An Investigation Into English Teachers' Professional Development In Senior High Schools

Recently,teachers' professional development has been one of the hottest topics in education research abroad and at home.Teachers have now realized that their teaching proficiency cannot be improved if they have not improved their own professional knowledge and skills.Nowadays,schools and government administrations have been endeavoring to help teachers facilitate their professional development in various aspects.How to help teachers to develop their professional career has become a critical point in implementation of quality education reform,and it has gained an increasing interest of a great majority of educators in China.Therefore,it is necessary to conduct this research,so as to contribute more suggestions to improve teachers' professional development.This study intends to investigate the status quo of English teachers' professional development in senior high schools in Nanchang,Jiangxi Province.The participants of this study are 123 senior high school English teachers from 6 schools.It attempts to explore the over all situation of senior high school English teachers' professional development,and status quo of senior high school English teachers' professional development,.Both a questionnaire and interview were adopted to collect data for this study.In the qualitative study,six teachers were selected as interviewees.The SPSS 17.0 was used to analyze the statistical data.The study has revealed a number of the findings related to English teachers' professional development in senior high schools.First,of the 123 subject teachers,43 are in the initial stage of pursuing professional development.Second,of the five dimensions of professional development,all the dimensions are above 3.5 in a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire,except the dimension of school management.Of all these dimensions,the mean score of teaching experience and research competence ranks first,and then followed by professional skills,professional knowledge structure and professional intention.The mean score of schools' administration ranks the lowest.Finally,teachers meet some challenges in pursuing professional development,and the most obvious difficulties that teachers encounter in schools are lack of administrative policy support and heavy working burden.On the basis of the findings mentioned above,we can offer some suggestions for English teachers' professional development in senior high schools.As far as English teachers are concerned,they should strengthen their awareness of professional development and diversify ways to accelerate professional development.As for schools,they should encourage and support teachers to improve their professional development.They should take measures to facilitate the professional development of teachers and provide more opportunities for teachers to reflect their teaching practice.Finally,government and educational authorities should organize professional development activities and provide training programs to promote the professional development of senior high school English teachers.