Informal Learning Makes Me A Better Teacher:a Narrative Study On Secondary-school English Teachers’ Informal Learning And Professional Development

Teacher professional development is fundamental to the quality of education.The professional development of quality teachers needs the stimulation and maintenance of endogenous power.The bottom-up informal learning activities organized by teachers,self-determined and self-motivated by teachers are the endogenous motivation to stimulate and maintain the high-quality development of teachers.However,for a long time,both theoretical researchers at home and abroad and grass-roots practical workers have paid more attention to the top-down formal learning organized,arranged and required by the educational administrative departments for teachers,while the attention to teachers’ informal learning is extremely insufficient for informal learning.Among the few studies of teachers’ informal learning,the focus is mainly on pre-service teachers’ professional development or their transformation processes based on the strong learning needs of novice teachers.However,experienced teachers,especially secondary-school English teachers at the forefront of teaching reform,have been scarcely researched on their daily informal learning activities and their impact on their long-term professional development.To fill the gap,this study attempts to address the following three research questions:1)What informal learning activities do experienced secondary EFL school teachers undertake during their teaching career? 2)What are the factors influencing their uptake of informal learning activities? 3)How do they perceive these informal learning activities’ impact on their continuing professional development?In this study,5 middle school English teachers with more than 10 years of teaching experience in J city were recruited as research participants to tell their stories about their professional development through their informal learning experiences.This study uses narrative research methods to extracts plots and key events of five teachers’ daily informal learning activities in their professional development process to explore the influencing factors in their uptake of the informal learning activities and the role of informal learning experience in their professional development.Through in-depth description and interpretation of the stories of secondary-school English teachers’ growth through informal learning,it enables people to understand the confusion and experience of teachers’ informal learning,and truly presents the overall appearance and development context of secondary-school English teachers’ professional development through informal learning.It is found that the five English teachers have taken their distinctive approaches informal learning: learning from online sources,learning from reflection,learning from books,learning from peers,and learning from teaching practice.The main personal factors affecting these learning activities are learning beliefs,personality characteristics and professional self-improvement awareness.The main contextual factors include teaching tasks or challenges,work setbacks,school learning environment,other teachers’ guidance,and their family.Teachers believe that through informal learning activities,they not only gain a substantial growth in their knowledge,improve their teaching skills and enhance their personal positions,but also change their teaching beliefs and self-beliefs.It is found that the professional discussion and mutual observation among teachers play a great influence on the improvement of teachers’ teaching skills.Learning from online sources can regulate teachers’ learning behavior and change their personal beliefs.Reflective learning can lead to the change of teachers’ educational beliefs and personal beliefs.Reading books can not only change teachers’ beliefs and also renew professional knowledge.Practice-based learning can also improve the awareness of education research as well as improve teaching skills.When officially initiated formal training can hardly include every teacher,teachers’ informal learning is undoubtedly an effective way for teachers’ professional development,which can make teachers grow up rapidly.Through these five teachers’ narratives,this study can provide growth experience for new teachers struggling in the forefront of education,as well as guidance for teachers with growth difficulties.It is hoped that education administrators can be inspired by this research on the teachers’ professional development.Also the researcher hopes that the majority of front-line teachers can enhance their own professional improvement through this research.