A Study On Influencing Factors Of Professional Development Of Middle School Excellent English Teachers

Through several years' teaching,some English teachers have accumulated rich experience in teaching.Their teaching abilities have been improved enormously.After practicing teaching skills for several years,they can control and manage classes expertly and achieve good teaching effects.Some of them become excellent English teachers and obtain good reputation from students,parents as well as school leaders.As we all know,the excellent English teachers' sustainable professional development is beneficial to the development of current education.Excellent English teachers' sustainable professional development has attached great importance by Chinese educational leaders.It is believed that teachers have the rights and obligations to update themselves continuously in order to keep pace with the times.The English Curriculum Standard(2011)points out that English teachers' lifelong learning and professional development are the key factors to the implementation of the new curriculum standard.This study intends to gain a better understanding of the factors that influence the professional development of middle school excellent English teachers.For gaining relevant data,this study embraces the qualitative and quantitative research approaches together.A questionnaire is conducted among 83 excellent English teachers from middle schools,6 of whom accepted subsequent semi-structured interviews.In the light of the collected data,the following research questions are addressed.(1)What are the external influencing factors of excellent English teachers' professional development?(2)What are the internal influencing factors of excellent English teachers' professional development?(3)In excellent English teachers' opinion,which influencing factors can be changed to facilitate their further professional development.Through which ways? What kind of help do they need?The major findings are as follows:(1)Two major influencing factors for excellent English teachers' professional development are the key people or affairs and the teaching research atmosphere.However,the influences of teachers' education and training,school system construction and interpersonal relationships are comparatively inconspicuous but cannot be ignored.(2)The middle school excellent English teachers regard the creativity,reflection,and learning ability as the most important factors.At the same time,the sense of occupational belongings and stress tolerance ability also play indispensable roles in improving teachers' career happiness and self-efficacy.(3)Some factors may limit teachers' professional development,such as the current system of educational evaluation,the conflict between traditional educational mode and the present educational reform of the curriculum,as well as the influence of different educational backgrounds,etc.Several excellent English teachers also give some advice on facilitating teachers' professional development.First,the Educational ministry should accelerate the reform of quality education in our country.Second,the curriculum reform should take the actual situation of different regions into consideration.Third,the ministry of education should focus on the economic and educational situations in counties,towns and villages,provide adequate resources and financial help,and try to narrow the educational gap between urban and rural regions.Based on the above findings,some suggestions for the sustainable development of middle school excellent English teachers are provided as follows.Above all,the school leaders and directors should create a favorable collective teaching research atmosphere for middle school excellent English teachers.Second,more training chances from the teacher training departments are the guarantee of teachers' progress.Third,the reasonable and appropriate educational evaluation system is the premise of teachers' professional development.In addition,teachers should have proper sense of occupational belongings and often do teaching reflections.Finally yet importantly,teachers themselves should foster the ability of autonomous learning and increase their consciousness of lifelong professional development.