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A META-ANALYSIS ON EFL SECONDARY TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCES IN CHINA

Many researches about secondary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher professional competences (TPCs) of senior high schools have been conducted through investigating teachers in some regions in China, which only reflect the status and development needs of local teachers. However, the relevant research conducted nationally was limited. Therefore, this study aims at exploring the status and needs of EFL secondary TPCs of senior high schools in China by using bibliometric method and content analysis of the meta-analysis. A review of relevant literature published between 2015 and 2019 was used to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of professional competences, causes and approaches discussed in the literature. Based on 25 studies, the results revealed that teachers have a medium level of pedagogical competence (PC). They are skilled in information and communication technology competence (ICTC) but scientific research competence (SRC) is very low. Curriculum competence (CC), reflective competence (RC) and assessment competence (AC) are low. Awareness of self-development and efficient in-service training are the key factors for improving professional competences.


INTRODUCTION
In China, there is a high demand for good English proficiency among students because English proficiency is tested in

College Entrance Examinations and Senior High School
Examinations. At the same time, EFL teachers are expected to master a good acquisition of professional knowledge and professional competence to meet the requirements of new trends in the field of teaching English as a foreign language.
Being a key component of teachers' professional development (PD), TPC is one of the indicators of teacher identity. TPC does not only generally determines the progress of teacher PD but also influences students' academic performance to a great extent (Enever, 2014; Karavas, 2014) On the other hand, TPC has become the focus of English teaching reform in China. As such, it is necessary to explore EFL teacher TPC and PD needs of senior high schools English teachers in the Chinese context.
However, much concern about PC was conducted in some Findings from those researchers are discussed in this article.
First, EFL teachers reported themselves as a lack of knowledge and skills in assessment literacy and some even did not have a clear concept of assessment literacy, which indicated that they had a very low level of language assessment literacy. Second, perceived ICT competence of EFL teachers surveyed in the study is low currently and they need a medium and higher Zhang, 2017). Third, regarding teacher PC and LC, a majority of teachers seemed to acquire enhance some relevant skills (Michaud, 2015) and had the highest self-perceived ability of teaching vocabulary while reading instruction was the lowest (J. Zhao et al., 2016). However, respondents surveyed in the research stated they had good PC especially in both oral and written, productive and receptive skills in communication (Rinantanti et al., 2017).
Overall, many teachers may have only a medium level of TPC to some extent and even they are low in some specific TPCs in some areas at present. Furthermore, it is likely to cause teachers' lack of self-confidence in all aspects of educational instruction and consequently may not be conducive to the development of students' quality. For instance, a lack of self-confidence in classroom instruction may derive from some factors such as EFL teachers' limited linguistic proficiency and lack of enough time for sufficient preparation and rare limited effective teacher training (Rahmati et al., 2019). Hence, it is obviously a must for them to employ some related in-service training or programs to satisfy the new trends in the field of educational reform. Similarly, the lack and degeneration of certain professional knowledge and competences probably exist among Chinese EFL teachers of senior high schools, which contribute to their self-perceived inadequate proficiency, a decrease in self-efficacy and less use of the target language in class, etc. To illustrate, just as Z. Tang (2008)

1) Research purposes and questions
The purpose of our study was to determine the status of EFL

3) Selection criteria
To make literature eligible for review, we used the following criteria to identify articles for inclusion in the study. First, only studies exploring EFL teachers' professional competence of senior high schools were included and participants' demographic characteristics such as gender, age, education background, teaching experience, professional qualifications, areas and others were not subject to limitation. Second, the outcome research results were required to be either the status of overall professional competence or its sub-dimensions.
Third, the studies were required to show sufficient relevant data and purely qualitative analyses without research methods were also excluded.
In the process of paper selection, the first author independently screened the titles and abstracts of identified papers. Then the first author made a meta-content matrix for further analysis after both authors examined the full texts of potentially suitable papers. Few differences of opinions arose and we determined 8 journal articles and 17 master's theses for the meta-analysis. The flow diagram for this selection process is shown in Fig. 1.
All the studies were coded for year of publication, population, surveyed area, status, reasons and suggestions and measures.
As a result of the unclear boundaries of level of teacher professional competence and the vague expressions, both authors had to discuss all researched results. In particular, the category of status of TPC was divided into five levels: very high level (90%-100%), high level (80%-89%), fair level (60%-79%), low level (40%-59%), and very low level (39% below). Also, we coded the levels of TPC based on research data and research conclusions as below.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
The 25 studies with a total of 3750 participants, were summarized in the meta-analysis as listed in Table 3  From Fig 2, we can see in 7 dimensions, scholars examined PC, RC, SRC, CC, ICTC and AC, and one of 7 not discussed was CFLC.
As for CRLC, scholars didn't treat CFLC as a whole, but explored some of CFLC such as LC, ICC and PA, which can be seen from Fig 3. In contrast, they focused more on PC, SRC and ICTC. It is worth noting that PC, RC, AC, ICTC and CC have received great concern from scholars home and abroad.
However, few scholars explored SRC of EFL teachers abroad, which is not alike that in China.   TIA1, KSA, COESC, TCA, TRA, TEA, TSAM, TIA, CMA and TDA. There is a great deal of difference among these aspects.
Scholars pay more attention to TDA and TIA, followed by TRA,   Based on the summary of Table 3, we found out internal and external factors causing English teachers' low professional competences shown as the principle from principal to secondary below.

Internal factors
Weak awareness of autonomous improvement, weak crisis awareness, fragile teaching faith and lack of life-learning idea; Low language proficiency and low professionalism including insufficient knowledge of curriculum, intercultural knowledge, and psychology; lack of awareness of community, closed teacher culture and non-cooperation with related groups; Fear of specific difficulties in the research process; Low improvement of academic qualifications;

External factors
Few chances of participating in-service training as well as lack of effective professional training and activities and training mechanism to improve; Overloaded workload and psychological burden leading to less time for teachers to study； The exam-oriented education and backwash effects on teaching; Weak school-based teaching and research and weak school's management of teacher professional development; Learn to do teaching reflection; Know students well and deeply.

For educational authorities and schools
Improve in-service training system and provide teachers varieties of effective in-service training and activities such as remote training, modern educational technology, etc. in continual teacher's education; Construct a teacher learning community and strengthen the construction of school-based training especially constructing more action researches; Gain outer support from experts, parents and other groups and build a harmonious and positive school environment; Reform the current teacher evaluation system and employment policy; Improve teacher structure and attract more teachers to the rural areas; Strength the link between secondary schools and universities in teaching and research; Improve teachers' salary and pay attention to teachers' mental health; Offer the construction of hardware facilities and provide English teachers more learning resources. Overall, our study achieved our assumed aims to reveal the status of teachers' TPCs of senior schools in China, but here are still some limitations. First, our study is limited by a relative imbalance of in numbers of each dimension of TPCs because we did not input each competence as the subject or in the process of searching the literature. Therefore, we may collect restricted studies in some competences. Second, some studies without causes and different classifications of TPCs seem to lead to a biased analysis on the overall causes. Third, the coding result can be more precise and reasonable if our study include more authors. However, interested readers may contact us for some relevant information on our research findings.

CONCLUSION
The contribution of our study is to explore the weakness, TPCs.