A Study Of The Impact Of School-based Education On Teachers’professional Identity Of Tuition-free Normal English Majors

In order to improve the overall quality of the teaching force and narrow the gap of teaching resources between the Midwest and the developed area, in 2007. the Education Ministry announced to implement the Tuition-free Normal Students policy within its affiliated six normal universities. With the purpose of cultivating excellent normal students to contribute to the teaching career of our motherland, they need first fall in love with this teaching job, then realize the meaningfulness and responsibility of teaching from its professional value, so at last they are able to devote themselves into the teaching profession positively and initiatively. However, the standard to measure their willingness and devotion is the Teachers’ Professional Identity.Teachers’ professional identity is the extension of professional identity in the field of education. It is the positive assessment in teachers’ inner heart towards the teaching profession, influenced by the factors like individual, environment, and the profession itself, etc. School-based education is a quite important experience of study and pre-teaching before normal students formally stepped into the teaching profession and it is also the most significant part of pre-service teaching education. This paper mainly-deal with the impact that school-based education may have on the teachers’ professional identity of tuition-free normal English majors. The author switched the eyes on the English major students, not only for the English subject has its particular characteristics, but also for both the nation and the individuals pay close attention on it. They, as the future English teaching force members, naturally become the research subjects of the paper. The author divides the school-based education into three parts:curriculum setting, teaching force, and campus atmosphere. And at the same time, teachers’professional identity have been separated into four dimensions as professional aspiration and expectation, professional volition, professional value and professional efficacy. The author attempts to study the impact of the three parts of the school-based education on the teachers’professional identity of tuition-free normal English majors.Four grades of tuition-free normal English majors in a university of Southwest part of the country have been selected as the research subjects. The paper adopts the research methods of questionnaire and interview, finally collecting 274 valid questionnaires and interviewing 8 students from different grades. SPSS 19.0 is used for the analysis of the data and all the recordings of the interviews have been collected and reorganized.Through the investigation of the survey, the author has the following findings. First, the level of teachers’ professional identity of English major normal students are basically high, and have little difference in genders and grades. Secondly, judging from the dimension of professional volition, more than half of the students are not sure whether they will quit the teaching job and step into another non-teaching field or not, and they seem to have no confidence and persistence on life-long teaching. Thirdly, when switching the eyes on the school-based education, the author finds that those normal students have common recognition on the courses and the teaching force themselves, while there exist a portion of students who said the courses do not reach their expectation and some of the teachers’teaching skills and methods can not echo among the students. The author, in the end, attempts to figure out which part of the school-based education has relatively bigger impact on these students’ teachers’ professional identity. And it turns out to be the impact of the teaching force is more significant than that of campus atmosphere and the impact of curriculum setting seems relatively small.After the analysis of the data and so as to better tackle these problems, the author finally put forward some suggestions. Our nation and society, for the sake of constructing powerful English teaching talents and cultivating their teachers" professional qualities, should first of all strengthen their recognition on the role of "eachers" teachers", then optimize the teaching force, stress their function of exampling and modeling, and also give them more systematic guidance on the teaching methods and skills. Still as the teachers of normal students, who is the biggest influential factor of their teachers’professional identity, should pick up the sense of calling and shoulder their responsibility. They need to be dedicated to teaching and patient on educating students. Teachers had better give the classroom stage back to the students, helping them show their talents, obtaining what they want in the interesting and beneficial classroom so as to accumulate their prior teaching experience. No matter during the class or after the class, teachers also need to involve some teaching contents like teaching belief and teaching value. As for the universities, they might as well carry out more activities related to professional volition and professional value towards those student teachers right from the beginning of their university life. Only by doing this, can students better switch their role as a teacher, but not just a student, and also contribute to the elementary education to cultivate more excellent teachers for our country.