Research On The Ways Of English Teachers' Collaboration In Middle Schools In The Context Of New Curriculum Reform: A Case Study Of Pingwu County

Since 2001, China has begun a new round of the basic education curriculum reform. The implementation of new curriculum needs the guarantee of teachers' qualities. Their personal qualities have direct influence on the final success of teaching and educational reform. With the implementation of new curriculum reform and teachers'professional development, collaboration becomes one of the indispensable qualities for teachers. Teachers are playing a key role promoting new curriculum. That is. teachers need to carry out the content of new curriculum, perform its standard and then explore new teaching methods and laws. All of these above could be done when teachers have sense of collaboration and ability of collaboration. Therefore, it is of necessity to study teachers' collaboration under the background of new curriculum reform as teachers'collaboration plays an important part for the development of the whole teacher groups and the final success of education quality. In this case, how do English teachers carry out collaboration in middle schools? What are the differences between their collaborative ways? What are the constraints during collaboration? And what is the influence of each collaborative way for English teachers'professional development? In this study, the author chose seven English teachers as the target for interview from M middle school. Through documentation, questionnaire and interview, data were collected so as to explore the concrete ways of English teachers'collaboration in middle schools, finds out teachers' attitudes toward collaboration, investigates the present constraints to collaboration and then finally proposes coping strategies for enhancing teachers'collaboration as well as teachers'professional development. Therefore, the author has summarized the findings into the following parts:First of all, through questionnaire and interview, teachers'collaboration ways can be categorized into two groups:organizational collaboration and non-organizational collaboration according to the fact that whether their activities are organized by the group. As for organizational collaboration, teachers'concrete ways are as the following:teaching and research activities, collective lesson planning, expert coaching in teaching, peer observation and evaluation and attending open classes. These collaborative ways are organized by relevant authorities so as to facilitate teachers'collaboration and their professional growth. As for the other classification, it includes teachers' daily communication after work and their network communication. The time and place for this group is not fixed and teachers'conversation and communication is more casual and relaxed. which may be of benefit for teachers" deep communication.Second. though most teachers have the common sense of collaboration, their focuses differ. According to relevant standards, teachers belong to different groups. Different teachers may be in various developing stages that their attitudes towards collaboration vary. For novice teachers, they are anxious to change their teaching roles to be a qualified teacher. As for them, the function of collaboration lies in helping them get basic teaching skills, think about how to teach well and solve practical problems.Third, though teachers'collaboration has been conducted smoothly in some middle schools, there are still constraints to teacher collaboration. First of all. teachers are occupied in their daily teaching that they have little time to communicate with other teachers. What is more, teachers' team spirit is not so strong. Some teachers are not so willing to communicate with others. Most of them just work on themselves. In addition, collaboration in schools is just a form which has little effect. Some teachers are forced by the school leaders to participant in these collaborative activities. Natural collaboration among teachers do not occur, which is not beneficial for teachers' communication and their professional development.Forth, according to the constraints to teachers' collaboration, several coping strategies have been proposed by the author to facilitate teachers'collaboration and their professional development, like creating healthy collaborative atmosphere, taking into consideration of teachers'particular needs and utilizing management mechanism to guarantee teachers'collaboration. In this case, teachers'collaboration and their professional development may be promoted.