A Comparative Study On Teacher Autonomy Between English Teachers In Private And Public Primary School

On the setting of New Curriculum Reform, teacher autonomy has gained more and more attention. It is widely acknowledged that teacher autonomy not only can benefit language teaching and professional development, but also stimulate the formation of learner autonomy. Therefore, how to improve teacher autonomy has become a hot issues in educational research in recent years.This paper focuses on the comparison of teacher autonomy between English teachers in private and public primary school. The author made some investigation on primary English teachers in Longquanyi district. By means of questionnaire and interview, the author aims at exploring the current situation of teachers perception on teacher autonomy, finding out the difference on teacher autonomy between teachers in private and public schools concerning teaching belief, class teaching, student assessment and professional development, indicating the main constraints and putting forward to suggestions on the development of teacher autonomy.The results of the study show that teachers both in private and public schools have a relatively comprehensive understanding of teacher autonomy. By comparison, teachers in private school have a general higher level of teacher autonomy than teachers in public school. However, the degree of specific four dimensional structures are varies. Teachers both in private and public school, the awareness of the importance of teacher autonomy is much higher than their practical actions; and the degree of teacher autonomy of class teaching and student assessment are obviously higher than professional development. Teachers in private schools attribute the main constraints to heavy workload and pressure; while teachers in public schools ascribe the factors to the lack of learning resources and opportunity of professional development training.Based on the findings in this study, some suggestions for promoting teacher autonomy are proposed for school leaders and teachers. Teachers should cultivate the sense of livelong learning, strengthen thereotical and empircal learning in language teaching; conduct reflective action; participate in team-teaching and make full use of subjective initiative to raise job efficiency; while school leaders should set up evaluation mechanism, and create a positive surroundings for the development of teacher autonomy.