A Survey On The Professional Identity Of Senior High School English Teachers

With the deepening of senior high school English curriculum reform,senior high school English teachers,as the direct practitioners of education and policies,play a key role in improving the quality of senior high school English teaching and the effectiveness of English curriculum reform.Having a high degree of professional identity can make senior high school English teachers constantly reflect and improve themselves and enhance the quality of English teaching as well as achieve the professional development.Therefore,senior high school English teachers’ professional identity has become an area worthy of researching.Taking relevant theory of teachers’ professional identity as the framework and referring related researches abroad and at home,the author investigated 81 senior high school English teachers in Taiyuan from the dimensions of occupational value,social support,behavioral effort and professional knowledge and ability.Besides,the author interviewed six representative senior high school English teachers.This thesis aims to answer the following questions:1.What is the overall level of senior high school English teachers’ professional identity?2.What are the differences of senior high school English teachers’ professional identity concerning teachers’ sex,age,teaching age,educational background,teaching school and academic title?3.What factors make difference to senior high school English teachers’ professional?Based on the analysis and discussions of the collected data from questionnaire and interviews,the results are as follows:1.Senior high school English teachers have a relatively high degree of professional identity which reaches to a score of 4.22 ± 0.46.English teachers in senior high school generally have a correct understanding of their profession and they are willing to make efforts to develop their professionalism.However,they are not quite satisfied with the current reputation and social status of their profession.They want to receive more respect and support from schools and society.2.There are no significant differences between senior high school English teachers’ professional identity and their age,teaching age,teaching school and academic title,while there are significant differences in their sex and educational background.Male English teachers have a higher degree of professional identity than female teachers,scoring 4.28 and4.19 respectively.High school English teachers with the educational background of three-year college and undergraduate have a higher degree of professional identity than teachers with postgraduate or above educational background,scoring 5.00,4.20 and 4.04 respectively.3.The influencing factors of senior high school English teachers’ professional identity can be mainly divided into three perspectives.The macro perspective includes the change of English curriculum reform policy and senior high school English teachers’ social status.The intermediate perspective includes school culture and workload of teachers.The micro perspective pertains to senior high school English teachers’ personal professional knowledge.Considering the influencing factors of senior high school English teachers’ professional identity and combing with related literature,the author proposes suggestions respectively for the department of government and education,school leaders and English teachers to(re)construct high school English teachers’ professional identity.The suggestions are as following:1.The department of government and education should take senior high school English teachers’ social status seriously and enrich the content and the form of teachers’ training;2.School leaders should distribute teachers’ workload reasonably and establish communities of practice to create harmonious atmosphere for teachers;3.English teachers should persist self-reflection and acquire the practical knowledge as well as make a long-term career plan.