Research On English Student Teachers’ Professional Identity In Senior Schools

Teachers’ professional identity is the reflective understanding of the following questionsduring the teaching practice:“What should I do as an English teacher?”“What are my pedagogicalbeliefs?” and “What should the students and I do in the class?” English student teachers’professional identity has the influence on their latter work. More and more researchers begin toconcentrate on the change of English student teachers’ professional identity, which becomes thetopical issue of education research field. The existing domestic and overseas researches discussstudent teachers’ professional identity from different aspects. Although there is a research showingthe complexity of English teachers’ professional identity among them, the demonstration for it isweak now. Through a semester’ follow-up study on three student teachers in senior schools, thisresearchrepresentstheirprocessesofprofessionalidentity change.It discusses two questions in detail. Firstly, it is to investigate the process of English studentteachers’ professional identity change from their changeable opinions on English teachers of seniorschool, students and English education before, during and after the internship. Secondly, what arethe factors which affect their professional identity change? The findings prove that theirprofessional identity change have the similarities and differences. For the differences: Jexperienced successively the diffidence�'anxiety�'clearness, L experienced successively theanxiety (the external factors)�'anxiety (the internal factors)�'anxiety and Z experiencedsuccessively the misplacement�'clearness�'clearness. For the similarities, they all had theperiod of anxiety. Through the analysis, the factors causing the differences are divided into twoaspects which are their personal factors and instructional situation factors. Based on the findingsand conclusion, the following advices are given. The student teachers should have a solidfoundation for English when they have the theoretical study. They need to have more reflectionduring the practice. The universities should provide more chances for the practice teaching. Thepracticeguideshouldgivethestudentteachers feedback andhelp intime.