An Investigation Into English Teachers' Instructional Design Ability In Rural Senior High Schools

Instructional design,as a crucial part in teachers' daily teaching,is currently receiving an increasing amount of attention from educational researchers.Kemp(1992),an American expert in instructional design,pointed out that teachers' instructional design ability not only affected classroom teaching effect,but also teachers' professional development.Thus,scholars at home and abroad have done a number of researches on instructional design.In China,instructional design research began in the middle of 1980 s and aroused general concern after 1990 s,which mainly focused on investigating the instructional design's process and specific methods of operation.However,the previous studies neglected the research of the overall instructional design ability of English teachers,especially the research of rural senior high school English teachers' instructional design ability.In recent years,our government and educational administrative departments have been attaching great importance to the rural education.Although the number of rural senior high schools in China is not very large,their education should also be taken seriously.Therefore,on the basis of previous studies,the study carries out an in-depth and detailed research in order to further understand the situation of rural senior highschool English teachers' instructional design ability and the influencing factors that affect teachers' instructional design ability.According to the major findings,this study puts forward some specific suggestions on teacher training to effectively improve the professional quality of rural English teachers.Based on the theory of Teacher Professionalism and Whole-person Education,this study summarizes the basic structure of the dimensions of teachers' instructional design ability and tries to answer the following two questions:(1)What is the current situation of senior high school English teachers' instructional design ability in the rural areas?(2)What are the factors which influence the development of rural senior high school English teachers' instructional design ability?In order to answer these two questions,a mix research design is adopted in this study,which includes questionnaire,structured classroom observation and semi-structured interview.One hundred English teachers from rural senior high schools in the town of Lingyuan,Liaoning province completed the questionnaire and SPSS22.0 was used to analyze the data.At the same time,in order to supplement the findings of the questionnaire and make the research more persuasive,classroom observation of four classes in Lingyuan No.2 Senior High School served as the primary instrument to collect data.Then interview was conductedwith three rural senior high school English teachers to explore the factors which may influence the development of rural senior high school English teachers' instructional design ability.Findings from the study reveal that rural senior high school English teachers' instructional design ability is above the average level,but there are still some aspects to be improved.To be specific,the aspect of setting teaching objectives and designing assessment are at relatively high level.The aspect of comprehending curriculum,designing teaching procedures and aspect of making self-reflection and improvement are above the medium level while the aspect of analyzing students' learning situation is at the lowest level.Through the analysis of the questionnaires and semi-structured interview,the study also finds out that three main factors that affect and restrict the instructional design ability of English teachers in rural senior high schools.The factors include teacher factor,student factors and teacher training factor.The result of the research contributes to the understanding of the overall situation of the English teachers' instructional design ability in rural areas.Practical suggestions for the development of teachers' instructional design ability and future research are also made in this study.