IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i12p6721-d574567.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Tale of Three Excellent Chinese EFL Teachers: Unpacking Teacher Professional Qualities for Their Sustainable Career Trajectories from an Ecological Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Wenxiu Chu

    (School of Foreign Languages, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China)

  • Honggang Liu

    (School of Foreign Languages, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China)

  • Fan Fang

    (College of Liberal Arts, Shantou University, Shantou 515063, China)

Abstract

Teachers’ quality has long been researched in the field of general education. However, little attention has been paid to the professional qualities of excellent English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in the context of English curriculum reform, especially from an ecological perspective. To address this gap, this study adopted a qualitative approach to characterise the qualities of excellent senior high school EFL teachers in China and the development of their professional qualities using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model. Four interconnected dimensions of excellent EFL teachers’ professional qualities were confirmed: English language pedagogical content competence, beliefs about the foreign language teaching profession and professional ethics, beliefs about foreign language teaching and learning, and beliefs about language teacher learning and development. Meanwhile, the EFL teachers constructed and developed their professional qualities in their dynamic interaction with the complex ecological systems where they lived. The paper considers these various teacher-related factors in the ecological systems and provides some suggestions for sustaining EFL teachers’ professional development.

Suggested Citation

  • Wenxiu Chu & Honggang Liu & Fan Fang, 2021. "A Tale of Three Excellent Chinese EFL Teachers: Unpacking Teacher Professional Qualities for Their Sustainable Career Trajectories from an Ecological Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-18, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:12:p:6721-:d:574567
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/12/6721/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/12/6721/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Honggang Liu & Lixiang Gao & Fan Fang, 2020. "Exploring and Sustaining Language Teacher Motivation for Being a Visiting Scholar in Higher Education: An Empirical Study in the Chinese Context," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(15), pages 1-16, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Honggang Liu & Wenxiu Chu & Fan Fang & Tariq Elyas, 2021. "Examining the Professional Quality of Experienced EFL Teachers for Their Sustainable Career Trajectories in Rural Areas in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-14, September.
    2. Siyu Duan & Wenxiu Chu & Honggang Liu, 2023. "“Seeking Resilience, Sustaining Development”: A Self-Narrative Study of Early Career English Teacher Resilience from an Ecological Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(16), pages 1-19, August.
    3. Xing Xu & Helena Sit & Hui Li, 2022. "Between Expert and Novice: Identity Transition from Teacher to Student as Sustainable Agentic Construction," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-12, August.
    4. Insuk Han, 2022. "Contextualization of Communicative Language Teaching in Confucian Heritage Culture: Challenging Pedagogic Dichotomization," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440221, March.
    5. Qingru Duan & Yong Jiang & Yifang Wang & Chuchu Zheng & Jing Liu & Xin Liu, 2023. "Development and Validation of Chinese Kindergarten Teachers’ Learning and Development Scale," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-20, January.
    6. Honggang Liu & Siyu Duan & Wenxiu Chu, 2022. "Unraveling EFL Teacher Buoyancy in Online Teaching: An Ecological Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(1), pages 1-16, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xiantong Zhao & Xu Liu, 2022. "Sustaining Faculty Development through Visiting Scholar Programmes: A Transformative Learning Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(1), pages 1-19, January.
    2. Gareth Morris & Junhua Mo, 2023. "Exploring the employment motivation, job satisfaction and dissatisfaction of university English instructors in public institutions: a Chinese case study analysis," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-9, December.
    3. Emir Ozeren & Aykut Arslan & Serdar Yener & Andrea Appolloni, 2020. "The Predictive Effect of Teachers’ Perception of School Principals’ Motivating Language on Teachers’ Self-Efficacy via a Cultural Context," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-17, October.
    4. Honggang Liu & Wenxiu Chu & Fan Fang & Tariq Elyas, 2021. "Examining the Professional Quality of Experienced EFL Teachers for Their Sustainable Career Trajectories in Rural Areas in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-14, September.
    5. Hui Li & Shoukat Iqbal Khattak & Qingquan Jiang, 2021. "A Qualitative Assessment of the Determinants of Faculty Engagement in Internationalization: A Chinese Perspective," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(3), pages 21582440211, September.
    6. Xiantong Zhao & Xu Liu, 2022. "Academic Visits as Transformative Learning Opportunities: The Case of Chinese Visiting Academics," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(4), pages 21582440221, November.
    7. Shi Jiao & Jing Wang & Xu Ma & Zheng You & Dini Jiang, 2022. "Motivation and Its Impact on Language Achievement: Sustainable Development of Ethnic Minority Students’ Second Language Learning," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-20, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:12:p:6721-:d:574567. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.