A Case Study Of The Professional Development Of Junior Teachers In Rural Junior High Schools

The quality of education depends on the quality of teachers.Meanwhile,rural teachers are the key of enhancement of education quality in rural areas.Beginning teachers are the new blood of rural education and the backbone of rural education reform.Limited to unfavorable conditions in rural areas,the real professional development of beginning teachers needs to be discovered.This is a case study research.There are 6 subjects,5 beginning teachers from rural middle school of Henan province,1 from Hunan province.This study is based on six rural junior middle school teachers' professional development situation,hoping to know the whole situation of the rural beginning teachers' development situation and relevant influencing factors.Based on this,I will promote the rural beginning teachers' professional development.The focuses of this qualitative research are:professional development situation of beginning teachers in rural middle school and the influencing factors.Thus I will make some recommendations for promoting professional development of rural beginning teachers.This paper consists of four chapters.The first chapter is an introduction.In this chapter,I introduce the cause of the topic,purpose and significance of the research.Then I define the core concepts of this paper,and briefly introduce the way of research,method and subjects.The second chapter is the literature reviews and theoretical foundation.I review the existing researches and theoretical foundation,based on which,the framework of teachers' professional development is settled.The third chapter is the journey of 6 rural teachers' professional development,as the main part of this study.In this part,I present the process of each teacher's professional development one by one,analyzing the influencing factors.The fourth chapter is suggestions for rural beginning teachers to make professional progress.I make advices from internal and external aspects.After hackling the professional development situation of six rural junior middle schools' beginning teachers,I draw out conclusions as follows.The same situation maybe is also prevalent in the other rural beginning teachers.The professional knowledge structure of rural beginning teachers is out-of-balance.They attach importance to subject knowledge and pedagogy content knowledge,ignoring conditional knowledge and general knowledge.Key points of rural beginning teachers' capacity enhancement are organization capacity and interactive capacity.For the time being,they haven't get the capacity of educational research.Most of rural beginning teachers show great passion to education,but there is absence of dedication spirit to rural basic education.Most of rural beginning teachers have a strong sense of professional development,willing to put it into action.Teacher education system should be refined.Support from school should be strengthened.For research conclusions above,on the basis of analysis of influencing factors,I make advices to promote rural teachers' professional development:enhance teachers'self-consciousness of professional development,form the habit of reflecting their own teaching,update their own education concept in time,take participation in school research and in-service training,improve rural teachers' treatment,perfect teacher education system,strengthen school's support,and construct high-quality network teaching resources.