A Study Of Hindering Factors Of Rural Primary English Teachers’ Professional Development In Zhuji City

High quality education needs high quality teachers. Teacher is one of the essential factors to influence success of all kinds of education reforms. In the New Curriculum Reform teachers are both the subject and object of the reform. Since the late20th century, all over the world have paid much attention to improving education quality, and teachers’professional development has been the hot topic.In2001, English became a required course at primary schools all over the land. With the influence of the New Curriculum Reform, great progresses have been made. But many problems and questions still exist in primary English teaching. One of the most serious problems is the lack of qualified primary English teachers. In rural areas, the situation is more problematic. The National Education Plan, which published in2010states that:"Improving the quality of the whole primary and secondary teachers, rural teacher are given priorities." Enhancing rural primary English teachers’ professional development is the essential way to solve the problematic situation in rural areas, and also the way to balanced development of Basic Education.This study takes the rural primary English teachers in Zhuji as the study object, applying the scientific research methods such as literature analysis, questionnaires, and interviews. This thesis tends to answer the following3research questions:(1) What is the situation of the rural primary English teachers’professional development in Zhuji?(2)What are the hindering factors influencing rural primary English teachers’professional development in Zhuji?(3) How to counter the hindering factors for enhancing rural primary English teachers’professional development in Zhuji?The study consists of six chapters, each chapter is briefly introduced as the followings:Chapter one, the introduction of the paper mainly introduces the research background, the content and significance of the study.Chapter two is about literature review. In this part, the literature review is done from the aspects of teachers’professional development, teacher professional development, English teacher professional development and the factors influencing teachers’ professional development. The limitation of the researches is also mentioned.Chapter three is about study design, implementation and the findings of the study. The questionnaires were carried out to seventy-seven rural primary English teachers in Zhuji during May,2011to June,2011. Five teachers were interviewed for detailed information about their professional development. There are many complicated factors holding back rural primary English teachers’ professional development. The weakness of the teachers’ professional knowledge, skills, and attitude hinder their professional development; Heavy tasks, high pressure, and lack of time also hold back their professional development; Lack of co-operative culture, incapability of leaders, irrational evaluation, and little help from experts at their working schools also hinder their professional development; The up-down model of teachers’ training and lack of professional development opportunities make their professional development more difficult.Chapter four is about hindering factors analysis. The detailed analysis about the hindering factors is implemented from the following aspects:social contextual factor, school contextual factors, and teachers’ personal factors.Chapter five offers the suggestions for rural primary English teachers. Based on the detailed analysis in part four, the study gives some suggestions for rural primary English teachers, proposals for the primary school they work, and the teachers’ education schools which are responsible for their in-service preparation.The last chapter is the conclusion. It makes a simple conclusion about the study and also points out the limitation of the study and what kind of further research should be done.