American Experts Work With History Teachers In Primary And Secondary Schools To Promote Professional Development Of Teachers

The cooperation between experts and history teachers in primary and secondary schools to promote history teachers' professional development in American has a long history. The content is rich and the system is complete. “The Teaching American History Program” is a new project in the new century to promote history teachers' professional development by the cooperation between experts and history teachers. It is the U.S. government that wants to improve students' achievements of American history and change the teaching situations. It intends to promote the professional development of history teachers through strengthening direct cooperation between history teachers and experts and improving the level of history teaching in primary and secondary schools. In development process, the rich experience of cooperation and more than ten years of development experience make “The Teaching American History Program” gradually consummate, and form several distinctive features. Now we explore the reform of professional development of history teachers. Referencing the successful experience of “The Teaching American History Program”, funded by the U.S. government and had great impact on American history teaching, is important to explore and complete further the professional development of history teachers in China.The object of study in this paper is “The Teaching American History Program” which is the new activities of promoting history teachers' professional development of American in new century. This paper utilizes the authoritative academic journal?The History Teacher?and the latest information about “The Teaching American History Program” from the website of the U.S. Department of Education, and we firstly study the program comprehensively. It not only explores the content, form, effectiveness and the conditions of evaluation but also generalizes three characteristics and three values. Furthermore, it draws some inspiration that could be used in practice from this program.This paper includes two parts. The first part is the introduction which includes the background, the research value of the topic. Besides, we defines the concepts of experts, history teachers in primary and secondary schools, and the professional development of history teachers. Moreover, we also provide the methods of research, the main content, the innovations and some previous researches. The main contents divide into four parts: the first part introduces the origin, purpose and implementation of “The Teaching American History Program”; the second part describes the case named “Model Collaboration: Rethinking American History” which shows the implementation process, and we analyzes the characteristics as well as the limitations of this case. The third part sums up the features and the values of “The Teaching American History Program”, namely, supporting strongly by the law and finance, cooperating with beneficial pattern, enriching the content, completing the reasonable evaluation mechanism, promoting the study about history teachers' professional development in-depth in the academic field, guiding history teacher autonomous learning and improving the level of American history teaching. The fourth part discusses several implications such as managing in accordance with the law and financial support, experts vectoring and favorable cooperation, the training providing for history teachers should be integrated closely with the practice teaching of history in primary and secondary schools.This study shows that when exploring the path of reform about the history teachers' professional development, we not only summarize and inherit the experience of the past but also should adhere to historical materialism, based on the facts of our history education and history teachers' professional development, and reference the valuable experience selectively which is draw from the world.