Effects of Community of Practice on College English Teacher Professional Development: Case Study of English Teaching of Featured Chinese Culture Faculty Development

Abstract

Teacher professional development plays an important role in improving teaching efficiency and upgrading talents cultivation, while community of practice is an effective platform for teacher professional development. To explore a feasible approach to its faculty professional development, English Teaching of Featured Chinese Culture, a college English intercultural communication course, adopted Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle Theory to construct and operate communities of practice on teaching and researching projects, aiming to encourage “mutual engagement”, “joint enterprise” and “shared repertoire”. The follow-up case studies with teacher professional development outcomes, reflective journals, and interviews revealed that communities of practice exerted different but positive effects on the professional development of its faculty members in the aspects of conducting teaching reflections, renovating teaching practices, and implementing teaching researches, the findings of which were expected to shed some light on teacher professional development practices.