Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
Challenges for university English teaching profession have caused an increased need for corresponding professional development. The question of how to effectively promote university English teachers? professional development is of great interest and is being discussed in various papers. In China, several teacher professional development programmes are trying to react to these changed conditions and various programmes have been set up and are still running today. Many societies acknowledge that university English teachers as the designers and performers are not only one of the variables that need to be changed in order to improve their education systems, but they are also the most significant change agents in educational reforms. Therefore, university English teachers and teachers development have received a great deal of attention among the government and the researchers in the past few years. During the process of teachers professional development, some conventional teachers professional development requires a university to send only a small number of representatives to attend periodic teacher forums, which are usually conducted in a distant city, further challenging the financial and human resources limitations. Moreover, with the increasing workload and their own family and work responsibility, only a few teachers have the chance of going out their own universities to further study. In addition, the method of delivery still follows a conventional model, which provides limited room for teachers to build and exchange knowledge with others. Other researchers( Zhang Yanling, 2017) reported some teachers professional developments involving in teachers self-directed reflection on their working or learning, which lacks necessary guide and communication. These self-reflection and peer-help learning belongs to the support from the same level and falls into the repetition of previous knowledge, even sometimes leads to wrong direction (Wang, et al., 2017).
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1.2 Significance of the study
The expert-led teachers learning community as one of the university-based training forms aims to provide supports for university English teachers based on their own experiences and needs, and to motivate them to seek autonomous learning and professional development from the perspective of teachers knowledge, teachers competence, professional ethics and attitudes, and the university's c，英语论文范文，英语毕业论文 |
