Qiaomei Dai,Lihua Tang

Since the reform and opening up, China's rural middle school English education has undergone profound changes. On the basis of combing the development process of rural English education from 1978 to more than 40 years, this paper divides the evolution of rural English education into four stages: recovery and exploration, standardization and development, new curriculum reform and deepening, tackling and innovation, and systematically examines its changes in the two dimensions of education policy and teacher level. The study found that national policies have a significant guiding role in the development of rural English education, and in terms of teachers, rural areas have long faced structural challenges such as insufficient professional ability and team stability. Although the ‘special post plan’, ‘rural teacher support plan' and other policies have alleviated the shortage of teachers to a certain extent, the gap between urban and rural areas still exists. In the context of the new era, digital technology and artificial intelligence bring new opportunities to rural English education, and also aggravate the complexity of educational equity. The purpose of this study is to provide a reference for promoting the balanced development of rural English education in China through historical review and multi-dimensional analysis.

Reform and opening up; rural middle school; English education; education change

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