Case Studies On Professional Development Of Good College English Teachers

Teachers are crucial to education. In the21st century, the perspectives of teacher research have changed from knowledge-based view and behaviorism to the cognitive theory, socio-cultural theory, and phenomenology. These new perspectives of teacher development have become the trend of this research field. In China, exploring English teachers’ development from the socio-cultural perspective is at the infant stage. Although there are a few studies on teacher development from these new perspectives, they seldom concern college English teachers.This case study mainly concerns the process of two teachers’ professional development from the socio-cultural and phenomenological perspectives. It mainly answers three questions:(1) What major professional development stages do the teachers experience? How do their teaching beliefs and practice change at each stage?(2) What are the facilitating or constraining factors that influence the teachers’ professional development in their social contexts?(3) What formal and informal learning approaches do the teachers use to develop themselves? According to research questions, this research adopts case study method and uses four specific instruments to collect data including pre-interview inventory, interviews, classroom observation, and case documents. Then, it uses "triangulation" and "narrative inquiry" methods to summarize the case characteristics and themes, employs Clarke&Hollingsworth’s (2002) the interconnected model of teacher professional growth as the analysis framework to analyze the collected data.The major findings are listed as follows:both teachers experience the exploratory stage, the stable stage and the reassessment stage. Through three stages, their teaching beliefs and teaching practice change correspondingly, from immaturity to maturity, from maturity to creativity. Secondly, social context factors facilitate two teachers’development including good relationship with colleagues and students, effective professional activities, and rich teaching and research resources. While, constraining factors contain passive teacher-student relationship, disappointing teacher appraisal system, limited teacher learning opportunities and challengeable curriculum reform. Thirdly, pre-service teacher education and in-service academic study impel two teachers to combine the teaching theories and teaching practice effectively, which promote their development. Self-directed learning, group professional activities and action research promote the teachers to reflect their teaching continuously, and develop themselves by reflection.This research explores the process of teachers’ professional development, which makes teachers better understand their close relationship with environments and provides effective teacher learning approaches. Moreover, this research can provide some insights to enrich the related research fields.