Middle School English Teachers’ Professional Knowledge And Competence Based On Chinese National Teacher Professional Standards

The impetus for educational reform comes first from the teachers’ professionaldevelopment, which is developing by leaps and bounds nowadays in China. However,the lack of theoretical direction poses an embarrassing position. The Ministration ofEducation released “Chinese National Teachers Professional Standards for MiddleSchools (trial)” in2012, but the Standards cater to middle school teachers of varioussubjects, not for any specified subject. On the other hand, English is taught for its tooland humanity functions nowadays, which will eventually raise the requirements forstudents’ English learning. The Standards evoke heated discussion on its content andclassification. However, there are few people who have discussed them on the basis ofany definite subjects, let alone on English.This paper first gives an integrated literature review on teachers professionalstandards and professional standards for English teachers home and abroad, thenanalyzes the content of “Standards(trial)”, and finally restricts the research subjects inprofessional knowledge and competences of middle school English teachers.Considering the proposals of the standards, the characteristics of English languageteaching in China, the National Standards for Compulsory English Curriculum and therequirements raised by the modern English teaching reform, the paper attempts toanswer the following two questions:First, what is the knowledge needed for middle school English teachers in theprofessional knowledge part?Second, what are the competences needed for middle school English teachers in theprofessional competence part?The results show that middle school English teachers should have the followingknowledge and competences. In the subject matter knowledge part, teachers shouldknow the English linguistics and its subordinate knowledge like the vocabulary,grammar, etc., English literature, cultures related to English and the English-Chinesecontrastive linguistics. In the pedagogical knowledge part, teachers should bear in mind of the English curriculum of secondary school and be familiar with middle schoolEnglish textbooks, know the methods and strategies in the English curriculum resourcesdevelopment as well as some modern teaching theories and teaching methods in specificteaching content. In the liberal knowledge part, teachers should get a generalunderstanding of middle school English teaching, know the knowledge related to othersubjects of middle school teaching, and the application of modern media into classes.As for the professional competences, teachers should first analyze the factors involvedin teaching process, such as learners, learning process, teaching content to set up clearobjectives of teaching, then make full use of different strategies, methods and the mediato design suitable teaching process; at last, they should be able to express theirinstructional design by the way of detailed teaching plan. In the end, teachers shouldmake themselves understood through verbal and nonverbal ways, be able to strictlymonitor the teaching process, handle the unexpected situations in classes successfullyand so on. In the assessment aspect, teachers should use multiple evaluation systems toassess the performance of students rather than just one or two ways, they should givefeedback immediately, also they should use the self-assessment system to doself-examination and use the results to improve their teaching.