The Exploratory Research On The Professional Identity And Its Affecting Factors Of Beginning English Teachers In Universities

In recent decades, the issue of teachers' professional identity has emerged as a separate research area. Teachers'professional identity relates to teacher-self, being constructed in concrete circumstances and it is an ongoing process.Many researchers in and abroad have focused on teachers'professional identity in the past few decades; however, few of them pay attention to beginning teachers who have worked for one to three years. From the perspective of teachers'career cycle, the present study is going to investigate the beginning teachers'professional identity as well as the factors affecting their professional identity.The present study adopts a questionnaire and an interview to investigate the professional identity and its affecting factors of 74 beginning English teachers in 12 universities in Guangxi. The present study aiming to identify:(1) status quo of beginning English teachers' professional identity, including the overall professional identity and the identity on six dimensions (Professional Competence, Interpersonal Perception, Behavioral Disposition, Relationship with Students, Self-acceptance and Satisfaction); (2) the relationship between teachers'information (gender, age, teaching course, teaching grade, academic degree, years of teaching and weekly class hours) and their professional identity; (3) the affecting factors(Biography and Teaching Context) and teachers'professional identity. The Biography includes two sub-factors: Critical Persons and Prior Education, while the Teaching Context includes Ecology of the Class and School Culture. SPSS13.0 is employed to calculate the quantitative data.The statistical results of the study indicate that:(1) Beginning English teachers possess a high level of overall professional identity. Among the six dimensions, Behavioral Disposition and Satisfaction are at medium levels, and the other four dimensions are at high levels. Beginning English teachers have got the highest level of identity in the dimension of Relationship with Students, and they have got the lowest level of identity in the dimension of Satisfaction.(2) On the relationship between teachers' personal information and their professional identity, statistics show that the seven factors have impact on teachers' professional identity.(3) The relationship between affecting factors and teachers' professional identity shows that both Biography and Teaching Context have influence on beginning English teachers' professional identity. Among the sub-factors, School Culture is the most critical factor in predicting teachers' professional identity.The results indicate that both personal information and the environment have predictive power on teachers' professional identity. Thus, the author proposes five suggestions for teachers and schools in order to construct and reconstruct beginning English teachers' professional identity.The limitations of the present study and the suggestions for future study are also discussed in this study.