A Study On The Current Situation Of English Special-post Teachers’ Professional Development In Rural Primary Schools

High quality education needs high quality teachers. Both of the knowledge economy and the new English curriculum put forward unprecedented challenges to English teachers’ professional development (TPD), especially rural primary English teachers’ TPD. The level of primary English teachers’ TPD will be directly related to the quality of basic education and our country’s future citizens. Since the "Specially Contracted Teachers Plan" has been put into effect in 2006, every year there are a large number of college graduates going to rural schools for teaching. These special-post teachers have brought great changes to the local schools and deservedly become the main force of rural English education. However, their TPD can’t get enough attention and the problems are becoming more and more serious. In this context, doing a research to the professional development of rural primary English special-post teachers is imperative.Taking the domestic and foreign literatures about English teachers’ TPD as reference, some basic theories have been presented in this thesis. And then according to the actual situation, the author conducts a comprehensive investigation. The primary means for collecting data are questionnaires and interviews. All of the ninety-five primary English special-post teachers have been chosen in Quanzhou County of Guilin, Guangxi Province to answer the questionnaires and some of them have been interviewed. Teachers’basic information and four aspects (growth environment, professional knowledge, teaching ability and self-development) have been investigated and the study analyzes the exiting questions from the four aspects. To be specific, growth environment includes teachers’ treatment, working situation, training, teaching research activity. Professional knowledge includes English pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, social functions, and the background knowledge of British and American culture. Teaching ability includes professional ability (teaching in English, using body languages, using English songs, developing English class games, making teaching aids, organizing classroom teaching) and other teaching ability (enriching teaching content, adopting various teaching methods, carrying out teaching reflection). Self-development includes teachers’views on self-development and views on rural primary English special-post teachers’TPD.The study attempts to answer the following two questions:(1) What is the current situation of the professional development of primary English special-post teachers in Quanzhou County? (2) What are the problems existing in the professional development of rural primary English special-post teachers? The investigation results show that, the current situation of rural primary English special-post teachers’TPD in our country presents an universal backward situation, mainly reflecting in the following four aspects of problems:(1) In the aspect of growth environment, teachers’low income, heavy workload, imperfect teaching facilities, lacking of professional training and teaching research atmosphere are the main problems. (2) In the aspect of professional knowledge, teachers are lack of educational theoretical knowledge and English professional knowledge with narrow scope of knowledge. (3) In the aspect of professional ability, teachers’teaching ability, innovative ability, and teaching reflective ability are all poor. (4) In the aspect of self-development, teachers are lack of the consciousness of self-development and rarely make any teaching reflection or develop independently.According to the above findings, some suggestions are given to effectively promote rural primary English special-post teachers’ TPD. Firstly, normal colleges should reform the curriculum system of full-time and in-service education, strengthen intercollegiate cooperation, popularize primary English teachers’education and do more theoretical and practical researches on special-post teachers. Secondly, education departments should increase special-post teachers’ wages and strengthen their pre-service and in-service training. Thirdly, rural primary schools should construct a network platform for English special-post teachers, reduce their workload and strengthen the management and pay attention to their growth. Lastly, rural primary English special-post teachers should strengthen the consciousness of their autonomous professional development, learn and develop independently, and then do some teaching reflection and make a self-development plan.