Study On Obstacles And Countermeasures Of Mature Mathematics Teachers’ Professional Development In Primary Schools

We can divide the periods of teachers’ professional development into four parts:green hand period, qualified period, mature period and expert period. And the matureperiod can be the key period of a teacher’s career. Most teachers’ teaching expertisedevelopment often remains stagnant at this stage, they get used to the role of skilledteachers. Until his or her retirement, he or she can not become experts. Researchingthe barriers and the counter measures of this period will be practical meaningful.This study will define the mature mathematics teacher as the primary schoolteacher who has senior teachers’ professional titles, who works in the elementaryschool for10years or more. This research mainly adopts the method of qualitativeresearch, research and analysis this kind of phenomenon through interviewing tenexcellent mature mathematics teachers from nine primary schools in Changsha. Thecommon barriers are lacking of basic mathematic knowledge, lacking of educationaltheory of mathematic. They’re inferior of how to teach mathematics well, how to tutorthe students who have difficulties in mathematic studying. And the consciousness ofself-develop is weak. Thus, the job burnout and the period of developing plateau willinfluence the teachers in mature period. The outer reasons includes the limitations ofthe job classification, the neglecting of school management level, one-sided jobtraining as well as the low efforts of experts’ tutor. Even though, teachers’self-learning is not enough. And the limitation of teachers’ thinking, teachers’childish thinking way, spending too much energy focus on the students with learningdifficulties, heavy family burdens, and so on, are main factors of the formation ofbarriers.In order to overcome the obstacles in the mature period of the mathematicsteachers’ professional development in elementary school, we need to manage thesectors to improve the job classification system, the development of professionalknowledge assessment system, to strengthen the effectiveness of job training, toestablish a professional tutor for the teachers. Schools need to improve managementlevel, as to establish an opening class system, to promote learning exchanges andcampus culture. Teachers should be active in seeking to develop, be good at learningand reflection, and actively participate in teaching research, attention to the students’training skills of problem-solving, and to develop professional development plans independently.