College English Teacher’s Belief System

Simon Borg says,“What teachers do is important, but if we want to understand whatteachers do, if we want to promote change, we also need to look at beliefs (Birello2012:88).” Therefore, teacher’s beliefs should be taken into consideration, especially whenlarge-scale education reforms are ended very often with minimal results even though a lotof time and money have been invested. That is the very reason why the past two decadeswitnessed that more and more educational researchers shifted their focus from teacher’sbehavior to teacher’s beliefs.This dissertation attempts to answer the following three questions:1) What are the college English teacher’s beliefs at present?2) What are the correlations between the beliefs?3) What does college English teacher’s belief system constitute?The study is underpinned by the relevant theories of educational ecology and educationalpsychology. Educational ecology indicates that factors of the environment interact,interchange, and interplay with each other, which implies that teacher and teacher’s beliefscan also be in the same way. Theories of Cognitive Development, Socialcultural Theory,Triarchic Reciprocal Causality and Bioecological Model of Human Development allconvey that beliefs influence and are influenced by various factors. Therefore, teacher’sbelief system can also be depicted as a system consisting of subsystems. Thus, groundedon above-stated theories, this study proposes the theoretical hypothesis on the teacher’sbelief system.Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are employed in this research. All datareceived are from127questionnaires and16semi-structured interviews. On one hand,teacher’s beliefs are surveyed of six dimensions of gender, teaching time, age, professionaltitle, the level of education and overseas learning experience respectively. On the otherhand, beliefs are also analyzed into eleven categories: social factors, students, colleagues,school environment, curriculum, teaching materials, the internet, teaching methods, teacherdevelopment, classroom teaching and teaching assessment. The findings of this study are: 1) Teacher’s beliefs originate from and develop with years of learning and teachingexperience, and the beliefs are exposed to various factors relevant to teachers throughouttheir teaching career. The novice teacher’s beliefs are mainly guided by his or her personallearning experience. A teacher’s beliefs change as his or her teaching experiences grow.2) Various factors interact with each other, and they all influence college Englishteacher’s beliefs, among which, beliefs about students, colleagues, school environment andteaching assessment are of greatest significance; beliefs concerning teaching materials alsoplay an important role; some other beliefs regarding social factors, curriculum, the internetand teacher development weigh differently. The research indicates that there is nosignificant difference in beliefs as far as teaching methods and classroom teaching areconcerned.3) Gender makes a difference in beliefs regarding students, colleagues and teachingassessment; both teaching time and age affect beliefs with respect to students, schoolenvironment, teaching materials and teaching assessment, and age also influences beliefsabout social factors and colleagues; professional titles play an important role in beliefsconcerning colleagues, school environment and teaching assessment; the level of educationinfluences beliefs in relation to students, colleagues, curriculum and the internet; overseaslearning experience matters in the beliefs about school environment and teacherdevelopment. Age, learning experiences and teaching practice exert the most powerfulinfluences, which verifies the above conclusions at the same time.4) College English teacher’s belief system, which is illustrated in the Figure1below,consists of four inside-out subsystems: inner core beliefs, classroom teaching beliefs,school environment beliefs and social factors beliefs.The inner core beliefs are implicit and complicated compared with the other beliefs, butthey play a central role; the peripheral beliefs are relatively explicit consisting of classroomteaching beliefs, school environment beliefs and social factors beliefs. Only if they areintegrated into the inner core beliefs, do they function. However, in the presence ofadministrative power, social factors beliefs may exert powerful influences on teacher’sinner core beliefs directly, which may also manipulate teacher’s teaching behaviortemporarily. Figure1demonstrates teaching-correlated factors in the teacher’s belief system. Thestronger the correlation, the closer the factor or the belief is to the inner core beliefs, andthe more central it is in the belief system. Inner core beliefs subsystem includes personalfactors such as gender, teaching time, age, the level of education, professional title, andoverseas learning experience. Classroom teaching belief subsystem and schoolenvironment belief subsystem overlap and interact with each other correspondingly.Teacher’s beliefs are subtle and complex, and they overlap at the same time, which alsoimplies that teacher’s beliefs are dynamic because variables are changing and they areinterchanging with each other constantly, especially when both teaching and learningexperiences are enriched.Figure1Teacher’s Belief SystemThis research is not only valuable to the study of teacher’s beliefs, proposing the constructof teacher’s belief system and revealing the correlations between beliefs of the collegeEnglish teacher’s belief system. It also contributes to teacher education researches,providing insights into teacher’s training, teacher’s education, teacher’s development andteacher’s learning. Moreover, findings of the present study are also beneficial toeducational management.