Investigation And Study Of The Professional Development Of Rural Junior Middle School History Teachers

"Without the assistance and active participation of teachers or against the will of teachers,the education reforms have never been successful", United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization points out that the teacher is one of the three key elements of successful education reform when summing up the experiences of education reform(Wang Bo,2009)." Therefore, developing the professional development of teachers, especially the history teachers, is the most important thing under the background of new curriculum reform. As for history teaching in rural junior middle school, the situation becomes worse for these reasons. First, history is not one of the main three subjects in the entrance examination of senior high school, so People don’ t know the importance of it enough. Second, the ignorance of history teaching staff and history teacher training brings about many disadvantages such as too many un-professional history teachers, the aging teachers’ knowledge structure, lack of the professional ability and son on. These disadvantages make it impossible to meet the national requirements of this kind of curriculum. Since history cross the two knowledge areas of "Humanities and society" and "science", it plays an great important role in cultivating the students’ consciousness of historical practice and exploration, even setting up the correct outlook of life and world view. Therefore, developing the history curriculum, especially improving the professional ability, not only meets the standard of curriculum, but also become an effective means to promote all-round development of students.This research takes rural junior middle school in Enshi City, Hubei Province as a case. Enshi, the capital of Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, is a poverty-stricken mountainous area and minority nationality region; Enshi faces the serious challenge of uneven development and the weak compulsory education. Through the investigation and interview of67history teachers’professional situation at19rural junior middle school in Enshi, the author has known the difficulties when they develop their professional ability, and has put forward some practicable suggestions based on correlative theories and the actual situation. The author concentrates on this research in order to improve the overall quality of history teachers in rural junior high schools, and even make some practical and useful work to improve the teachers’ professional attainment in the whole province.This thesis consists of four partsThis article, in its introduction, tried to present the research status, significance of theory and practice, and literature review.The second part is detailed research. At first the author draws up the initial questionnaire according to the four aspects of teacher’s professional development, the previous study and some interview of history teachers. And then, the author implements the preliminary investigation and modifies the questionnaire. At last, the formal questionnaire is determined and carried out in the research, In this part, the author introduces the objects, research tools and methods of the investigation. The data collected the valid questionnaire was statistically and correlatively analyzed and estimated.The third part is discussion of the research. In the part, the author sums up the results of the research. The author concludes many problems. The low quality of the whole rural history, the low level of education, the inaccurate professional idea, a lack of solid foundation for professional knowledge, the weak professional skills and the professional attachment are all due to the current problems.The last part is countermeasures and suggestions. The author puts forward some constructive suggestions such as forming correct and advanced professional idea, enhancing the correlation mechanism of teachers training, improving the teacher’s professional attainment feasibly, changing the internal and external environment of teacher’s professional development and improving the teacher’s professional affection. All these suggestions are expected to play positive roles in the professional development of history teachers in rural junior schools.