An Investigation Into Senior High School English Teachers’ Professional Development

With the implementation and popularization of the new senior high school English curriculum standards cross the country,higher requirements are raised for teachers of English in senior high schools.Teachers’ professional capacity has become a key factor to the implementation of the new curriculum reform.Thus,the research of the senior high school English teachers’ professional development has now become very important.The present thesis,by taking the teachers from 4senior high schools in southern Ningxia as objects,focuses on the teachers’ professional development.The thesis intends to investigate the current situation of the professional development of the 4 senior high schools,aiming to find the existing problems and further to put forward the countermeasures for improving the situation.A total of 75 high school teachers were surveyed through questionnaire and 8 teachers were randomly selected to conduct interviews.The survey data was analyzed by using SPSS 21.0 software.Based on the analysis of the survey results,the problems,such as the serious disproportion of men and women teachers,the lack of expert teachers,and teachers’ unclear professional development goals were found.Then through exploring the causes practically and theoretically,the countermeasures were suggested,including policy support from the local education departments,creation of favorable professional development environment for teachers,organizing school-basedteaching and research activities,and raise of teachers’ professional qualifications.At the same time,the paper also pointed out that teachers themselves need to enhance their own professional development awareness,introspect their own teaching continuously,actively participate in education and teaching research so as to enhance their own sense of professional identity and thus promote their professional development.