The Individualized Professional Development Of Secondary School Teachers:Career’s Perspective

Teachers are mandate holders and communicators of education, also the core elements that promote educational reform and development. The quality of teachers determines the quality of education, and teachers’professional development is the only way to enhance the quality of teachers. Teachers’professional development in the past mainly were undertaked by the teaching activities within the school, teachers played a "campus-tinted character" role. With the increasing of individual workload, personal development demands are dispelled in the process of the school development. Many teachers finally face "rationality dispelled by experience, innovation restrained by repetition, passion died out by pressure, personality disintegrated by herd instinct.’ In addition, with the increasing complexity of the teaching object, the role, tasks and functions of teachers will have to change, which will finally require individualized professional development of secondary school teachers.Why do we choose individualized professional development instead of teachers’ professional development? Mainly because teachers’professional development itself contains the character of independence which is the expression of individual motivation, behavior and attitude, and whose essence is a kind of state or result. Therefore, the independent and continuous professional development is personalized results or target for individual teacher and reflects the respect and attention. The personalized professional development is the process of realization of individual self-development. In addition, the career is an important part of human resource management, and the essence of teachers’career is a complex state of teachers working and living. From the perspective of teachers’career rather than professional point of view, looking at the secondary school teachers’professional development will change the situation that teacher’s work and life are isolated from each other.The research is carried out in accordance with the basic logic which includes "what, why, how to do". The main research questions are:"what is the relationship between the existence of life and professional development of teachers (working) in career perspective?", "what is the status (work) of teachers’professional development?", "What is the situation of teachers’life?", "What is the meaning behind them?", and "what problems are there still and what are the causes of questions?". What are the countermeasures there for promoting the individual professional development of teachers based on the perspective of carrer?The research mainly adopts the method of qualitative research, designed the teachers professional questionnaires according to the five phase of professional development according to the research of Zhong Zurong (2012), which shows that professional identity is as high as 83.4%, the stage of exploration and adaptation, the stage of capability-establishing, the stage of enthusiastic growth, the stage of stability-maintenance, the stage of frustration and recession. This research takes the phase as the status of teachers’behavior and attitude. It uses the self-awareness, interpersonal relationships, self-management to describe the situation of teachers’life. We did a questionnaire survey which included 463 teachers in five schools, and gave an in-depth interviews of 35 teachers that have different administrative duties, teaching age, and academic background, for collecting the detailed first-hand information. Survey data aims to show the "campus-tinted characters" status of professional development, the "person of life"situation of the life, explore the problems existing in teacher development, and reveal the promotion of teachers’life to teachers’professional development. Finally, we put forward the countermeasures and suggestions to promote individual professional development.With systematic reflection and demonstration, this paper has following findings: firstly, teachers’age, seniority, marriage show the most significant influence on teachers’professional development. Individuals who are between 25 and 35 and have teaching experiences in 5 to 10 years show frustration recession characteristics, which results from the fact that life itself gradually becomes the core center of individuals, whose focus are slightly changed to love affairs, building up families and raising children. This to large extent explains why individuals spend relatively less energy on teaching and face stagnation or even recession in professional development. In addition, it also illustrates the importance of teachers’life from the other side.Secondly, from the point that teachers are as "whole person", teachers’ life can not only provide common "health" to professional development, but also "promotion" Furthermore, the dimension of interpersonal communication of teachers’ life influences most to professional development. As a result, based on career role, this paper proposes countermeasures and suggestions to enhance the individual development of teachers. Thirdly, while teachers regard teaching abilities and life experiences as focus of individual development, they still face several problems in these two aspects. Finally, strategies to promote teachers’ professional development from the perspective of career, all aim to develop teachers from "campus-tinted character" to "whole person". The main means are self-initiative ones while the assistant means are families’ and schools’ support, which all together are to promote the transformation of roles and functions of teachers and organizations, approaching a new way of teachers’ individual professional development.