A Study Of High School English Teachers’ Professional Identity

Teachers’ professional identity determines the basic attitude of teachers,work behaviors and also deeply affects teachers’ feelings of themselves and occupation.Higher professional identity is the eternal driving force to promote teachers’ own work.The happiness and the value of teachers can be realized only when they really establish a sense of professional identity.Teachers’ professional identity has increasingly become a research topic of scholars.Generally Speaking the research perspectives are definitions,constituents,elements,significances and so on,which greatly enrich the content of teachers’ professional identity research.Based on the analysis of research data collected by the author,it is found that most of the researches are carried out on primary and secondary school teachers and university teachers.And there are not too many literatures on high school English teachers.Senior high school English teachers’ professional identity is the recognition and acceptance of their own professional values,professional belongings,professional behaviors in tendency and role values.These evaluations are conductive to improving English teachers’ professional identity.Questionnaire and interview are employed to study the teachers’ identity.The purpose of this survey is to solve the following three problems:Firstly,what is the general situation of senior high school teachers’ professional identity in Zhumadian? Secondly,what are the main factors for the differences of teachers’ identity? Lastly,what are the main reasons for the differences of the teachers’ identity?The results show that(1)the overall level of professional identity of senior high school English teachers in Zhumadian city is very high.(2)The key influencing factors are gender,marital status,job titles,positions,years of teaching,monthly income and the classifications of schools.(3)The differences of teachers’ identity are caused by personal motivation,school management and social recognition.Base on the results,the present study discusses the teachers’ identity from four perspectives: professional values,professional belongings,professional behaviors in tendency and role values.Finally,the author makes some suggestions to improve English teachers’ professional identity from the following three aspects: individuals,schools and the society.There are still some deficiencies in this study,for example,the survey sample is not large enough and the questionnaire has only four dimensions.The future research can consider more factors and focus on more dimensions.