A Study Of Teachers’ Practical Knowledge Of English Teachers In Middle School

It was the 1980 s that the teachers’ practical knowledge had been paid attention to and considered to be the key factor to the professional development of teachers.Researches on teachers’ practical knowledge at home and abroad have the following characteristics,firstly,these researches mostly empress on the studies of the theories of practical knowledge rather than the practical and teaching process in the class.It is also proved that there are also few practical researches on how teachers use practical knowledge in the class,especially in English class,most surveys draw their attention to all subjects,fewer researches have been done on teachers of specific subject.In the other words,the number of researches on empirical studies is less than that of the theoretical one;secondly,the majority of them regard the teachers as a whole community,while few researches notice those teachers of English subject,so that these researches are only suitable for some special situations;lastly,those previous researches play an important role in making survey of the components and generation of teachers’ practical knowledge,but do little to the study of the existing deficiencies,tactics of teachers’ practical knowledge in middle school.According to these facts,this thesis makes a survey of the deficiencies existing in the current situation of it,then propose some suggestions accordingly.The design of this paper is based on the researches about different components of practical knowledge at home and abroad.The purpose of this paper is to find out the current situation of the practical knowledge in middle school in Liaocheng.Therefore there 150 English teachers are chosen to be as the subjects from four middle schools.These schools are respectively Liaocheng NO.1 Senior Middle School,Liaocheng,NO.3 Senior Middle School,Wenxuan Middle School of Liaocheng and Dongchang Middle School.The methods used in this paper are questionnaires and interview.Questionnaires were used in the paper to make a clear understanding of the present situation and the reasons causing the phenomenon of teachers’ practical knowledge.There are 150 questionnaires handed out to those teachers,while 145 questionnaires are available among them,and the efficiency is 96.60%.The interview helps to prove the result we get from the questionnaires.The whole process which lastsfour months is divided into two stages.Through the analysis,the data we collected before indicates that teachers have acquired the educational beliefs of practice,curriculum knowledge,knowledge of students and education strategy well.However they have deficiencies in interpersonal relationship,self—reflection and contextual knowledge.The reasons causing these deficiencies are the teachers’ lack of theoretical knowledge,the single way of self—reflection,heavy school teaching task.In addition,teachers have no adequate opportunities and conditions to gain practical knowledge.In a whole word,the reasons that lead to the situation contain two aspects,the teachers themselves and the outside conditions.According to the results,this paper will first find the reasons leading to the phenomenon above,then some suggestions are proposed from external factors and internal factors to solve the problems.These suggestions also conclude two aspects,external factors and the internal factors.In the end of the paper,it indicates the limitations of the study and the foreground of the research on teachers’ practical knowledge.