A Narrative Study Of High School English Teachers' Development Of Teaching Beliefs In Writin

As a significant part of teachers’ cognitive system,teaching belief embodies teachers’ confident views and verdict on teaching objectives,contents,methods and other aspects,which has a direct impact on teaching decision-making and teaching behavior.With the continuous deepening of the goal-oriented English curriculum reform to develop students’ subject core competencies,EFL teachers as the core subject and executor of the curriculum reform are supposed to update their structure of knowledge and develop their educational philosophy to carry out instruction according to the requirements of the curriculum standards.As is known to all,writing is one of productive skills that students must master in learning English,so the establishment of a scientific and reasonable belief about teaching writing is an important guarantee for teachers to conduct effective writing instruction and develop students’ subject core competencies.Guided by social cognitive theory,this study uses narrative inquiry to explore the following three main issues: What beliefs do high school English teachers hold about teaching writing? What are the characteristics of beliefs about teaching writing at different stages of high school English teachers’ professional development? What are the factors that influence the development of English teachers’ beliefs about teaching writing? And how do these factors influence the development? In respect of the above questions,this study has obtained information and narrative materials on the content,development process of belief about teaching writing and teaching behavior of two senior high school English teachers in G City,Ningxia District,by means of interviews,observations and text analysis.After reading and analyzing the narrative materials for many times,this paper probes into three research problems according to the analysis framework of the development of beliefs about teaching writing.The research results show that the two English teachers have been influenced by multiple factors,and their beliefs about teaching writing have broken free from the constraints of traditional mode of writing teaching,possessing modern teaching philosophy of flexibility,communicativeness,and student-centered concept.The two teachers think that English teachers should design integrated,relevant,and practical writing activities based on students’ life experience and thematic context of a large integrated unit to stimulate students’ authentic expression in real contexts and to improve their written communicative abilities,thinking abilities,and cultural awareness,aiming to the development of students’ core competencies.The development of the beliefs about teaching writing presents stage characteristics as follows: pre-job learning period(constructing concepts),adaptation period(solving conflicts),ability-building period(forming style),and expert period(moving towards excellence).Combined with the two teachers’ working environment,teaching practice,and personal psychological characteristics,the factors affecting the development of the beliefs about teaching writing are explored as below: human subject factors(inner drive and self-reflection),environmental factors(curriculum reform and campus culture),behavioral factors(curriculum practice and lifelong learning).The development of belief about teaching writing is influenced by many factors,which have complex interaction in the way of two-way or even multi-directional construction.Among them,teachers’ subjectivity is the inexhaustible motive force of the development of teaching beliefs.