Research On The Professional Identity Of English Teachers Under The Training System Of Public-funded Normal Students

Teachers’Professional Identity has become a hot topic in the field of teachers’professional development in the 21^stcentury.Professional identity is a premise for teachers to devote themselves to education.Improving Teachers’Professional Identity helps to enhance the quality of teaching,implement the English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education,and finally promote the English Curriculum Reform.Although previous studies have explored the professional identity of rural novice teachers,college teachers and so on,they rarely touch on English graduates from pay-free normal universities.And few studies focus on the transformation of their identities,particularly from imagined identity to practical identity.Therefore,we need,urgently,to expand the scope of research objects and research ideas in order to enrich the researches on Teachers’Professional Identity.This study,based on professional entry of the first batch of graduates from pay-free normal universities in Shandong Province,guided by the Sociocultural Theory and Identity Formation Theory,selects 40 English pay-free normal students as the research objects,who just graduated from XX Normal University and started their teaching career.By using the methods of questionnaire,classroom observation and interview,the study attempts to explore the following three questions:（1）What’s the imagined identity of English graduates from pay-free normal universities?（2）What’s the practical identity after they have become teachers for five months?Compared with imagined identity,what changes have taken place during their teaching practice?（3）What are the factors contributing to their transformation of Teachers’Professional Identity?The research results show that:（1）The imagined identity of English graduates from pay-free normal universities,as a whole,is of high level.But their English Language Level and Professional Behavior Tendency are relatively low,due to their lack of teaching and management experience.（2）After their employment for five months,their practical identity level has declined slightly compared with that of imagined identity,but it is still at a relatively high level.（3）The factors contributing to their transformation of Teachers’Professional Identity are the Sense of Professional Belonging,Work Engagement and Organizational Support.Although gender and the location of school they work in have some influence on their transformation,the influence is not significant.According to the research results,the study suggests that normal universities responsible for education of the pay-free students should strengthen professional quality guidance and teaching experience imparting.The schools they have entered should not only relieve them from their burden in non-teaching tasks so that they can return to classroom with a real sense,but also provide them with efficient support from outside of their profession.Only in this way can the graduates from pay-free normal universities get help in connecting their professional identities before and after employment,enhancing and constructing smoothly their Teachers’Professional Identity.As a whole,this study has answered the three research questions and achieved preset goals successfully.In other words,the results have not only presented the factors affecting the professional development of graduates from pay-free normal university,but also put forward feasible suggestions for strengthening their professional identity.