A Study On The Professional Development Of Excellent English Teachers In Rural Senior High Schools

With the rapid development of information technology, and the accelerating of theprocess of economic globalization, the basic education reform is ongoing all over theworld. In China, with the gradual deepening of the English curriculum reform inprimary and secondary schools, teacher professional development has got more andmore attention from all levels of education administrative departments and traininginstitutions. The training of teacher professional development has become an importantmeasure to improve the professional quality of teachers.At the end of2013, the author participated in the research project which was heldby Ludong University and the Board of Education in Yantai, and aimed at investigatingthe professional development of teachers in senior high schools, junior high schools,and primary schools. This project was held by the author’s supervisor and the authoralso participated in it. The project investigated more than40,000teachers in primaryand secondary schools in the use of questionnaire through the network platform. Thequestionnaire is designed on the basis of High-school Teachers’ Profession Standards(trial) and Likert Scale. High-school Teachers’ Profession Standards involves fivedimensions: the basic information, professional ideas and ethics, professionalknowledge, professional skills and training needs. And, in this study, the researchsample was selected from the database and it took62excellent English teachers in ruralsenior high schools as research objects. The excellent teachers are those who haveobtained the reputation level of municipal or above. The data showed that the currentsituation of the teacher professional development of excellent English teachers in ruralsenior high schools was overall satisfactory, but there were still some problems thatneeded our attention, such as, the relatively rigid education ideas, the imperfectprofessional knowledge, and immature teaching ideas and skills in the informationtechnology context, etc. In addition, the author interviewed6excellent teachers. Aimingat the problems, and basing on the training needs and the interview, the author tried to analyze the factor restricting the teacher professional development of excellent teachersform the external and internal aspects. And, the author gave some suggestions from theaspects of the education administrative department, the school and teacher themselves inorder to improve the teacher professional development of excellent teachers in ruralsenior high schools.This paper is divided into six parts:Part one states the background, significance, contents and questions of this study;Part two states the study on teacher professional development in foreign countriesand China;Part three states the methodology in this study;Part four analyzes the data and states the general findings, and analyzes the reasonsfrom external and internal aspects;Part five states the suggestions from the aspects of the education administrativedepartment, the school, and teacher themselves, and states the summary and limitationsof this study.