A Study On Teacher Professional Development Of English Teachers In Rural Primary Schools

The reform of basic education in China has entered into a new and critical stage.Teachers’ quality is the core of basic education reform and it is related to the success ofbasic education reform. And it is teacher professional development that influencesteacher’ quality. Meanwhile, the professional development of rural teachers is animportant content for all levels of educational administrative departments in China. Inorder to promote the professional development of rural teachers, they have formulatedmany relevant reforms and measures, which have played active roles.As a coastal and open city, Yantai is the bellwether of quality education in China.In recent years, Yantai has been taking various measures to continuously strengthenteachers professional development and post-job training, and it has acquired goodresults. To further understand the present situation of English teachers in rural primaryschools in Yantai, the author participated in the research project which was held byLudong University and the Board of Education in Yantai, and aimed at investigating theprofessional development of teachers in senior high schools, junior high schools, andprimary schools at the end of2013. This project was held by the author’s supervisor andthe author also participated in it. The project investigated more than40,000teachers inprimary and secondary schools in the use of questionnaires through the networkplatform. The questionnaire is designed on the basis of Primary Teachers’ ProfessionStandards (2012) and Likert scale. The investigation included five dimensions: teachers’basic information, professional philosophy and ethics, professional knowledge,professional ability and training needs. In this study, the research sample was selectedfrom the database, and the author took620English teachers in rural primary schools inYantai as the research subjects and later interviewed6English teachers among them.The sample data was very large almost covering English teachers in rural primaryschools in Yantai.Through the analysis of results, the author found that: female English teachers were more than male teachers resulting in gender structural imbalance; young Englishteachers accounted for large proportion; highly educated English teachers accounted forsmall percentage; professional title structure was irrational; some teachers were lack ofthe ability to use information technology; and some of them were weak in teachingevaluation and reflection; about training, most teachers believed that training time andcontents were unreasonable for them. Therefore, according to these findings, the authorput forward some suggestions from four aspects: the society, school, teachersthemselves and training. Firstly, the government should provide strongly financialsupport and set up special funds for teacher professional development. The schoolleaders should have the cognition of teacher professional development, try to change theunreasonable structure, develop information technology teaching. And the school alsoshould establish professional development teams and make good use of school-basedtraining. For teachers themselves, they have to establish the consciousness of selfdevelopment, strengthen independent learning, and integrate teaching practice andteaching reflection and improve the ability of using IT. Finally, the author thinks thatthe training content should be more systemic, the time can be decided by teachersthemselves democratically and teachers training institutions should try many kinds oftraining methods.