The Contrastive Study Of Middle School English Teachers' Professional Development In Urban And Rural Areas

Teachers' professional development has been one of the hottest topics in education research in recent years.Lots of researchers have done the research from different kinds of perspectives,and have made some achievements.However,researches taking Middle English teachers as subjects and making a contrastive research between urban and rural schools are rare.The research takes 120 English teachers(including 60 urban,60 rural English teachers)from Nankang,Ganzhou,Jiangxi province as the subjects.Through questionnaire and interview to find out the differences or similarities of the teachers' professional development;then some suggestions will be given.The following are the major research findings:(1)First it shows that there are more female English teachers than male English teachers in both areas.(2)It has no obvious difference on the teachers' educational belief and view on career;most love teaching and have clear,specific educational beliefs and ideals.But few still need to reinforce their educational belief and ideal.(3)In teachers' professional knowledge,there are some differences between urban and rural English teachers.Most urban teachers think they need to improve speaking.While most rural teachers hold that they need to improve writing and speaking.There are obvious differences on pronunciation,grammar and National English Curriculum.(4)For the classroom language,it shows urban English teachers use more English in class.(5)In doing scientific research,they are in different situations.More urban teachers do scientific research.(6)As to schools' circumstance,the hardware and software facilities in urban schools are better than rural schools'.And for the measures taken by the schools,urban schools offer more training opportunities.(7)As to the educational books and periodicals,all the schools hardly subscrip them,especially the rural schools.(8)For the training contents,most English teachers like to learn modern educational theories,approaches.From the training ways,many teachers like to listen to the classes of some excellent teachers,and then is case study.In summary,the study will find the present situations of the English teachers;suggestions are presented from the teachers,Education departments and schools to improve teachers' professional development.