A Sociocultural Approach Towads The Good College EFL Teachers' Professional Images

There is no doubt that education is of great significance in human history as it plays an important role in the transmission of knowledge,facilitating the evolution of human beings.Of all the factors identified to account for the quality of education enterprise in general,teachers are believed to play a crucial role in both the process and outcome of education and"good teachers" has thus become an important research topic.The past decades have witnessed the rapid development of China.With the development,increasing importance has been attached to the development of education.In 201 8,"the State Council's Suggestions on Comprehensively Deepening the Reform of the Construction of the Team of Teachers in the New Era" was proposed.The document suggested that teachers are the important resources in the development of education and they should be put in the focus of development of education with major supports.In the same year,"Suggestions on Accelerating the Construction of High-quality Undergraduate Education and Cultivating All-around Talents"was proposed.This document imposed new requirements for innovative development in undergraduate education,which also add to the requirements for teachers to come up with new ways of teaching.Thus,the effectiveness of college EFL teachers has accordingly become a crucial issue.Among studies concerning good teachers,most of them are concerned with middle school teachers.In the limited number of studies concerning college teacher,most of them focused on summarizing the professional competences and personality traits of good teachers based on results of interviews and questionnaires but the empirical evidence from real classroom teaching practices are lacked,making it less helpful in guiding the teaching practice.And some others have conducted a detailed analysis of good teachers' teaching competences based on the classroom discourse analysis of good teachers but they only focus on the classroom teaching of these good teachers without investigating other aspects.It is found that previous literature only focuses on describing certain facet of good teachers.Therefore,an all-around description of good teachers' professional images is lacked,which is significant in that it would provide teachers with the direction of their further development in the profession.Thus,this study aims to explore the good EFL college teachers' professional images.From a sociocultural approach,four good college EFL teachers were invited to participate in the study.One lesson of each teacher was recorded,together with the interviews of students and teachers,and using ELAN and Nvivo,the current study describes the good EFL college teachers' professional images.Also,the factors contributing to their career development were summarized.According to Vygotsky(1978;1986),learning,is not the straightforward appropriation of skills or knowledge from the outside in,but the progressive movement from external,socially mediated activity to internal mediational control by individual learner.For students,good teachers are able to provide effective mediation,thus facilitating students' learning.It is found that the good EFL college teachers' professional images have several features:(1)In terms of knowledge,they have abundant content knowledge which is the foundation to mediate students' learning.All participant teachers have a doctoral degree;(2)In terms of teaching competences,they are highly competent to carry out different tasks through various teaching strategies(i.e.,organize effective activities);(3)In terms of classroom behaviours,they can use various kinds of verbal or non-verbal strategies in classroom discourse,making good use of both cognitive scaffoldings and emotional scaffoldings to facilitate students'development of both language and thinking;(4)In terns of personality traits,they are responsible,dedicated and easy-going.They are role models and their professionalism and pursuit of knowledge have huge influences on students;(5)In terms of beliefs on foreign language teaching and their profession,they have their own understanding of language teaching and use it to guide their teaching practice.(6)In terms of attitudes towards teaching profession,they have passion for their profession;(7)In terms of relationship between teacher and student,they respect students and are willing to help them.The closer relationship makes students easier to learn from teachers.Such good college EFL teachers' professional images are the outcome mediated by teachers in the teacher learning process.The influencing factors include:(1)teachers'motivations:their passion for teaching profession and a pursuit of knowledge motivate them to study continuously.(2)teachers' understanding of rules for teachers:on the one hand,four participant teachers are at similar age and the focus of college teachers at the time they were new teachers was on teaching,which exerted huge influences on their perceptions of good teachers.On the other hand,Chinese traditional thoughts also influenced their teaching practices.(3)teachers' beliefs on foreign language teaching and learning:the beliefs mediate their perceptions on the division of labour between teachers and students,thus influencing teaching practice.A focus on internalization would lead to more language practice and assign roles of learners and instructors while a focus on learning moments would attach more importance to trigger thinking and assign roles of speakers and coordinators.(4)Relationship with other members of the community:in the working environment,some model teachers'words and behaviours serve as learning resources and mediation tools for teachers,the mediation of community also comes from sharing teaching resources and preparing for lessons together in a preparation group.(5)Reflection upon teaching practice:reflection upon SET and teaching practice is a powerful medication tool for teachers to make improvements.The results of the present studies have both theoretical and pedagogical implications.From the theoretical aspect,the present study has provided empirical evidences for good college EFL teachers' professional images.And a triangulation of the data,together with the discussion of the interrelationship between different categories,facilitates a deeper understanding of good EFL college teachers.In terms of the implication for teaching practices,the results are enlightening for pedagogy that having a clearly picture of what is good EFL college teacher images like would give teachers a target to reach and the factors fostering teacher development would also leave some clues for the teachers to learn and to become good teachers.