The Status Quo Of EFL Teachers’ Professional Development At Primary And Secondary Schools In Rural Areas

The Reform of New Curriculum has pushed the EFL teachers’ professionaldevelopment to the forefront, and one of the key issues of the EFL teachers’professional development in China is that the professionalization of the teachers inrural areas for they have taken up more than half of the whole group of EFL teachers.This current study takes the primary and secondary EFL teachers in rural areas insouthern Jiangxi as samples, applying the method of literature review, empirical study,statistic analysis and related statistics comparision, to investigate the status quo of theobjects’ professional development. The detailed statistics and analysis could be ofsupport to further study in this field.The samples are primary and secondary EFL teachers who participated theNational Training Programme for souther Jiangxi EFL teachers. This current study iscomposed mainly of the survey of the status quo of the primary and secondary EFLteachers in rural areas. The survey consists of questionaires of five dimensions:perisonal information, learning strategies and time management, working context,PCK interests and understanding level, and professional obstacles andcountermeasures.Survey results suggest that:1) the samples tend to be younger and more femalein formation;2) the variable of objects’ professional title is similar to that of therelated literature, but the match-majored percentage is much better than that of easternHenan, Longnan and Lanzhou;3) more than half of the objects write post-teachingjournals, but they have not formed systemetic reflective practice. The reflectivepractice form they choose is of relatively lower form;4) the status quo of essayspublished, projects undertaken, academic literature reading and borrowing is awful;5)the computer and internet situation in the objects’ working place is bad while that ofliving place is positive more than90%. However, the percentage of using computerand internent to facilitate learning and working is very much low;6) the forms ofprofessional development are plentiful, while few of them received good comments.With statistic analysis comes the following conclusions:1) the influence ofvariables of basic information was over-estimated;2)the key of reflection practice lies not on its frequency but on its forms;3) promoting teaching capacity of the objectsmay conflict with the their improvement of researching accomplishment;4) there aredrawbacks in title evaluation system;5) EFL teachers’s professional developmentforms are plentiful, but the effective and expected forms are rare. To further developthe effective forms and expanded the utilization of them can ultimately promote thesamples’ professional development.