A Study Of Professional Development Of Foreign Language Teacher From The Perspective Of Reflective Teaching

In recent years, teacher education has changed its focal point from a concern on what to teach and how to teach in terms of contents and methodology of teachers' professional development. With the development of English education reform in China, the problem of professional development of foreign language teacher is becoming more and more urgent. The present circumstance of the professional development of foreign language teacher in China is not satisfactory and the social needs cannot be met. Some of foreign language teachers'professional developments (TPD) are in the pattern of experience accumulation. On the one hand, parts of the foreign language teachers do not have strong awareness of self-development, or they do not know how to develop themselves even though they have the awareness. On the other hand, there are some disadvantages in foreign language teacher education in China, for example, paying too much attention to teaching theoretical knowledge to the trainees and neglecting their knowledge background and the practical knowledge which they have already acquired.The professional development of foreign language teacher refers to the dynamic process of unceasingly developing and improving the professional knowledge, skills, qualities and brieî–¹ystem of foreign language teachers under the mechanism of teacher education through continuous learning and reflection. In the process, the foreign language teachers took their self-development awareness as a driving force. In accordance with the thesis, foreign language teachers promote their own professional development from the following four aspects:to improve their self-awareness and self-observation, to make themselves learn and research, to make themselves change in teaching beliefs and practice, and to make themselves integrate their educational theories and teaching practice.There are a lot of approaches to enhance the professional development of foreign language teacher, such as school-based training, developing evaluation of teacher, and reflective teaching (RT). At present, both at home and abroad, reflective teaching has caused more and more attention of people and has become an effective approach to develop foreign language teachers because it has the features of its activeness, effectiveness, situation and feedback etc. of making teachers more active in education, solving practical problems in teaching and adjusting teaching so as to make teaching more effective and achieve better teaching results. Compared to the operative teaching, reflective teaching can make teachers more active in teaching and motivate their professional development awareness. Its essence is to form their own teaching theories, to improve their teaching and to develop their professional competence by means of reflection. It makes them develop themselves from spontaneously to consciously, helps them bring about better results of study of their students, and finally develops the students and themselves.Through reviewing and critically analyzing the traditional teaching, the thesis makes theoretical study of the reflective teaching and professional development of foreign language teacher, and lists the effects of reflective teaching on professional development of foreign language teacher. There are not systematic theories of professional development of foreign language teacher and of reflective teaching in China at present. Therefore, further study should be made on the concrete operation methods and assessing system of reflective teaching. It is also expected to make further study of more effective and practical approaches to develop foreign language teachers in China.