Construction of a Tiered and Categorized Development Support System for Foreign Language Teachers in Vocational Colleges under the Three Major Global Education Initiatives

Abstract

Implementation of UNESCO's education transformation, Belt and Road Education Plan and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has put forward new demands regarding professional competence and internationalized teaching ability for foreign language teachers in China's vocational colleges. Some problems exist including imbalance of knowledge structure, lacking enterprise practice experience, poor intercultural literacy, significant deficiencies in information-based teaching competence among foreign language teacher workforce in vocational colleges; current teacher development support mechanism suffer from ambiguity of tiers, homogenized training path, and an incomplete evaluation and incentive system that is ill-equipped to meet the demands of global education reform and internationalized cultivation of talents in vocational education. Based on the core tenets of the Three Major Global Education Initiatives and considering the actual development dilemmas of foreign language teachers in vocational colleges, this paper introduces the concept of tiered and categorized development, starting from teachers' competence stage, job responsibility, disciplinary background and development orientation, constructing a three-level teacher tiering and categorization framework consists of junior level, intermediate level, and senior level, building up an integrated support system composed by competence improvement training, career development paths, and diversified evaluation and incentives, proposing implementation paths through optimizing policies and institutions, implementing school-based model, and operation monitoring and improvement. We hope our research can offer actionable practical solutions for professional and internationalized development of foreign language teachers in vocational colleges and cultivate technical and skilled talents with global competence.