On Foreign Language Teacher's Role and Niche

The diversity and multiplicity of the teacher's role has been an important cause for the "loss"felt by the teachers in their professional practice. This paper tries to explore the teacher's niche and niche expansion by reviewing roles theory,analyzing publications on teacher's roles in China since 2000 and discussing problems in exisiting research.It suggests that niche expansion can explain the ecostate and ecorole of the teacher in a certain complex ecosystem.