A Study On The Professional Development Of Excellent English Teachers In Rural Junior Middle School

In recent years, the teachers’ professional development is still the hot issue for theeducation researchers at home and abroad. The teachers’ professional development is atopic which has the theoretical and practical value in the current education reform. Thequality of English teachers’ professional development directly affects the quality ofEnglish teaching. The English curriculum reform in the21st century has put forwardhigh request for the teachers’ professional development. Therefore, the educationadministrative departments have taken many measures to promote teachers’ professionaldevelopment. In Shandong province, the education administrative departments holdtraining programs to promote the teacher professional development every year,including the training program for the excellent English teachers. In order to provide thesuggestions on the teachers’ professional development for the education administrativeauthorities, the author has made the research about the teachers’ professionaldevelopment and the needs of training of the excellent English teachers in junior middleschools. The participants of this research come form the Thousands of ExcellentTeachers in Shandong Province Training Program where each year100excellentEnglish Teachers from the rural middle schools will receive training in universities forabout10days. Among those English teachers we delivered100questionnaires andcollected84effective ones, and we also did interviews with some English teachers inthis program.The questionnaire includes four parts: the teachers’ professional philosophy andethics, professional knowledge, professional skills and the needs for training. Throughanalyzing the questionnaires and interviews, I got the following findings: even theexcellent teachers,8.33%of them were not so passionate about their career, some wereindifferent to the students and1.19%of the excellent English teachers admitted thatthey could not respect the students’ independent personality and treat them equally. Asto the professional knowledge,1.19%of the excellent teachers thought they did not have solid disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, and4.76%ofthem were not so skillful at using information technology. In terms of professionalability,32.14%of the excellent teachers could not design the teaching activitiesappropriately and2.38%of the excellent teachers lack the ability to communicate withstudents effectively and16.67%of the excellent teachers can not manage the classsuccessfully.3.57%of them seldom reflect on their teaching. In terms of trainingcontents, most of teachers hoped to receive the training for the classroom teaching skills.In regard to the training needs, the excellent English teachers paid attention to theinstructional design, teaching practice, teaching evaluation, teaching research. At thesame time, they look forward to getting the training in the winter or summer vacation,the time would not last long and got the professor’s guidance. Based on the existingproblems, the author put forward the suggestions on the effective methods forpromoting the rural excellent English teachers’ professional development and offers theaccurate basis for making policy for the Ministry of Education and the primary andsecondary schools.