| With the deepening of the new curriculum reform,teachers have begun to change from the initiator of knowledge to teaching researchers and set out to explore the laws of education and research into pedagogical approaches.Meanwhile,the professional development of teachers which is regarded as a process of teachers' self-reflection and selfrenewal has become a noteworthy issue in the domain of teacher education.In this process,reflective teaching(RT)plays a vital role in teachers' professional growth and boost the transition from novice teachers(NTs)to expert teachers(ETs).To date,a considerable amount of literature has been published on RT.However,most of the previous studies mainly focus on college instructors and pay little attention to middle school teachers.Also,these investigations tend to explore the effective ways of RT from a micro perspective such as the specific teaching process and only a few studies could reinterpret RT according to the theoretical framework of pedagogical content knowledge(PCK).Thus,the previous researches seem not to thoroughly demonstrate the current situation of middle school English teachers' RT.Under the circumstances,the paper reports a study based on the theory of PCK and combines qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore the differences between middle school novice and expert English teachers in RT practice at the present stage and accordingly point out constructive suggestions on teachers' RT practice.This study investigates 66 novice teachers and 59 expert teachers,who are categorized based on the length of teaching and professional title.All the research participants are seized from eight middle schools in Shandong Province to explore teachers' perceptions of reflective teaching practice from awareness,content,strategy,and influencing factors through the questionnaire.And the statistics are analyzed by SPSS.23.0.Subsequently,8 of the participants are chosen randomly and interviewed according to the results of the questionnaire.According to the results and discussion of the questionnaire and interview,the three main research questions are addressed:(1)What is middle school novice and expert teachers' perceptions of reflective teaching practice in terms of awareness,content,strategies,and influencing factors?(2)Are there any differences in the above four dimensions of reflective teaching practice between novice and expert English teachers? If so,in what way?(3)How to improve teachers' further reflective teaching practice according to these differences? The research results are demonstrated as follows.Firstly,both novice and expert English teachers are willing to participate in reflective teaching and there is no significant difference in RT awareness between them.Secondly,in terms of RT content,NTs' reflection on teaching value and teaching environment significantly differ from ETs'.ETs give more consideration to teaching values but pay less attention to reflect on the teaching environment.Thirdly,as for RT strategies,which is divided into methods and timing of RT.Regarding the methods of RT,there are significant between NTs and ETs.In contrast to ETs,NTs have a strong preference for teaching journals,instruction portfolios,lesson recording,and action research.According to the interview,it could be assumed that novice and expert English teachers tend to observe and learn from their colleagues' lectures.Besides,both NTs and ETs seldom reflect on their teaching during a lesson.Fourthly,concerning the factors that influences RT,objective factors,especially the school regulations have a stronger effect on NTs' RT.While,ETs' RT,in most cases,is affected by internal factors,such as self-efficacy and self-identity.In conclusion,through conducting a comparative analysis of middle school novice and expert English teachers' RT,this study offers theoretical and practical guidance to NTs' professional growth and accelerate the transformation from NTs to ETs.Meanwhile,this thesis also guides ETs' teaching research from a creative perspective. |
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