A Case Study On The Effect Of Distance Blended Learning On The Development Of Rural Junior Middle School English Teachers’ Classroom Reflective Ability

Teacher professional development, which was proposed in the1980s, has received common concernsin educational field worldwide after twenty years theoretical and practical exploration, and is becoming themainstream in teacher educational reform. With the implementation of curriculum reform and theapplication of information technology in educational area, the requirements of teachers’ quality have beenincreasingly concerned. Therefore, many scholars begin to pay much attention to the using of informationtechnology and the web resources to promote teacher professional development.There is a wide variety of ways to foster reflection for pre-and in-service teachers’ professionaldevelopment. Reflective teaching has caused more and more attention of people at present and has becomean effective approach to develop foreign language teachers’ qualities both at home and abroad because ithas the effects of making teachers more active in education, solving practical problems in teaching andadjusting teaching so as to make teaching more effective and achieve better teaching results. It is essentialto form their own teaching theories, to improve their teaching and to develop their professionalcompetence by means of reflection.Blended learning is the mixture and combination of all the methodologies, learning methods, teachingresources, and teaching media, and is to provide the learners with suitable contents in convenient time,through right teaching strategies and appropriate teaching media. Distance blended learning allows for thepossibility of teacher professional programs to be based in schools and to provide opportunities for teachersto share and reflect on their practice. The on-line component of blended learning can provide teachersaccess to different context in which they can learn.The author carried out the present study on the basis of the theories on teacher professionaldevelopment, blended learning, constructivism and reflective teaching. The purpose of this study is tofigure out how blended learning influences the reflective ability of rural middle school English teachers.The research questions are:(1) Can distance blended learning help rural junior middle school Englishteachers promote their classrrom reflective ability?(2) In what aspects do teachers reflect their teaching indistance blended learning (reflection of teaching strategies, reflection of learners, reflection of teachers’roles)? There are two subjects in this study. The instruments applied for data collection are questionnaire,interview, classroom observation, and teaching logs.The results showed that distance blended learning could improve the reflection ability of rural junior middle school English teachers. And the teachers paid much attention on the aspects of teaching strategies,learners, and the roles of teachers. During learning, both of the subjects showed positive attitudes towarddistance blended learning, and this kind of learning mode promoted teachers’ reflection on classroomteaching and personal teaching experiences. By comparison, the experienced teacher took morecomprehensive thinking than the novice teacher in reflecting teaching contents. Due to the time restrictionand practical situations, this study has some limitations. Part of the findings relied on self-reportingresearch instruments. Data accuracy thus depends on the truthfulness of the respondent and his willingnessto provide accurate information. The role of the teacher is the essence to the quality of online learning.Without strong backgrounds in online experience and any extra compensation for extra work, that mightaffect the subjects’ willingness to get fully involved in the implementation of the blended learningapproach.