Research On The Teacher Professional Development By Special-grade Teachers’ Workshops In Guangxi

With the educational reform popularized in the world, teacher professional development has become a problem that is concerned by many countries. In the internet era, the increase in knowledge is so rapid that teacher has to renew his ideas about how to develop himself, and that the model of teacher professionalization has been affected by the world. Besides the school based research, the teacher’s training, the reflection of teaching and other traditional teacher developing models, online based research changes to be one of the top topics in the educational study. In order to meet the development of teachers in the Age of Information, the Educational Department of Guangxi has implemented the project of special-grade teachers’workshops in October,2010, trying to take advantage of the network, the experts in colleges and the special-grades teachers, fully utilizing the resources of internet to improve teachers’information literacy and comprehensive abilities. On top of that, this project attempts to drive the development of teachers in another schools or places throughout the share and communication in the network.Based on the theories of Teacher Professional Development stages, Learning Community, Teaching Reflection and Informal Learning, this paper major interprets the fundamental concepts of Teacher Professional Development and the Special-grade Teachers’Workshops; then, it summarizes the essential information about teacher’s professional development and the general patterns at home and abroad. The article analyzes the development of the special-grade teachers and the implementation of the network of the workshops. By means of the system of SPSS, this paper finds out some questions about this project. Firstly, this workshop is lack of the technology environment and the policy to support the benefit of teachers in this study. Secondly, the online learning community formed in the workshop is short of the active system. Thirdly, the network resource is not perfect. Finally, there is misunderstanding about the educational technology and the workshop for some teachers. Based on the questions, this article puts forward the relative strategies of the online teacher professional development through four areas—the environment, the technology, the resources and the teachers. In environmental, there should be material supports produced by the related department, so teachers can study in a better internet environment. In technology, teachers should have the right attitude on technology; after that, they have to control the network technology in their development. In resources, the network resources have to be updated and generated by teachers or the managers; besides, people must deepen the resources in integration and interaction. In teachers, the online learning community formed by the special-grade teachers should set up the learning target, the rules, the system and so on.