Research On Junior High School English Teachers' Needs For Professional Development

Teachers'professionalism and teachers'professional development are two important topics in teacher training worldwide. Since the 1980s, teachers'professional development has become a focal point and one of the central themes of educational reform. In China, research on professional development began rather late. Even today, research is still sorely needed on matters such as how to improve teachers'professionalism and foster their professional development. In particular, priority should be given to how to help teachers evolve professionally all the while taking into account their personality, various needs and wants, different experiences in teaching and current level of expertise. To this day, literature on these topics seems scant. Even more regrettable is research in relation to junior high school English teachers where there is no literature on their professional development. Teaching and research seem to suggest that these teachers may well benefit from professional development. Therefore, research on their needs for professional development has enormous implications for both theory and practice. More specifically, this research is conducive to improving teachers'professionalism, to enhancing their theoretical knowledge in education, to increasing their level of expertise, to improving their professional standing, to carrying out reforms in our current curriculum. These are the theoretical and practical grounds on which we base our research topic.Guided by current theories in education and theories on the overall development of human being, we start by defining some key terms and proceed to examine the reasons why teachers are less than enthusiastic about professional development, find the solutions, and offer some suggestions. This research topic is motivated by the aim of contributing to the professional development of junior high school teachers in China.In analyzing the needs of junior high school teachers regarding professional development, we collected our data by way of administering questionnaires and interviews and drawing upon previous literature. This paper goes into great detail in its discussion on why teachers are less than enthusiastic about professional development. We define teachers'effective needs for professional development as the desire of a teacher to keep improving their level of expertise to the point where they reach professional maturity over a period of time due to the change of environment. There are two prerequisites to effective needs, that is, a desire and abilities to reach this professional goal. Having one of the prerequisites alone does not translate to effective needs. Put differently, the needs are not strong enough. We believe that junior high school teachers'lack of enthusiasm about professional development at the moment is manifested in two aspects. (1) Capable but not aspiring. Evidence for this is threefold:belittling the importance of English itself, lacking a sense of recognition for teaching as a profession, and downplaying the significance of relearning English. (2) Aspiring but not capable. The evidence for this is also threefold: wanting to improve themselves but not being able to find any opportunities, wanting to improve themselves but not being able to find time, and wanting to improve themselves but being incapable of doing so.Teachers'professional development is affected by the interplay of various factors. Some reasons for junior high school English teachers'lack of needs for professional development are common to all teachers; others are specific to English teachers. Chapter Five delineates the factors that have an impact on junior high school teachers'lack of needs for professional development in terms of pre-service training, in-service training, the general climate of examination-oriented education, working and living conditions of teachers, and the not-so-just teacher evaluation system.Last but not least, we offer some suggestions for increasing junior high school teachers'needs for professional development by means of a literature review and a case study. The suggestions include:reforming the syllabus of the pre-service training for English teachers, helping student teachers lay a good foundation before they start work, reforming in-service teacher training, improving junior high school teachers'professional development, improving the effectiveness of training conducted by individual schools, and enabling teachers to reach their full potential by establishing links between schools and districts.