A Study Of Junior High School English Teachers’ Professional Development Agency

Teacher professionalism is key to the effectiveness of English teaching.The new edition of The Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2022)has specially added guidance and suggestions for teaching research and teacher training.Teachers’ professional development is quite important for enhancing their professional levels,and agency is the core and foundation of teachers’ professional development.Therefore,exploring the current situation of junior high school English teachers’ professional development agency and the factors that affect their professional development agency may provide more empirical data and instructional implications for promoting junior high school English teachers’ professional development.Through literature review,the author finds that there are a few studies on English teachers’ professional development agency in China.The participants of previous research involve mostly college English teachers and pre-service English teachers,and there is few research focusing on junior high school English teachers’ professional development agency.Besides,the existing research usually investigates the overall status and influencing factors of teachers’ professional development agency,but the analysis of the factors affecting teachers’ professional development agency is not comprehensive enough.This study takes the definition of agency in Bandura’s social cognitive theory and the ecological theory of teacher agency as theoretical basis,aiming to explore the current situation and influencing factors of English teachers’ professional development agency.This study divides English teachers’ professional development agency into two dimensions: personal agency and environmental agency.And the factors affecting English teachers’ professional development agency are divided into three dimensions: iterational dimension factors,practice-evaluation dimension factors and projection dimension factors.This study adopts quantitative research methods,using the “The Questionnaire of Teachers’ Current Professional Development Agency” and the self-compiled “The Questionnaire of Influencing Factors of Junior High School English Teachers’ Professional Development Agency” as research tools.A questionnaire survey is conducted on the status quo and influencing factors of professional development agency of 137 junior high school English teachers.The research findings are presented as follows:Firstly,the overall level of junior high school English teachers’ professional development agency is high,and the level of environmental agency is significantly higher than that of personal agency.Secondly,some characteristics of junior high school English teachers’ professional development agency are found.The level of personal agency of teachers with Master’s degrees or above is significantly higher than that of teachers with Bachelor’s degrees or below.The English teachers who graduated from normal universities have significantly higher overall professional development agency,personal agency and environmental agency than those who didn’t graduate from normal universities.The overall professional development agency agency and the environmental agency of ordinary teachers are significantly higher than that of head teachers.There are no significant differences in professional development agency among English teachers in terms of gender,age,years of teaching,professional titles and school locations.The factors influencing junior high school English teachers’ professional development from an ecological perspective are as following: among the iterational dimension factors,teachers’ teaching beliefs,teachers’ professional identity,teachers’ professional levels and teachers’ past experience significantly affect their professional development agency.Teachers’ professional titles have impact on their environmental agency,and teachers’ educational backgrounds influence their personal agency and overall professional development agency;Among the practical-evaluation dimension factors,school culture atmosphere,teachers’ teaching autonomy,peer cooperation,relationship with students and parents,and material resource have significant effects on the professional development agency of junior high school English teachers.Among the projection factors,both short-term and long-term goals set by teachers can predict teachers’ professional development agency.Based on the above findings,this study puts forward some suggestions for junior high school English teachers,school administrators and education management departments to provide more favorable support for junior high school English teachers and promote their professional development.