A Survey Of Rural Primary School English Tcachcrs’ Professional Development

With the deepening of education reform, the development of basic English education inrural areas received extensive attention. For rural primary schools, the English teaching quality isdirectly related to the English teachers’ professional development level. The country needs arural education team with high-quality, however, the rural teachers’ professional levels are farfrom being able to meet the needs of the development of education. So, the state vigorouslydevelops rural education. The key to developing the rural education is to improve theprofessional quality of rural teachers and to promote the professional development of teachers,thus enhancing the entire teaching level. After doing a survey, I found that: The theoreticalresearch of domestic scholars on the professional development of teachers in rural areas mostlyconcentrates on high school teachers, or just consider the ideal level of teachers’ professionaldevelopment as a developmental goal for other teachers. The real situation of primary schoolEnglish education in the rural areas is that teachers’ conception of education falls far behind andteaching cannot be timely reflected. Those problems seriously hampered the rural primary schoolEnglish teachers’ professional development. So strengthening the rural primary school Englishteachers’ professional development is of great significance in helping all levels of educationdepartments to actively take measures to improve the professional standards of the rural primaryschool English teachers, to solve the difficulties in the new English curriculum implementation,and to improve the effectiveness of the implementation of the rural primary school Englishcurriculum and the quality of China’s basic education.After reading the relevant research literature, learning the definition and stages ofprofessional development of teachers, the knowledge of the structure of the teaching profession,teachers’ professional development mode, approaches, policies and management, foreignlanguage teachers professional development, etc., the focus of the present study is on theprofessional development status of68English teachers from47primary schools in HantingDistrict, Weifang City. Based on the questionnaires disseminated to those primary school Englishteachers, I conducted a survey on the basic structure of the teachers teaching situation, theprofessionalism of teachers, teachers’ pre-service and in-service training situation. The study isbased on three major theories, i.e., the constructivism learning theory, sociology of educationtheory, and reflective teaching theory. I analyzed the basic structure of those teachers from thefollowing aspects: gender, age, seniority, qualifications, job title, and disciplinary structure, andalso from four dimensions: working hours, student numbers in their classes, other workload besides English teaching, and job satisfaction. The professional standards of teachers includeEnglish pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary, grammar, and understanding of the language,the use of flexible teaching methods. And the pre-service and in service training situationincludes training time, training methods, and the function of training on their professionaldevelopment. Survey shows: there exist many problems in the teaching of English and theprofessional development of rural primary school English teachers, among which the lack of theawareness of professional development and an effective approach to development are theimportant bottleneck in restricting the development of primary school English teachers. In orderto solve these problems and promote the professional development of teachers, we shouldchange our stereotyped ideas and improve teachers’ cognitive level and theoretical quality,construct the general pattern of the rural primary school English teachers’ professionaldevelopment, and improve the security system to guarantee rural primary school Englishteachers’ professional development. It is hoped that the study can be of some significance inimproving the professional standards of the rural primary school English teachers and promotethe development of China’s rural primary school English education.