A Study Of The Correlations Between Motivation, Anxiety And EFL Teacher Professional Development In Senior Middle Schools

As a new trend of teacher education, teacher professional development has received great attention in recent years. It is an ongoing process of teacher growth involving knowledge building and competence development. Teachers are required to be autonomous leaners and progress as professionals through lifelong learning about the teaching profession. The professional development of EFL teachers in China contributes to the improvement of EFL teachers’teaching knowledge and classroom instruction, and the enhancement of students’English learning outcome. Evidence shows that learners’ affective states have an influence on their ability to focus on learning. Thus, the professional learning of EFL teachers as learning individuals must be affected by their affective states. However, there are few studies discussing the effects of affective variables on the professional development of EFL teachers in China.The purpose of the study is to explore the potential relationship between two main affective factors:teacher anxiety and motivation and professional development of EFL teachers in senior middle schools with approaches of questionnaires and a semi-structured interview with teachers. Three five-point Likert scales are employed in the quantitative study of the thesis to investigate the general level of anxiety, motivation, and professional development of EFL teachers in senior middle schools respectively. In the qualitative analysis, a semi-structured interview is adopted to discuss EFL teachers’ affective states when participate in professional learning activities in depth and in details.The results of the empirical study reveal that EFL teachers’teaching anxiety has a significant negative correlation with their work motivation, pedagogical content knowledge and professional development. Meanwhile, EFL teachers’work motivation is positively correlated with their pedagogical content knowledge and professional development. That is, affective factors of EFL teachers keep a dynamic and interactive relationship with cognitive factors of teacher professional development. In addition, there are gender differences in degrees of anxiety and motivation that EFL teachers have. Female English teachers are more subject to the feeling of anxiety in teaching than male English teachers. And male English teachers have higher levels of work motivation than female English teachers. However, such differences are not notable in English teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. Finally, the general level of teacher work motivation indicates that the majority of English teachers in senior middle schools have reached the mature stage of stabilization from the novice level in professional growth, for duty and relation motivation, rather than survival and power motivation, become the most important factors that drive English teachers to teach and participate in professional development.According to the major findings of the study, implications are provided as follows in order to promote professional development of EFL teachers in senior middle schools: enhancing teachers’understanding of professional development, providing opportunities for peer learning and collaboration with colleagues, and strengthening teachers’ motivation to attend professional development.