An Investigation Of Primary School English Teachers' Professional Identity In Ethnic Minority Area

The English Curriculum Standard and Guiding Opinions on Establishing English Lessons Actively in Primary Schools published by the Ministry of Education of China has pushed the primary school English teaching in China into a full operation and overall advancing process.Mojiang,as a remote Hani Ethnic Minority Autonomous County in Yunnan,has begun to set up primary English course since 2001 and over a decade's development,all the township primary schools have offered English courses now.The County Board of Education introduces English teachers from colleges and universities to primary schools for their English education development.These teachers,as executors of teaching methods,will determine the effects of the new curriculum reform and primary English teaching in Mojiang County.Good professional identity can push the teachers to upgrade and develop themselves constantly,thus assuring high-quality teaching and high-efficiency learning.However,there has been no systematic study on professional identity of primary English teachers in Mojiang County so far.Therefore,the aim of this study is to survey the present status of primary English teachers' professional identity in Mojiang County and find out the factors that affect the primary English teachers' professional identity.This thesis is based on previous studies about professional identity and actual investigations into it from six aspects,which are professional value,professional emotion,professional ability,professional will,professional behavior tendency and professional social status.Both qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted for this research,with 26 subjects involved,all of whom came from 17 primary schools in Mojiang.The results are as follows:(1)The data of the questionnaire are put into the computer and analyzed by the software SPSS19.The results show that the professional identity of primary English teachers in Mojiang County is relatively high.And there are no significant differences in the six aspects considering differentiated teaching ages,educational backgrounds,incomes,regions and job natures.(2)The researcher has an insight into the current situation of primary English teachers' professional identity after analyzing the outcomes of the interview with some teachers.Although data analysis on the questionnaire results shows that primary English teachers in Mojiang county identify with their occupation to a large extent.There still exist some problems,among which the most prominent is that dominated by the exam-oriented education system,students,their parents,school authorities and even primary English teachers pay little attention to this subject given that English has not been included in secondary-school entrance examination.Consequently,negative impacts are brought to the teachers' professional identification.Therefore,the author has proposed several suggestions based on this study and previous researches,with the view to promoting English education in Mojiang,improving primary English teachers' professional identity and furthermore,elevating education quality and realizing comprehensive development in Mojiang.