An Investigation Of The Current Situation Of School-based Action Research Of English Teaching In High Schools And Countermeasures

The New Curriculum Reform focuses on students’ development, which calls for the transformation of teachers’ way of teaching. Doing action research helps teachers’ professional development to meet the requirements of the New Curriculum Reform. Action research is a kind of research carried out by practitioners who seek to solve practical problems, improving practice and enhancing understanding. Its characteristics are: the researcher is the practitioner himself or herself, the aim of research is to solve a certain problem, and the research result has no universal significance. Action research can effectively combine research and teaching practice so it is an important way of teachers’professional development. The author is honored to have practiced teaching English in High School attached to Minzu University of China for a period, so try to investigate the situation of school-based action research of English teaching in this school and to put forward some opinions and suggestions about the theory and practice of school-based action research of English teaching.Based on related theories of action research and school-based action research, adopting questionnaire, interview and SPSS, this thesis aims to investigate the status quo of English teachers doing school-based action researches in ethnic middle schools. During the second semester of the year 2015, the author have an investigation which lasts for a semester in the Middle School Attached to Minzu University of China, in order to probe into questions about the situation of English teachers’ doing school-based action research, English teachers’understanding of doing school-based action researches, main constraints in doing school-base action researches and English teachers’expectation on doing school-based action researches.The analysis of results shows that:The investigated teachers have different levels of knowledge of school-based action research, and most of them think that action research helps facilitate teachers’ professional development, students’ comprehensive development and schools’autonomous development.More than half of teachers have carried out school-based action researches. Many of these teachers have gained professional development in pedagogic knowledge and self-examination; the school has gained certain school-based development; the atmosphere of teaching and learning has become more democratic and more harmonious, and the teaching plan has become more suitable for the students’mentality and the rules of language learning; the differences of students of ethnic minority have not gained enough attention; the management and incentive system are not complete enough.The analysis of the constraints shows that the main factor that hinders school-based action research is the workload and pressure of teachers, teachers lack in knowledge about the theory and practice of action research, there exists contradiction between the organizers and the supervisors and during the process of school-based action researches teachers lack in guidance from experts.Many teachers investigated expect that the school-based action research can be more reflective, more democratic and more united.