An Investigation Of Female English Teachers’ Professional Development In High School

Since the1980s, the world has begun to focus on improving the quality of human being. Therefore, people began to pay attention to and studied the professional development of teachers. Nowadays, a new round of education curriculum reform has already started in China. With the New Curriculum Reform, more and more attentions have been paid to the teachers’development. On the one hand, the New Curriculum Reform provides opportunities for the teachers to promote their professional development; on the other hand it challenges teachers as well. The implementation of the New Curriculum Reform has greatly changed English teaching in high schools, while English teachers have been trained greatly. Fortunately, many achievements of researches about teacher development are gained.Inspired by the previous studies, this research is carried out with the purpose to explore the problem existing in professional development of female English teachers in high schools and discuss professional development strategy of female English teacher under the background of the New Curriculum Reform by taking91female English teachers from7high schools in Laibin City as the subjects of the research. Questionnaire and interview are used as the basic research methods. The research lasts for three months.The results of the research show that the main obstacles of the female English teachers’ professional development are:their devoid of time, heavy teaching load, educational policy, financial support, and the lack of chances for further learning or training, etc..; the majority of the female English teachers’professional development is influenced by some factors such as salary, working conditions, environment and families, etc.; the female English teachers in the survey have desire to take part in off-job training or short-term training, and some other kinds of trainings, but they seldom have such chance.According to the existing problems, this research proposes the following suggestions: for the purpose of providing a platform to improve female English teachers’ability of scientific research which is suitable for the characteristics of female teachers, government, the school should create conditions and carry out a wide range of school-based research activities, such as doing action research, inviting experts to school to give some professional guidance, carrying out a variety of professional competitions, etc.; education departments and schools should pay more attention to the professional development of female English teachers because they are the main role in English education in high schools. Thus, in order to promote their professional development, the measures of cultivating female English teachers should be carried out purposefully and practically; Having a clear understanding of their own values, female English teachers should have a sense of urgency with their professional development, and actively participate in various activities, so as to improve their ability of scientific research and teaching as well as their professional level.The thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter one is introduction, which introduces the background and significance of the research. Chapter two is literature review dealing with the related definitions, the related studies at home and abroad and the theories used in this research. Chapter three presents the process of the research. Chapter four shows the data analysis and the related discussions. Some suggestions are proposed respectively in Chapter five. Chapter six is the conclusion.