A Study On The Impact Of Teaching Practicum On Pre-Service English Teachers' Motivation For Professional Development

With the rapid development of education in the new era,society has put forward higher requirements for teachers' quality.Teacher professional development is the key to improving the quality of teachers.Studies have shown that the effectiveness of professional development is directly affected by teachers' motivation for it.Therefore,teachers' motivation for professional development has gradually attracted the attention of researchers.However,most of the subjects of the research on teacher professional development motivation is in-service teachers while the research on pre-service teachers' motivation for professional development is rare.The Master of English Education,as a kind of pre-service teachers,is in the initial stage of teacher professional development.Teaching practicum,as an opportunity for them to experience the work and the role of in-service teachers,has an impact on the construction and maintenance of their motivation for professional development.Based on the self-determination theory,this study attempts to explore the impact of teaching practicum on pre-service English teacher's motivation for professional development.This research takes 53 full-time masters of English Education from Central China Normal University as the research subjects,and collects data by questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.The questionnaire is issued twice:the first time is before the practicum while the second time is after the practicum.The data from questionnaires are analyzed by SPSS(version 25.0)and EXCEL software.Then 10 masters of English Education from different practicum schools are interviewed to supplement the quantitative data.All the data are used to answer two major questions:1.What is the overall impact of teaching practicum on pre-service English teacher's motivation for professional development?2.What affects pre-service English teacher's motivation for professional development during teaching practicum?The results show that:first,among all the six sub-motivations of pre-service English teachers' motivation for professional development,interest motivation,self-value realization motivation,responsibility motivation and profit-driven motivation decreased while ideal pursuit motivation and outside force motivation increased after teaching practicum.Second,there are four main factors that influence pre-service teachers' motivation for professional development during teaching practicum:the feedback from students,the guidance from practicum school mentors,the collaboration with other pre-service teachers,as well as practicum school teachers'attitudes towards professional development and teaching.Among them,the collaboration with other pre-service teachers only has a positive impact on pre-service teachers' motivation,while the other three factors may have both positive and negative effects on pre-service teachers' motivation.