The Study Of Impacts Of Overseas Training On Middle School English Teachers' Professional Development In Border Areas Of Western Yunnan

With the recent purpose of promoting Chinese English teachers' professional skills and global horizons,more and more Chinese English teachers were sent abroad to have their further study or pursuit their degrees in different foreign countries,the overseas English teachers' training program has thus become an integral part of promoting the professional development of the teachers in Yunnan province,especially border areas of Western Yunnan.Under such circumstance,it is important to explore how overseas learning experiences affect and challenge teachers' change in their professional development.Through the lens of sociocultural theory,this study employed both qualitative and quantitative approach to investigate the influence of overseas training programs on professional development of middle school English teachers in border areas of western Yunnan.The data sources were collected through four methods:(1)15 trained teachers were interviewed in 11 middle schools;(2)18 English classes were involved to conduct classroom observation;(3)181 teacher's questionnaires and 969 student's questionnaires were collected to analyze the evaluation and impacts of training.The results showed that:(1)Trained teachers are highly satisfied with overseas training programs.(2)Overseas training is an effective approach to promote English teachers' professional development,and overseas trained teachers must face some challenges in localizing what they learned abroad and need to make appropriation in their teaching context.(3)Students do feel changes of their overseas trained teachers' classroom teaching in terms of teaching attitudes,language knowledge renewal and teaching skills' improvement and ways of opening student's mind.Based on these findings,the following suggestions were proposed:(1)The teachers' training should immerse into the local teaching context with the local teachers to co-construct the local teaching which makes sense to them.(2)The trained teachers' expertise and their agency should be recognized and prioritized in all teacher training programs.(3)The new knowledge and new practices that emerge from the combination of external and local expertise are socio-culturally mediated by many factors,which deserve further research.