A Narrative Study On Teachers’Professional Development

Until recently, researchers in the field of foreign language (FL) teaching focused their interests on teaching methods, textbooks and syllabus. Since mid-1990, teachers and teacher development have received a great deal of attention. In the FL teachers’ professional development, much attention has been given to what kind of knowledge and skills that FL teachers should have and what courses should be taken in the pre-service teacher education program. Most of the teacher education programs are knowledge centered, and they ignore the teachers as persons whose learning and life experience matter a great deal in the construction of their knowledge and identities.This research attempts to explore how two Chinese-American ESL teachers and two American FL teachers construct their teacher knowledge and teacher identities in the sociocultural context of America and how they interact between society, culture and individuals in the professional and personal development. The paper centers on the following issues:1. How the four teachers’ life experiences, mainly their FL learning experience andcross-cultural experience affect their teacher knowledge.2. How the four teachers with different cultural backgrounds construct their teacher knowledge and teacher identities in the American educational system.3. How the four teachers get in-service professional development and its impact on their construction of teacher knowledge.4. What implications can be drawn for FL teachers’professional development?This study argues that teachers’ professional life is closely related to their personal life, and their personal space overlaps with their public space. Teacher knowledge is embedded in their daily teaching, and their teaching experience comes from their life experience. Therefore, to explore their professional development one needs to view them in their lived world which is their starting point as well as finishing point of their professional development.Teachers’ professional development involves not only the acquisition of knowledge from formal education, but also the theorization of personal experience and the interaction between them. Through narrative inquiry into individual teachers’ life, the researcher can get a deeper insight into the process of teachers’ learning and professional development.Teachers’ development means not only the development of expertise, but also the development of self which is the inner power for professional development. To explore teachers’ professional development one needs to explore the existence of the self and the activities that embody the meaning of life which is the basic form of existence.Language and culture influence the way of thinking and the way of doing of those who learn and teach that language. FL teachers who teach a different language from their native one will surely construct their knowledge and identity in their unique ways.By interviewing four FL/ESL teachers in the public schools and colleges in the U.S, the author attempts to draw a picture of how their teaching philosophy, teacher knowledge and teacher identity are formed and developed. The process of the study itself constitutes a very important of professional development of the researcher. Meanwhile, by examining the individual teachers, this research tries to gain an insight into the complexity of professional development of FL teachers as a whole.