A Study On The Current Situation And Countermeasures Of Middle School English Teachers’ Professional Development

In recent years, English teachers in many different countries of the world have shown great passion and interest in their own professional development. English teachers are expected to keep up to date with the progress and development in the educational field, to regularly evaluate and renew their teaching skills and to assume appropriate teaching tasks according to the requirements put forward by the new situation.Teachers’ professional development has become a worldwide tendency in the educational field. And countries in the world share the common view on focusing on teachers’ in-service education, improving teachers’ teaching proficiency of the English subject and also promoting teachers’ professional development.The study on English teachers’ professional development has aroused much more concern. However, most of the current researches focus on English teachers in universities or colleges. A few of them focus on English teachers in middle schools. Besides, we could not find much research on what the English teachers think, how they understand the teaching procedure, what they master and believe.This study tries to explore the situation of middle school English teachers’ professional development in Ganzhou city and to seek countermeasures of increasingly promoting their professional development. Guided by the theories of Maslow’s self-realization theory, constructivist learning theory and action research theory, the author investigated the current situation of middle school English teachers’ professional development in Ganzhou city through literature research, questionnaire survey and face-to-face interviews. The questionnaire goes for one hundred English teachers from different middle schools in Ganzhou city. It intends to get information of the major aspects of teachers’professional development, including teachers’personal information, level of professional knowledge, specialized capabilities, ability of doing scientific research, professional expansion, emotional attitude and educational belief.The major findings can be summarized as follows:(1) The majority of middle school English teachers are young and a few of them possess high titles and much teaching experience. (2) Many English teachers are deficient in the knowledge of pedagogy, psychology, cross-cultural communication, British and American literature. (3) A great number of the English teachers are confined to those traditional teaching aids and nearly half of them are dissatisfied with their organizational abilities. (4) A few of them participated in national or provincial teaching proseminars. And fewer would publish research papers and undertake research projects because of the heavy teaching load. (5) The majority of the teachers show great interest in improving teaching qualities through different kinds of training activities. (6) More and more teachers have a strong sense of responsibility and throw themselves into teaching actively. But job burnout still cannot be ignored.Based on the above findings, the author suggests that middle school English teachers should strengthen their professional autonomy which involves improving teachers’ self-consciousness and professional qualities, constructing teachers’ learning community and launching teachers’ action research. School leaders should optimize the teaching management and improve the condition of teachers’professional development. And administrative departments should provide more opportunities for English teachers to develop long-term goals and to participate in various training programs.On the basis of the study, it can be meaningful to break through the traditional views of English teaching, to explore the current situations of middle school English teachers’ professional development in Ganzhou city and to endeavour to find out suitable ways to improve and promote middle school English teachers’ professional development as well as the quality and efficiency of English teaching in secondary schools.