Teachers' Beliefs Of Novice English Teachers In Junior High School: A Case Study

Since 1980 s,with the further development of research in the field of cognition and the increasing understanding of the complexity of education,the research on teachers in western developed countries has shifted from the study of teachers' behavior to the study of teachers' thinking and decision-making.Teacher's belief is one of the topics that received much attention during the transition.In September 2014,President Xi pointed out in his speech with the teachers and students of Beijing Normal University that good teachers do not have a unified model,and they can each have their own merits and talents,but have some common essential qualities.The first point is to have ideal beliefs.It shows that teachers' belief is increasingly becoming the focus of attention in the field of education.In the existing researches,the author found that most of the research objects are focused on college teachers,the basic teachers' beliefs are only studied in a general way,and there is a lack of research on teachers' beliefs in a specific stage.Therefore,this study takes junior high school novice English teachers as the research objects.Through investigating the current situation of their teachers' beliefs and influencing factors of beliefs changes to promote the teaching training of novice teachers and offer some substantive advice for their professional growth.This study adopts a case study method,selecting two novice English teachers in junior high schools as the research participants,and uses in-depth interviews,participatory observations and text analysis to find out how the novice English teacher' s beliefs changed and explore the factors that affected the changes of junior high school English teachers' beliefs.It is mainly from four aspects: beliefs about the nature of English subject;beliefs about English teaching;beliefs about the roles of English teachers and students and beliefs about teacher professionalism.This study attempts to address two research questions as follows:(1)What teachers' belief changes did the novice English teachers experience over time in their workplace?(2)What are the factors that influence their teachers' belief changes?By collating and analyzing the collected data,this study draws conclusions:(1)With the passage of working time,the teachers' beliefs of novice teachers changed as follows:(i)teachers' beliefs changed from ideals to reality;(ii)teachers' beliefs changed from open to conservative;(iii)teachers' beliefs changed from positive to negative.(2)The factors that influenced their teachers' belief changes are mainly two aspects.The external factors mainly include in-service training system,allocation of resources,school teaching management and students' quality.The internal factors are analyzed from the perspective of the teachers themselves,mainly including teachers' previous learning experience,motivation of employment and self-efficacy.Based on the above research results,the author puts forward several suggestions for the cultivation of teachers' beliefs.For school,first is to improve the in-service training system and improve the comprehensive quality of novice teachers.Second is to create a cooperative teacher culture and help teachers gain positive emotional experience.Third is to establish a flexible learning mechanism and create a sustainable learning atmosphere.For teachers,they need to do two things well.On one hand,they should establish the belief of lifelong learning,improving their professional literacy and teaching standards constantly.On the other hand,they should cultivate reflective ability,through making the comparative connection between practice and previous theories to form a critical consciousness gradually.