Attributions Andapproaches For English Teachers’ Professional Development In High Schools

English is an important tool for further study like studying abroad and internationalcommunications. With the world’s largest population of English learners, nearly200millionprimary and middle school students are learning English. English-learning becomes more andmore heated. English education has received doubts repeatedly about“high input and lowoutput”, thus causing its reform for the national primary schools like a raging fire. Englishteachers’ professional development in middle schools is directly related to the quality ofEnglish education, taking on its stimulation of professional development.The testing phenomenon for the current English teaching in the middle schools existsgenerally, ignorant of the training and nurturing for students’ English acquisition ability,learning strategies, affective attitudes and cultural awareness. With the new Englishcurriculum standard carried out from2000on, the power for English new curriculum reformincreased ceaselessly, and new English teaching materials for middle schools and newteaching methods occurred constantly, offering opportunities and challenges for theirprofessional development. Their concept of education, view of language and languageteaching should be improved. They need to take effective ways to adapt to the demands ofnew curriculum standard, improve their professional attainment, occupation accomplishmentand business knowledge based on the facts, circumstantially differing from man to man, andexplore various development approaches with classified teachers’ education, realizing themass professional development for urban and rural English teachers in middle schools.The thesis is divided into six parts: problems put forward and its research significance,research overviews of teachers’ professional development, the situation investigation andanalysis for it, a comparative case study for the professional development of perfect Englishteachers between urban and rural middle schools, the strategies and suggestion for improvingtheir professional development, research conclusion and discussion. It explores theconnotation of professional development, internal and external attributions through the overallreviews of the middle-school English teachers’ education, research into middle-schoolEnglish teachers’ professional development situation, as well as the existing problems throughinterviews and questionnaires, and puts forward effective strategies for high-school Englishteachers’ individual professional development and classified education for mass professionaldevelopment via two comparative case research into provincial leveled middle-school Englishteachers’ professional development between urban and rural area.The purpose of this thesis is put forward its relevant professional development approachesand strategies via the research into the theories of middle-school English teachers’professional development and the representative practice cases, leading to the situation wheremiddle-school English teachers promote their teaching practice based on the theory of theprofessional development and realize individual professional development and massprofessional development, while providing some theoretic and practical support for theapplication of the teachers’ educational theory in the middle-school English education.