A Study Of Professional Development Of MED Students During The Teaching Practicum

Nowadays great attention has been drawn to foreign language teacher education for the fact that foreign language teachers are closely connected with the quality of education. Teacher professional development is a highly heated and essential research topic and many teacher educators are increasingly interested in it. Many normal universities started to recruit MED students and took actions in specifying training programs and the teaching practicum accordingly. Although there are many researches on in-service teachers and their professional development and undergraduates’ teaching practicum, this study centers on professional development of masters of English education (MED students). Darsh (1990) maintains that the teaching practicum is the best opportunity for pre-service teachers to develop their professional abilities. The teaching practicum is highlighted for MED students because the teaching practicum is beneficial for these future teachers, especially for their professional development. This paper attempts to uncover the professional development of MED students during the teaching practicum from the perspectives of professional knowledge, professional skills and professional affection and the factors that influence their professional development during the teaching practicum. Forty MED students in English Teaching from School of Foreign Languages in Central China Normal University (CCNU) are chosen as research subjects. By questionnaire and interview, data and materials are collected and analyzed to answer the following two research questions.(1) What improvements have the MED students made during the teaching practicum?(2) What are the factors that impact the MED students’ professional development during the teaching practicum?The results show that: 1) all the MED students have gained a lot from the teaching practicum. They have formed their own teaching views and have got over their shortcomings as well. 2) Their teaching professional knowledge, professional skills and professional affection have all been improved during the teaching practicum. Their teaching abilities, management ability, reflective ability have been improved greatly,except that their professional knowledge and research ability have not been promoted dramatically. 3) Factors that influence their development were discovered, which are respectively the guide teachers, the practicum schools, full preparation, self-reflection,and peers.This paper can provide useful suggestions to the future MED students’ teaching practicum and university administrations can have a better understanding of the improvement of MED students’ professional development during the teaching practicum.The university administrations can improve and prefect the practicum program accordingly. Meanwhile, some limitations are found in the study. The size of the subjects is too small and the author of the paper may be subjective and hold personal preferences in dealing with data. The further study should reduce the limitations and investigate the complicated teacher professional development from different perspectives. However, the study will shed light on future research on teacher professional development.