EFL Teacher Professional Development Of The Role: An Exploratory Survey In Agricultural And Forestry Universities

Teacher professional development is one of the key elements in educational reforms all over the world. It refers to the development of the teacher in his or her professional role.Mediation theory introduces teachers and educators to a new perspective on the language teacher professional development, as teacher-learner role relationship is of the centrality in all classrooms and core in all teacher professional development programs.Mediation is defined as the role played by the significant people in learners'lives, who enhance their learning by selecting and shaping the learning experiences presented to them. It suggests that language teachers should act as mediators, who not only help the learners to acquire knowledge, but also foster the right climate for learning to take place, for learner's confidence to develop, for learner's individuality to be respected, for a sense of belonging to be nurtured, for developing appropriate learning strategies, so as to enable the learners to become independent thinkers and active problem-solvers. The mediation and the role of teachers-as-mediator, supported by the studies in the field of linguistics and educational psychology, matches the needs of the recent English teaching reforms in China which focuses on development of students'learning ability and problem solving ability. Thus, traditional role of language teachers as transmitters of language knowledge has been questioned.According to mediation theory, this paper makes an investigation by means of questionnaires on the role of teacher-as-mediator among English teachers and students in some agricultural and forestry universities: comparing discrepancy between teachers'role consciousness and teachers'role behavior, examining variation of teachers'role behavior between teachers'self-evaluation and students'evaluation, and examining gap between students'need for teachers'mediation role and teachers'role behavior (students'evaluation). Afterward, first part of follow-up interview on teachers efficiently confirms the statistic result. Eventually, the other part of follow-up interview on teachers provides useful insight into the teacher professional development of role as mediator.The research results show that the teachers generally take a positive attitude towards the importance of mediation tool in ELT, but they relatively don't apply them so frequently in the class. This contradiction reveals that a lot of English teachers"know"what should be done but"not practice"it in their teaching.The results indicate that the students cannot experience frequency of teachers'using mediation tool in the classroom at all or fully by examining variation of teachers'role behavior between teachers'self-evaluation and students'evaluation.Contrast of students'need for teachers'mediation role and teachers'role behavior (students'evaluation) shows that teachers'behaviors don't satisfy students'expectations though there is certain agreement. English teachers think highly of the importance of mediation tools, however, there are still some activities that the teachers do not practice as much as the students expect, or what the teachers do is not recognized by the students in ELT classroom from the perspective of the students.Finally, follow-up interview with the teachers suggests English teachers are not very much satisfied with the role they play in the teaching practice. They are in urgent need for professional development of role, and they need to be provided strategies of practicing mediation tools rather than pure theoretical analysis by teacher professional development program.The findings provide useful insights into implementation of the role of teacher-as-mediator and may have strong implications for English teacher professional development. If the concept of the teacher-as-mediator, especially about the strategies of implementing the mediation tools, prevails in the teacher professional development program, English teaching in agricultural and forestry universities will be likely to meet the need of educational reform in China with the fundamental aim of enabling students to become life-long learners, independent thinkers and active problem solvers.