Teacher Training and Professional Development of Chinese English Language Teachers: Changing from Fish to Dragon

This up-close look at Chinese ESL teachers documents undertakings at formal and informal levels to support and sustain their expertise in ways that balance collaborative and competitive efforts, situated and standards-based programs, ethnically responsive and government-based efforts, and traditional and 21st-century teaching visions. English is a mandated subject for approximately 400 million Chinese public school students. Making transparent the training and professional development received respectively by pre-service and in-service teachers, this book provides a rare window into how Chinese English Language teachers (ELTs) reconcile the two needs with the responsibility to teach large numbers of students while also navigating societal, cultural, and institutional cross currents. It also explores the range of ways China invests in the training and professional development of its English language teachers.

Faridah Pawan is a professor in ESL/EFL teacher education in the Department of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education in the School of Education at Indiana University, USA.

Wenfang Fan is a professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at Tsinghua University, People's Republic of China.

Miao Pei is an associate professor in language pedagogy at the Center for Teacher Education Research in the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University, People's Republic of China.