.The forth part analyzed the two key issues raised in the questionnaire data and interview. The first is that teachers have no direction in their own further development though they have a strong professional identity. The second is that qualified teachers and excellent teachers show significant differences (sig=0.000***<0.001) in scientific research. In view of the issues identified above, the fifth part analyzed and discussed the needs of teachers' professional development. It suggested the strategy of 'peer-coaching' and 'developing in action research' etc. In addition, this paper also provides information for making strategy in school development by team cooperation and virtual practice group with modern technological aides.Teachers' professional development process can be shown numerous form and diverse content, but the core content is 'reflection' and 'cooperation'. When teachers reflect and cooperate consciously in teaching practice, teachers' development to a high stage will become an inevitable tendency.