A Study On Obstacles And Strategies In Building English Teachers' Learning Communities In Middle Schools

Since the 1960 s,teacher professionalization movement has gradually become a strong current of educational thoughts,but English teachers in China have long been struggling for developing their career.The English teachers' learning community seems a solution to the professional development and it has been practiced widely.However,the real effect of the practice remains a myth.Therefore,this study aims at discovering the status quo of the construction of English teachers' learning community and tries to propose strategies for dealing with the problems arising in the construction.After clearly defining the concept of learning community,the thesis reviews the literature on teacher's learning community and teacher professional development.It is found in the literature review that the former studies more often than not focus on theoretical discussion,and that more empirical studies are needed.This study takes the Social Constructivism theory,the Group Dynamic Theory and the Cooperative Learning Theory as the theoretical background and survey the learning communities of two middle schools in Ganzhou composed of 41 English teachers.By way of questionnaire and interview,the obstacles in constructing the learning communities,the teachers' cognition,attitudes and expectations on the communities are analyzed.It is found that although most teachers have high expectations for the learning community,problems including deficiency of teachers' cooperative consciousness,lack of diversification of the membership,backward application of technology and the loose organization of activities hinder the construction of the community and discourage the members severely.To clear the obstacles,pertinent strategies are proposed.And they include the headmaster's support as the system guarantee on the top level,the improving of teacher's abilities so as to build a shared vision,the empowering of the teachers as the incentive to improve their sense of ownership and the constructing of the communicative culture so as to open the channel of free and sincere exchange.Despite its limitations,this study to large extent verifies the Learning Community Theory,sheds some light on the understanding of the complexity of English teacher development and offers a reference for further studies.