A Narrative Inquiry Into Critical Incidents Of Expert English Teachers' Professional Development At Middle Schools

Teachers are at the heart of the education reform. They play a more and more important role in the development of the education. Teacher professional development has its own personal characteristics which imply that the teachers integrate their emotion, concepts and experiences with the general theories, in which the critical incidents play an important role.This research employs narrative inquiry to investigate what critical incidents happened in the process of the three expert English teachers'professional development and explore the nature of their professional development. Through the reseach, the expert English teachers are given the chances to talk about their critical incidents, which help them reflect on their teaching experience and develop their professional development much further. At the same time, these critical incidents may set up resonance in other teachers'heart and they can learn from the critical incidents and get a deeper understanding about the expert English teachers'behaviors and thought. The data are collected through the interviews with the expert English teachers, the e-mails, the writing journals and the class observations.The critical incidents which the three expert English teachers mentioned are mainly the incidents which happened in their professional lives, which can be sorted into four categories-professional learning, professional competition and the open class, the critical incidents in the teaching practice and assistance of the critical persons. They are the turning points of their professional development, which provide the teachers with the opportunities of reflection of the educational and teaching concepts, renewal of the professional abilities and enhancement of the professional emotion in their professional development. The excellent personality characteristics are the inner force of their professional development, which consists of persistent learning, professional enthusiasm and reflective thinking.The thesis includes six chapters. In the first chapter, a general introduction is presented, which consists of the origin, the aims, and the significance. Chapter Two is a review of literature mainly on expert teacher professional development and critical incidents. In Chapter Three, the research methodology is mentioned, which consists of research questions, research participants, research methods, data collection and data analysis. And then some narrative accounts of the three expect English teachers are presented in Chapter Four. Chapter Five consists of two parts. The first part is about the categories of the critical incidents. The second part is the analysis of the characteristics of the expert English teachers'professional development. There is a conclusion in Chapter Six which includes the major findings, some suggestions and limitations.