A Study On English Teachers’ Professional Identity In Junior Middle Schools

Teachers’ professional identity refers to an on-going process, which is valuable and meaningful, at the same time it will be affected by some external factors such as school or society and by some internal factors teachers themselves. Teachers’ professional identity is also regarded as a psychological basis for professional development. From the perspective of professional development,the profession of teacher is not only related to the future development of teachers themselves, but also related to student’s long-term study and their future life.Although the study on teachers’ professional identity has become an independent research topic,there still exist some problems in the study of this subject. The first one is about the research method of the teachers’ professional identity: researchers pay more attention to the theoretical research. However, the empirical research is comparatively less and far from adequate. The second one is concerning about the research subjects, most of the researches of the teachers’ professional identity are based on the whole group of teachers, involving primary and middle school teachers, adult college teachers and normal college students, however, there is little research on teachers’ professional identity for a specific subject. According to the current situation of the research and the comprehensive analysis of the current situation of domestic and overseas teachers’ professional identity, this paper makes a quantitative and qualitative research on the professional identity of English teachers.This thesis attempts to answer the following two questions:(1) What is the overall level of professional identity of junior school English teachers?(2) What are the factors that affect the professional identity of English teachers in junior middle school?The key point of the study is to understand the present situation of the professional identity of junior middle school English teachers. Questionnaire is used as the main research instrument complemented by interview. Sixty-six English teachers in four junior middle schools from Donggang District in Rizhao are chosen as the participants to do the investigation. What’s more, the author interviewed six English teachers. According to the research questions, the questionnaire consists of three parts, the first part is about the basic information about junior middle school English teachers, and the second part includes some questions mainly about the current sitution of teachers’ professional identity, and the questions in the third part focus on the factors that affect teachers’ professional identity.In view of the research questions, the author analyses and discusses the questionnaire data and interview records. The results are summarized as follows:(1) The overall degree of professional identity of junior middle school English teachers is moderate, so teachers have a clear understanding of their professional characteristics. According to the mean score, we can see that professional behavior tendency has reached to top score. And this shows that the junior middle school English teachers in Donggang District of Rizhao have a strong consciousness of professional development. However, the recognition of professional will is rather low, because the pressure from the society strongly affects the teachers’ professional will identity. As to the professional value identity, we can see that English teachers in junior middle schools of Rizhao City have a positive understanding and evaluation of their professional value, and most of teachers would like to have a good relationship with students. However, there are still some constraints that affect teachers’ creativity and autonomy. As to the professional emotion identity, a majority of English teachers have a positive attitude towards their career and teachers realize that they belong to a member of the teacher group.(2) The main factors that affect the professional identity of English teachers’ in junior middle school are the economic treatment, heavy workload and teaching pressure, professional titles evaluation. What’s more, we can find that there are also many other external or internal factors affecting English teachers’ professional identity in junior middle schools in Donggang District of Rizhao. The first one is the imbalanced gender structure. It not only does harm to the mental and physical health, but it is also unfavorable for the improvement of the whole educational teaching level. The second one is the unreasonable professional structure. There is no doubt that it affects the promotion of teaching quality. Thirdly, the unreasonable proportion of professional title also affect English teachers’ professional identity in junior middle schools.At last, this study puts forward some suggestions from the aspects of the society, the school and teacher themselves in order to improve the whole level of English teacher professional identity in junior middle schools.