A Narrative Inquiry Of Rural High School English Teachers’ Teaching Reflection

Teaching reflection is a teachers’ reflection and perception of the noteworthy events that occur in the teaching process,which condense teachers’ teaching experience and also reflect many problems that exist in teaching situation.There is no teacher who does not reflect.The review of domestic and international research on teaching reflection reveals that there is a lack of research on teaching reflection on rural areas.In this context,based on experiential learning theory and constructivism theory,this study takes three English teachers from a rural high school in Shangrao City,Jiangxi Provence as research subjects and aims at answering the following three questions:1.What manifestations can be found in Rural high school English teachers’ teaching reflection?2.What is the prototype of rural high school English teachers based on the manifestations found out?3.What are the factors that influence rural high school English teachers’ teaching reflection?This study employs narrative inquiry as research method,collects the data by means of life history interviews and classroom observation,and analyzes the data by using content analysis.The findings of the study is thus reported as follow:(1)The contents of teaching reflection focus on five aspects: teaching objectives,teaching methods,student management,rural education drawbacks and self-development;the reflection level of rural high school English teachers is at a moderate to low level;the reflection process is consistent with most teachers’ teaching reflection process,which starts from problem identification,followed by problem analyzing and ends in problem solving.(2)Rural high school English teachers are the constructors of their own educational philosophy and methods,the ones who are limited by and breakthrough traditional education,and the representatives who were dissatisfied with rural education.(3)Factors that influence Rural high school English teachers’ teaching reflections can be divided into two categories,internal factors and external factors.The internal factors include teachers’ theoretical basis of teaching,teachers’ teaching philosophy and teachers’ pursuit for professional development.The external factors include reflective atmosphere and evaluation and management system of school.Based on above findings,some suggestions are proposed to promote rural high school English teachers’ teaching reflection.Firstly,rural high school English teachers need to do more critical reflection.Secondly,it’s necessary for rural high school teachers to acquire systematic knowledge about teaching reflection to strengthen their theoretical basis.Thirdly,what’s more important is that both the government and the school should create a favorable environment for teachers to do teaching reflection.