Research On Peer Coaching Among Junior Middle School English Teachers In Their Professional Development

With the comprehensive promotion of the new round basic education reform and the all-round quality education,great changes have taken place in the objectives,principles,contents and methods of foreign language education,which sets higher demands for the quality of English teachers in the basic education field.Furthermore,as the main performers of teaching activities in junior middle schools and the mentors of students who are in the critical life period,the self-quality of junior middle schools English teachers exerts an important influence on the orderly operation of schools and the sound development of students.However,the quality of some English teachers in junior middle schools cannot meet the current requirements.So how to accelerate the professional development of junior middle school English teachers has become an urgent issue to solve.PC,as an approach to boost TPD,was first proposed by two American scholars called Showers and Joyce in 1980 s,aiming to remedy the low efficiency of previous training programs.Showers and Joyce defined PC as a process of sharing knowledge and tackling problems,in which two or more teachers build on mutual trust under the cooperative atmosphere so as to assist and observe teaching along with constructing teaching knowledge and techniques(Joyce & Showers,1988).It has been proved that PC is an effective approach for promoting teachers‘ professional development by means of communication and collaboration,which is of great advantage to TPD.However,most of the previous researches concerning PC in TPD only remained at the theoretical and macro level and were confined to such aspects as the clarification of concepts and patterns,the analysis of barriers and influencing factors,rarely involving empirical research and in-depth dissect.Meanwhile,the previous participants studied mainly were English teachers from senior high schools and universities,neglecting junior middle school English teachers.Given this,this research aims to investigate the implementation situation of PC among junior middle school English teachers.Participants involved in this research are junior middle school English teachers from five schools in Anqiu City of Shandong Province.Questionnaire,interview and observation are adopted as the research instruments.92 questionnaires are released totally with 71 available in the present study.Data collected through questionnaire was analyzed by means of statistical method with SPSS19.0,such as descriptive statistics,Independent-sample T-test,one-way ANOVA and Scheffe method.The author attempts to figure out the following three questions and further provide some constructive suggestions for junior middle school English teachers to implement PC and enhance professional development in a better way.(1)What are the status of the implementation of PC and its influences on junior middle school English teachers?(2)Are there any differences in PC‘s implementation among junior middle school English teachers with demographic variables?(3)Are there any differences in PC‘s influences on the professional development of junior middle school English teachers with demographic variables?The research results demonstrate that,firstly,the implementation of PC among junior middle school English teachers reaches up to high level,and among four dimensions of PC,teachers do best in ?PC behavior? and do worst in ?PC guarantee?.Meanwhile,The function of PC on TPD reaches among junior middle school English teachers reaches up to high level with ?professional competence? obtaining the best effect and ?professional affection? the worst effect.Secondly,significant differences exist in the implementation of PC among junior middle school English teachers of different genders.Finally,significant differences exist in the function of PC on TPD of junior middle schools in terms of their demographic variables involving gender and professional title.Based on the results above,the author proposes some suggestions on optimizing the application of PC and improving TPD.Besides,some pedagogical implications of this study are proposed and suggestions are provided for future study.