A Research On English Teachers’ Professional Development In Senior High School From The Perspective Of School Ecology

Since last century, the viewpoints, approaches and principles of ecology have increasingly become a new paradigm of educational research, which has gradually grown into a relatively complete theory system of education ecology and some related researches have obtained achievements. With the development of modern education, the ecological problems are becoming increasingly important in teachers’ professional development and personal development. Therefore, it is of theoretical significance and practical value to conduct teachers" professional development research with ecological approaches. Based on the status quo of senior high school English teachers’professional development and the perspective of ecology, the present research is conducted accordingly.Taking the English teachers and school leaders of seven senior high schools in Wuhan city as the subjects, the present research conducted the investigation to collect quantitative and qualitative information with the methods of questionnaire, interview and observation in June2013, aiming to reveal the status of English teachers’professional development in the current school ecological environment, to find out and analyze the existing problems objectively and theoretically, and then to propose some relevant suggestions to English teachers’professional development with the consideration of the realistic situation. The investigation lasted one month.The result of the present research shows that many factors have negative impact on senior high school English teachers’professional development in the current school ecological environment, including the formatted school management, the phenomenon of "Teacher Mosaic Culture" and the mismatches between English classroom teaching and learning, etc.According to the analysis of the existing problems, the related suggestions are proposed, which are that schools, by taking the principles of integrity, openness, diversity and coexistence as the guidance, should construct the ecological environment according to the realistic situations for the purpose of helping the senior high school English teachers’ professional development. That is, schools should create a harmonious school culture, a good academic culture and a decent culture of teacher cooperation through various means such as building objective and effective evaluation systems for teachers and students, paying more attention to teachers’ reflective teaching and scaling up efforts to teacher training. The above three cultures can serve as three essential elements of an educational environment which contributes to senior high school English teachers’ professional development.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter one is the introduction. Chapter two focuses on the review of literature. Chapter three is concerned with the process of the survey. Chapter four shows the analyses of the survey data and the related discussion. Chapter five mentions the suggestions which relate to the present research. The last chapter is the conclusion of the research.