Promoting EFL Teachers' Professional Development Through Reflective Teaching

With the large enrollment of students in resent years, every year more and more students pour into colleges and universities which greatly challenge teachers, especially English teachers. They have so many classes every week that they don't have much time to attend lectures or training programs to improve themselves. Even if some teachers can accept in-service training, the outcomes are still doubtful. In their practical teaching, if they find there is a big gap between the theories they learned from the training program and practice, they may turn back to their old teaching methods. Therefore the awareness of teacher self development comes to be a task of top priority for most college and university English teachers.However, the result of the questionnaire survey conducted over 200 college English teachers from Chongqing and Sichuan Province reveals that most College English teachers do not have a strong sense of self-awareness or a sense of self-development. They are always fully occupied with their teaching and have little time to systematically conduct their professional development. More than half of the College English teachers investigated lack independent research ability and practice. This survey has also shown that the situation of reflective teaching practiced among college English teachers is not so satisfied, for more than 65% College English teachers have not systematically practiced reflective teaching, and only less than 35% of them have consistently done reflective teaching. Then how to raise teachers'awareness of self development?Based on Chinese EFL in-service teachers at university level, guided by Piaget and Vygosky's constructive theory and Roger's humanistic theory, this thesis lays emphasis on the study of reflective teaching to raise awareness of teacher self development and guide teachers to facilitate their professional development through reflective teaching. First a literature review on teacher professional development and reflective teaching is conducted. Next a theoretical foundation of teacher professional development and reflective teaching as well as their relationship is explored from constructive and humanistic perspectives. In the following part, the contents of reflection of teachers and techniques of reflective teaching are respectively introduced. Then the author implements two cases of reflective teaching to serve the purpose of showing what and how to reflect for teachers, and what approaches can be used for reflective teaching and how to benefit from different kinds of reflective teaching for the purpose of teachers'professional development. At last implications for College English teachers and teacher educational administrators are presented, so this study is significant and inductive to teacher professional development.