Investigating Chinese Rural EFL Teachers’Reluctance To Engage In Professional Development

Teacher professional development has attracted great interest of experts of linguistics and education since the1980s. Though numerous studies on teacher professional development could be found in the literature and articles about rural teacher professional development are also on the increase, articles on rural teachers’ attitudes towards teacher professional development are very limited. Thus, a study on rural teachers’attitude to engage in professional development and factors leading to that attitude is urgently needed to be carried out.In this study, questionnaires and interviews were employed to conduct a survey on57rural teachers to investigate their willingness to engage in the teacher professional development and the contributing factors. In order to make the findings impartial, interviews were conducted with three of the school-level administrators to get further insights.The study shows the teachers’ reluctance to engage in teacher professional development and highlights four major factors:(1) the societal factors: low salary and social status;(2) the school factors:the difficult working conditions and constrained resources, pressure from students’moral education and leaders’"check-ups", limited learning opportunities and the lack of a sound teacher evaluation system;(3) the teachers’ challenges in teaching:the large classes and difficulty in managing the students and finally (4) the teacher factors, including the low quality of the teachers; the conflict between family and career and the stability in the profession and family,Based on the findings and the realities in rural areas, some implications are offered by the author. For the state, it should focus on the financial incentives and an increase of development and training budget for rural teachers to attract more qualified and willing teachers there. Besides, professional development centers should be established there to offer more opportunities for the rural teacher. For the school, administrators should recruit teachers from the local community, organize more school-based training programmes and give teachers more positive feedback and recognition and organize activities involving parents and students as well. Last but not least, teachers should be aware of the significance of coping strategies and conduct more self-directed teacher professional development.