Needs Analysis Of Senior High School EFL Teachers' Professional Development

With the deepening of the English teaching reform in senior high schools,more and more challenges lie ahead of EFL teachers.Hence,improving teachers' professional quality is one of the key factors to the success of the English teaching reform.Identifying the needs of teachers for professional development is necessary and important for the improvement of teachers' professional qualities and the development of education.Prior related researches have mainly focused on what makes professional development effective from the program design perspectives.There is a lack of concern about what teachers need for the improvement in the context of teaching reforms and curricular changes.The present study explores senior high school EFL teachers' needs for professional development from the perspectives of both teachers and observers provide some constructive suggestions for senior high school EFL teachers' professional development.In this study,the primary means for collecting data are questionnaires and the Teaching Knowledge Test(TKT).135 English teachers from eight different senior high schools of Shijiazhuang participated in the survey of questionnaire and the test of TKT,and eight of them accepted the in-depth interview.The study attempts to answer the following questions:1)What is the current situation of senior high school EFL teachers' professional development in Shijiazhuang?2)What are the EFL teachers' perceptions on professional development?3)What is the senior high school EFL teachers' needs for support?After analyzing the data of questionnaires,interviews and the scores of the TKT,the main findings of this study are:1)The senior high school EFL teachers have a relative strong sense of professional identity.All of these teachers want more in-service training to develop themselves.2)Although the senior high school EFL teachers hold the learning-oriented belief and have the positive attitude to the New Curriculum Standards for Senior English,their teaching practice hasn't embodied their updated teaching belief.3)The results of the TKT indicate that these senior high school EFL teachers have extensive knowledge of language systems and background to language learning and teaching.However,there is a lack of knowledge of lesson planning,use of resources for language teaching,and managing the teaching and learning process.4)There is a huge gap between teachers' ‘felt needs' and ‘observed needs' of professional development,of which they seem largely unaware.Based on these findings,the author suggests that the designers of professional development should target the common needs of teachers when they design the professional development.At the same time,more objective needs-assessment should also be conducted.