A Study On Rural Junior Middle School English Teachers' Professional Development In Hubei Province

The rapid development of foreign language education and its reform in depth in China requires teachers to seek professional development in order to keep pace with the times. Currently, the overall quality of foreign language teaching staff in compulsory education stage needs to be improved, especially in the vast rural areas where English teachers' professional level is relatively low. It's a great challenge for them to adapt to the requirements of the compulsory education reform. Though with an education advantage, Hubei province also faces the plight of compulsory English teaching staff problems. She has an urgent need to take the teachers through professional development, and improve the professional level of teachers as well as the compulsory English education in rural areas In this study, theoretical and empirical methods are combined to conduct a survey on rural junior middle school English teachers' professional development in Hubei province.This thesis is composed of five parts:ChapterⅠintroduces the research background as well as the purposes and significances of this study, reviews related research results and progress at home and abroad, then defines the main content and research methods of this study.ChapterⅡoutlines the theoretical basis of teachers' professional development and defines the content of junior middle school English teachers' professional development based on the content of foreign language teachers' professional development. That is, junior middle school English teachers need to achieve their professional development from four aspects like professional belief, professional knowledge, professional competence, and self-development consciousness.ChapterⅢsamples the rural junior middle school English teacher trainees in Hubei province in 2010 and carries out an in-depth survey of teachers' gender ratio, age structure, seniority structure, title structure, educational structure, discipline structure and other basic conditions. Then it presents the survey results from five aspects including the situations of teachers' professional emotion and attitude, professional knowledge, professional competence and professional development activities.ChapterⅣfirstly summarizes the major problems of rural junior middle school English teachers' professional development in Hubei Province, including the following five aspects:the vague professional belief, the barren knowledge, the weak professional competence, the poor self-development awareness and narrow professional development paths. Then it analyzes the causes of these problems in two aspects of teachers'individual factors and external environmental factors.ChapterⅤproposes countermeasures to promote rural junior middle school English teachers' professional development. They are building self -cooperation-training trinity model of development to promote their self-development; and meanwhile, taking measures from the aspects of both schools and the society to optimize the external environment for professional development of junior middle school English teachers in rural areas.