A Study Of The Impact Of New Junior High School English Textbooks On Teachers’ Professional Development

With curriculum reform entering a new stage, being modified and improved for eight years,the junior high school English curriculum standards (hereinafter referred to the new curriculumstandards revised edition) was finally officially promulgated by the Ministry of Education onDecember28,2011. With the new curriculum standards promulgated, the new junior high schoolEnglish textbooks were employed in the fall semester of2012. The new textbooks are the carrier ofthe advanced concepts of the new curriculum reform, but only teachers understand the textbookwriters’ intention, learn the new instructional theories and instructional methods and employ thenew textbooks rationally, the new curriculum can be developed further. However, how teachersutilize the new textbooks and how this affects teachers’ professional development are unknown.Therefore, these two questions are the core content of this study. And this study focuses threequestions: the real situation of teachers’ utilization of new textbooks, the impact of teachers’utilization of new textbooks on teachers’ professional development and the factors of influencingteachers’ utilization of new textbooks. This study adopts qualitative research method and casestudy to track three teachers at a common junior school in a city of economically developed coastalarea. The research is expanded through classroom observations, collections of instructional designand interviews. And the interviews are designed from two aspects: teachers’ usage of newtextbooks, which involves in teachers’ interpretation and evaluation of new textbooks, teachers’adaption of new textbooks and teachers’ reflection on their utilization of new textbooks, and itsinfluence on teachers’ professional development, which involves in teachers’ subject knowledge,pedagogical knowledge and their reflection level.The findings show that new textbooks contribute to the accumulation of some teachers’subject knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and the improvement of some teachers’ reflection level;teachers’ utilization of new textbooks is subject to the local education authorities, schools andteachers; new textbooks have many highlights, but the teachers think that new textbooks are a littlebit difficult for students to learn.