A Study On English Teachers’ Professional Identity In Senior High Schools

Teachers’ professional identity is the construction process of teachers’ understanding and meanings of being a teacher, which is formed through constant self-perception and self-reflection during the teaching practice. Teachers’ professional identity not only affects self-knowledge of teachers, but also indirectly affects the teaching quality of elementary education and teachers’ professional development. In addition, since people increasingly focus on foreign language teachers and the professional development of foreign language teachers, conducting researches on teachers’ professional identity carries great theoretical significance and practical values.Most of the current researches on the professional identity of foreign language teachers focus on college English teachers, while researches on senior high school English teachers are fewer. Therefore, the research, combining the quantitative research method with the qualitative research method, employs and synthesizes self-identity theory, social identity theory and integration of individual and society situation role theory of developmental psychology as the research theory. By doing questionnaire surveys to 82 English teachers in four senior high schools in one county in Shaanxi Province and conducting in-depth interviews with six representative English teachers, the author makes an analysis of the current situation and existing problems of English teachers’ professional identity in China.After the analysis, the research has some findings as follows: first, currently, the senior high school English teachers’ professional identity in China is generally at an average level; among the three dimensions of personal development identity, professional knowledge-ability identity and social situational identity, the degree of the first two are relatively higher and the degree of the last one is the lowest; as for these factors, English teachers have higher sense of identity with professional behavior tendency and teaching knowledge and lower sense of identity with teaching ability and professional environment; professional identities among teachers with different genders and education backgrounds have no significant differences, while professional identities among teachers with different professional titles and seniority are of significant differences; besides, by doing questionnaire surveys and conducting interviews, the research finds that English teachers’ professional identity can be effected by factors like self-profession identity, the cognitive language level, the culture and management system of the school organization and the reform of entrance exams and the curriculum; finally, the research puts forward some suggestions with regard to individual teachers, schools and management and policy-making departments to improve teachers’ professional identity and development.The suggestions are as follows: teachers should do more self-reflection and strengthen their professional ability; schools should establish a teacher-focused management system, provide teachers with full support and implement teachers’ educational trainings and create harmonious cultural environment of schools; relevant policy-making departments should create favorable institutional environment and strengthen the reform of teachers’ education to improve the development of English teachers’ professional identity.