A Need Analysis On Rural English Teachers' Professional Development In Rural Primary Schools

Teachers' professional development is vital to their teaching quality.The National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development(2010-2020)published by the Ministry of Education in 2008 indicates that the construction of high-quality teachers' teams should be strengthened,the teachers' academic level and teaching ability should be promoted and the overall quality of teachers should be improved with focus on teachers in rural areas.Therefore,it is very urgent to meet the need of professional development on the part of teachers of English in rural primary schools so as to improve their level of professional development.However,the present domestic study on their professional development is unfortunately insufficient.In order to improve the professional development of English teachers in rural primary schools and promote the reform process of English teaching there,the author carries out a study on English teachers' professional development in some rural primary schools in Changtai,Zhangzhou.By combining the related academic papers,the author invested 60 English teachers from some primary schools in Changtai.The study aims to probe into the following questions:(1)What is overall situation of the need of professional development of English teachers in rural primary schools?(2)Are there significant differences among those teachers with different teaching time in terms of the need of professional development?Through the data analysis,the study obtains the following results:(1)Teachers of English in those rural primary schools show strong need of their professional development.According to the score sequence from high to low in the four dimensions,the needs run as follows: the knowledge structure,professional philosophy,ability structure and outside aid.(2)On the whole,in the need of professional development there are no salient differences among teachers with competence;teachers within 5 years teaching time have much more stronger need for improving the ability of teaching themselves than those above 5 years teaching time.In the aspect of need of aid provided by outside,teachers within 5 years teaching time have different length of teaching time except that of outside aid.However,the aspect of abilitystructure,teachers with 5 years teaching time or below have much stronger need for improving the ability of self-learning than those with above 5 years teaching time.In the aspect of need of outside aid,the former have much stronger need for professional training and specialist seminars than the latter.In addition,the former also have much stronger need for better academic environment than the latter.Thus,the relevant suggestions are put forward to individual teachers,primary schools and educational administrative departments to improve the professional development on the part of teachers of English in rural primary schools.