An Investigative Study On County-level High School English Teachers' Professional Development

The development of the country depends on the development of education,the development of education depends on the development of teachers,and the quality of teachers is directly related to the success or failure of the whole education.At the end of 20^th century,the scholars in China began to study teachers'professional development.During this period,the studies mainly focused on improving teachers'professional knowledge and skills,and ignored the inner needs of teachers'professional development.In recent years,teachers'professional development has been given more and more attention,and many domestic and foreign scholars have carried out the studies on teachers'professional development from different aspects.The improvement of the professional development level of foreign language teachers is the key factor to improve the foreign language teaching quality in China.Although there are many researches on the professional development of foreign language teachers in China,the empirical researches on county-level high school English teachers'professional development are still very rare.This study mainly uses the methods of the questionnaire and interview.There are348 senior high school English teachers from 14 county-level high schools?7 key high schools,7 common high schools,including different levels of county-level high schools?who are chosen as the subjects,and they are from some counties of Hebei Province.This study attempts to explore the current situation of the professional development of county-level high school English teachers.The content of this study includes the following aspects:teachers'professional identity,teachers'professional knowledge,teachers'professional ability and teachers'professional development demands.This study had conducted the in-depth interviews with 14 county-level high school English teachers?including 9 female teachers and 5male teachers?,which covered different types of teachers with different professional titles and different years'teaching experience.Through the analysis of the questionnaires and interviews,the following research results are obtained:first,from the aspect of teachers'professional identity,mostcounty-level high school English teachers love education and love English teaching,but there are some English teachers are not satisfied with the current working environment.Second,from the aspect of teachers'professional knowledge,a majority of county-level high school English teachers are very confident with their grammar knowledge and reading ability,while most of them still need to improve their phonetic knowledge,oral communication ability,cross-cultural knowledge,the knowledge of teaching theories and the knowledge of scientific research.Third,from the aspect of teachers'professional ability,most of county-level high school English teachers are not very satisfied with their teaching skills,and they would like to improve their teaching methods and skills.As to the educational research,only a small number of English teachers have already conducted some scientific researches,county-level high school English teachers urgently need to raise their awareness of scientific research and research ability.Fourth,from the aspect of the demands of teachers'professional development,a majority of county-level high school English teachers have a strong awareness of self-development,but they do not have a clear understanding of the specific contents of teachers'professional development.Besides,there are no clear professional development plans for most of them.They urgently need to improve their theoretical qualities,teaching skills and scientific research ability.As to the teacher training,most English teachers hope to acquire new educational concepts and improve their professional knowledge or skills through training.Meanwhile,they also put forward some specific requirements for the contents and modes of teaching training.However,a minority of English teachers participate in teacher training in order to meet the requirements of their schools and complete the tasks of continuing education,so the awareness of these county-level high school English teachers'professional development still need to be promoted.The findings of this study have some implications for teachers:firstly,county-level high school English teachers need to promote their awareness of self-development,strengthen the learning of English language and relevant theories,and actively improve their teaching skills and scientific research ability.Secondly,schools should optimize teachers'working environment,subscribe more educational publications and encourage teachers to improve themselves.Meanwhile,they should strive for more opportunities of teacher training and more opportunities of cooperative learning with other excellent schools.In short,the schools need to take appropriate measures to promote the professional development level of English teachers.Thirdly,the local government and educational authorities should try their best to improve teachers'wage and welfare as much as possible,and motivate teachers'enthusiasm to pursue their professional development.At the same time,they should adopt some flexible strategies to provide more opportunities of training and further learning to meet the demands of English teachers'professional development.