A Case Study Of College English Teachers’ Professional Development

The deepening of College English education reform makes college Englishteachers face more challenges and higher expectations. How to be a professionalcollege English teacher has become a hot topic in college English teaching reform.Thus, it is significant to study the professional development of experienced collegeEnglish teachers. Moreover, college English teaching reform aims to promoteeffective teaching activities, and motivate students’ English development. CollegeEnglish teachers play crucial roles in this part. However, for a long time, collegeEnglish teachers’ training just focused on teachers’ teaching skills without enoughattention on teachers’ professional development.This thesis aims at exploring the professional qualities in the process of theseexperienced teachers’ professional development, and the ways of how they achieveprofessionalism. The subjects of this study are three ELT teachers in the school offoreign languages in Shenyang Normal University. Two instruments have beenemployed in order to make the paper valid and credible: pre-interview inventory, andsemi-structured interview.The study finds that all these professional college English teachers experienceda continuous and reflective learning through informal activities such as imitating rolemodels and self-teaching, and formal professional programs such as group lessonplanning and advanced studies at home or abroad. Contextual factors affectexperienced teachers’ learning and development strongly. As for contextual factors such as interpersonal, institutional, and social relationships, they all respondedappropriately. Positive beliefs also guide experienced teachers’ learning anddevelopment.