| Foreign language teachers are always the core factor to reform education and improve the quality of teaching in foreign language teaching development.However,when the higher education popularized in China,the enrollment of local university expanded in a high speed.The quantity of teachers soared in the universities,while it was difficult to ensure their qualities.Since lacking adequate pre-service teaching practice,it was hard to qualify local university foreign language teachers to adapt to the perpetually enhanced professional requirements.The professional development of the in-service teachers plays a key role in improving the quality of foreign language teaching.To motivate the teachers’ autonomy is significant to boost TPD and teaching quality,and teacher reflection is an effective approach to motivate the teachers’ autonomy.Based on the relative literature of TPD and teacher reflection reviewed and analyzed,research framework of this dissertation is constructed based on the outline of Hao Minning’s TPD research as well as Wu Weidong,Luo Bowei’s reflective capacity research.The research attempts to research on the following questions:(1)What is the present situation of the local university reflective behaviour?(2)What is the present situation of the local university foreign language teachers’ reflective consciousnesses?(3)What effects does reflection exert on local university foreign language teachers’professional development(TPD)?The research attempts to inquire into the present situation of the local university teachers’ reflection and the role of reflection in the TPD.Both quantitative research method and qualitative research methods are adopted in the research.77 foreign language teachers in Hubei Engineering University took part in the questionnaire investigation,and 6 teachers among them were surveyed by in-depth interview.The analysis of the data collected by questionnaire is conducted with Statistical packages for Social Sciences,and an in-depth analysis is conducted based on the interview transcripts categorized according to the subjects.The research result indicates that,generally speaking,the local university foreign language teachers’ relatively active employment of rich varieties of reflective ways,their reflective consciousnesses are relatively active,comprehensive and profound.The reflection is the indispensible factor of the TPD.It plays a significantly positive role in the teachers’ teaching,research and professional affection development.Nevertheless,frequently using the reflection methods and actively reflecting on professional knowledge and competence could merely explain a small portion of the teachers’professional selfhood development.The research result indicates that it is significant for the teachers to improve reflective behaviours and consciousness so as to promote the TPD.The teachers need to learn more and communicate more with other foreign language teachers except reflection individually to clarify how to innovate their professional development consciousness to adapt to the requirements of the education in the new era.Nevertheless,their reflective action and consciousnesses should be improved.The research results of in-depth interview show that some problems exist in the teachers’ reflection.Three suggestions are proposed to solve the problems in the relative universities system in order to promote TPD.First of all,the curriculum should be arranged more reasonably,and the teachers should improve their quality of reflection.In addition,the local universities should construct a new teacher communicative and collaborative mechanism.Last but not least,the universities should integrate supervisory mechanism to supervise various aspects of TPD.The researcher wishes the empirical research could provide local university teachers some guidance to enhance their efficiencies of TPD and speed up the innovation of their TPD. |
