A Study Of English Teacher Classroom Teaching Reflection In Rural Middle School

Since the reform of the education techniques and the promulgation of new curriculum standard(2011),reflective teaching is regarded as the basic quality for a middle school teacher.There are more specific and high demands for middle school teachers and students.But English learning and teaching in rural middle school still has been staying in low stage for a long time.Therefore,this study aims to investigate rural middle school teachers' reflection contents and attitudes towards the application of reflection approaches and strategies,so that teachers can improve their professional development and teaching level through reflection.Firstly,this thesis specifies the definition of reflection,traces the development of categories of reflection,and gives a comprehensive overview about the literature of teacher reflection abroad and at home,highlighting the necessity of this study.Secondly,in order to solve the first research questions:what are the rural middle school English teachers'reflection contents,60 rural middle school teachers' 262 self-created reflection records were coded and analyzed by means of Ho and Richards'(1993)framework of themes from four aspects.They are theories of teaching,instructional approaches and methods,teaching evaluation methods and criteria and self-awareness.The frequency of teachers'reflection records in each category was calculated.Then the contents were analyzed with the methods of content analysis and Korthagen' s(1985)Reflection Model.A five-point Likert scale questionnaire with 25 items was used to probe the teachers' attitudes towards reflection approaches and strategies implemented based on reflective records.All the participants are invited to complete the questionnaire and use the method of the percentage to carry on the statistical analysis to the questionnaire,the result is used to solve the second research question:what are the teachers' attitudes towards the application of reflection approaches and strategies.The conclusions are:(1)From the perspective of reflective theme,most teachers focus on their teaching approaches and methods in daily teaching practices.54%reflection records are about this theme.The second most frequent theme is the third category(evaluation of teaching)with 80 records(30%).The fourth category(self-awareness of strengths and weaknesses)with 31 records(13%),theories of teaching with 9 records(2%).Theories of teaching is the least frequent themes written by the participant teachers,which shows that participants pay more attention to their instructional methods,their teaching behavior and teaching results in teaching.(2)The statistics in figure 2 is evident that teachers show positive attitude towards reflection approaches and strategies.The data show that most teachers think reflecting through personal practical experience is a good way in teaching practice.It reveals that reflection needs more formal instruction and more various reflection approaches which should be applied in practice teaching,such as observation,talking and action research research,etc.The implications are presented in the following:in the second section of chapter six.From the finds of the study,there are two suggestions about reflective teaching for rural middle school teachers:(1)peer collaboration through observation;(2)awareness of reflection.