Teachers’Beliefs In Teacher Professional Development

Since the1980s, themes like "teacher belief","teacher education" and "teacher development" have attracted great research interest from educational field. Teacher professional development has also become one of the central themes of contemporary educational reforms. All English teachers have beliefs in the English language, English teaching, student learning, the role of teachers and students, and teacher professional development. Teachers’ beliefs support teachers’ teaching and guarantee the effectiveness of teaching. The study of teachers’beliefs in teacher professional development (In the present study, teacher professional development refers to the Master of Education Programme) plays a significant role in teachers’teaching practice, the professional development of teachers, and teacher professional development programmes.This study focuses on both pre-service and in-service teachers’ beliefs in teacher professional development. By employing the research method of questionnaire, this study investigates the beliefs in the Master of Education (M.Ed.) Programme held by pre-service and in-service teachers in a normal university of central China, explores the positive and negative beliefs of pre-service and in-service teachers, and makes a comparison of the beliefs of both groups. It attempts to optimize the existing M.Ed. programme thus enables the programme to meet the needs of the professional development of teachers and cultivate more qualified teachers and educational talents.In the questionnaire designed for the research, both open-ended questions and closed multiple-choice questions are employed for data collection. The questionnaire survey, which consists of two parts, is conducted among forty subjects. The first part looks into personal information of the subjects, including their gender, graduate schools, undergraduate majors and in-service teacher seniority, the level of school they work in, and school types they work in. The second part of the survey investigates English teachers’ beliefs in professional development, including four dimensions:teachers’ personal beliefs, beliefs in the organization and management of the English department, beliefs in curriculum content and framework, and beliefs in the influence of the programme. Subjects participated in the survey are divided into two groups. The first group consists of24subjects who are second-year full-time M.Ed. candidates in a normal university in central China, on behalf of pre-service teachers; the subjects in the second group are also full-time M.Ed. candidates from the same university as the first group, on behalf of in-service teachers. The research was conducted in the second year after study in the first year was finished. Therefore teachers would have a comprehensive and thorough judgment of the M.Ed. programme.Based on the comparison and data analysis, this study comes to the following conclusions. Firstly, pre-service and in-service English teachers hold both positive and negative beliefs in the professional development programme. Secondly, beliefs of pre-service and in-service teachers differ, but more beliefs of teachers are alike. Thirdly, the positive and negative beliefs play an important role in the development of teachers as well as the teacher education programme.This article makes an enquiry into a particular area of teachers’ beliefs, which is, teachers’beliefs in their professional development. The empirical study present aims at facilitating pre-service and in-service teachers to develop a clear understanding towards the M.Ed. programme and making up for existing deficiencies in order to improve the quality of teacher professional development programmes to promote teachers’progress and development.