| In recent years,the country has paid more and more attention to the professional development of teachers,and point out that it is necessary to improve the quality of education,steadily strengthen the construction of teaching staff,and improve the professional teaching ability of teachers.Teacher learning has gradually emerged from the field of cognition,which has been increasingly valued by domestic scholars.Professional learning community as one of the teachers’ learning methods,plays an important role in promoting the individual development of teachers and the smooth progress of teaching reform.However,the current research on the professional learning community focuses on English teachers in colleges and universities,and most of them employs case studies and narrative research.There are relatively few studies on English teachers in primary and secondary schools.Therefore,this study explores the improvement of junior middle school English teachers’ teaching ability by analyzing the situation of junior middle school English teachers in the professional learning community,with a view to providing suggestions for the construction and improvement of junior middle school English teachers’ professional learning community.Based on the self-directed learning theory and social interaction theory,this study analyzes the questionnaire data of 137 junior high school English teachers and the interview data of 6teachers to explore three questions:(1)Does the junior high school English teachers have professional learning community experience? If so,what are the learning contents and learning methods?(2)In the professional learning community,what is the overall learning effect of junior English teachers? Are there differences between different teaching ages and different titles?(3)What are the factors that influence the learning effect of junior middle school English teachers?This study exploits a combination of quantitative research and qualitative research.SPSS19.0 software is mainly used to analyze questionnaire data.Interviews is used to analyze the attitudes of the teachers towards the professional learning community and the activities in their units.The research results are listed as follows:(1)All the teachers tested have participated in professional learning community.Junior high school English teachers are more inclined to choose listening or observing learning methods,the content of which is closely related to the actual teaching problems,and is relatively weak for scientific research.(2)Junior English teachers have a better overall learning effect in the professional learning community.Teachers have improved their knowledge and skill reserve,classroom practical ability and reflection research ability by participating in professional learning community activities.Differences in teaching age and professional titles will affect the improvement of teachers’ teaching ability to acertain extent.(3)In addition to teaching age and professional titles,the factors that influence the learning of junior high school English teachers are individual teachers’ awareness of participation in cooperative learning and development needs,education reform,the situation of the entrance examination to the high school and the arrangement of the school administrative management system.At present,the common professional learning community activities still have the following problems in the implementation process.First of all,some junior middle school English teachers have a weak sense of participation and have yet to clarify their roles in community activities.Second,there are situations in which leaders and experts are at the core.The school puts too much emphasis on the control of professional learning community activities in the discipline.Finally,the guarantee mechanism is not mature enough.Therefore,in order to construct a professional learning community for English teachers in junior high schools,the author recommends that schools or subject groups should respect the learning needs of English teachers,advocate free and equal educational dialogue,appropriately relax the management system,improve the teaching incentive mechanism and provide more chances for teachers at diverse levels.It not only promotes junior middle school English teachers to actively participate in professional learning community activities,but also achieve teaching experience sharing,individual teacher development and English subject progress. |
