Team Teaching And Professional Development Of College English Teachers

Teacher professional development has always been a hot issue in recent years. It is necessary to enhancecollege English teachers’ quality in order to improve college English teaching quality. In terms of teacherprofessional development, most college English teachers have put great emphasis on self-learning andpractice-reflection model through which teacher quality can be promoted. These models center on developing byteachers themselves. In fact, teachers’ cooperation is also an effective way to promote teacher development.According to the researches of professional cooperation made both at abroad (Bauwens and Hourcade,1997) andhome (Wang Tan,2002), teacher professional cooperation has been regarded as an important means in improvingteachers’ development. However, the importance of teachers’ professional cooperation is not well recognized bymost Chinese college English teachers. Team teaching, as a typical model of cooperative teaching, is good tocoordinate teacher resources and make teachers mutually complement by making use of their differentadvantages.This research attempts to investigate the general situation of team teaching in college English teaching fromthe aspect of teacher professional development and analyze its causes and contributions to teacher professionaldevelopment. The subjects of the survey include110college English teachers from three universities in Lanzhou.The investigation covers the general situation of professional development and team teaching of college Englishteachers and their knowledge and attitudes to team teaching. The author involves a team teaching practice withtwo English teachers. Through interviews and teacher journals, data are collected so as to explore factorsaffecting team teaching and impacts on teacher professional development. The results from the questionnaireindicate that college English teachers have limited knowledge about team teaching; the models of team teachingmainly focuses on some traditional forms including cooperative lesson planning and classroom observation,followed by cooperative problem-solving and teaching and research activities. In-class cooperative teaching isnot accepted widely by the majority of college English teachers. The interviews and teacher journals explorefactors affecting team teaching and impacts on teacher professional development. These factors includespersonal differences in age and gender, personality, communication styles and some objective factors, such asthe heavy workload and administrative supports, and the lack of teacher training, etc. Most college Englishteachers can recognize the benefits brought by team teaching in terms of promoting college English teaching andteacher professional development. The analytical results of the research data also showed that the team teachersbenefited from team teaching in three aspects: teaching skills; development of partnership; and development ofprofessional identity. This paper can be divided into five parts: The first part is an introduction to the background of the research, the significance and outline of theresearch.The second part is literature review which introduces the related concepts on teacher professionaldevelopment and team teaching. It also reviews relevant researches of team teaching home and abroad.The third part is the theoretical foundation. Firstly, from theories of teacher professional development thispart indicates that team teaching plays the critical role in promoting teacher professional development. Based ongroup dynamics, social interdependence and social constructivism theory, the group cooperation and socialinteraction advocate the realization of teaching goals and improving self-development. All these theories providetheoretical foundation for the team teaching in college English teaching.The fourth part covers the research procedure, the data collection and analysis. The questionnaire investigatesthe general situation of professional development and team teaching of college English teachers and theirknowledge and attitudes to team teaching. The interviews and teacher journals explore factors affecting teamteaching and impacts on teacher professional development.The final part is conclusion. Major findings are concluded and the research questions are answered anddiscussed. Then the pedagogical implications gained from this investigation are discussed in hoping that theymight be helpful in guiding the follow-up studies. Finally, it points out the research limitations and makesrecommendations for future research.