A Social-cognitive Study Of The Knowledge Sources And The Professional Development Of Middle School English Teachers

Teacher knowledge, as the most stable and fundamental part of teachercognition, is a core issue of teacher education and development. During the past20years or so, foreign language teacher knowledge has developed into one of the mostdynamic areas in the research of the foreign language teacher education. At thebeginning of21stcentury, the Second Language Acquisition(SLA) research areawitnessed the shift of epistemic perspective-socio-cognitism, with which teacherknowledge concept has been changed and its research content has been evolved andenlarged as well, ranging its scope from teacher knowledge basis to teacher practicalknowledge. However, researchers have different understandings toward foreignlanguage teacher knowledge. It urges us to identify the latest trends of the research inthis field, in order to study the foreign language teacher learning from theperspective of knowledge formation, to examine the foreign language teachereducation in our country from a socio-cognitism oriented concept and viewpoint, andto support foreign language teachers to improve their teaching practice moreeffectively. The shift of epistemology inevitably changes the paradigms of researchin teacher knowledge and development. To investigate knowledge sources andprofessional development of Chinese middle school English teachers, the normaluniversity English student teachers and the in-service middle school English teachersfrom Northeast of China were invited to take part in the present study. Bothquantitative and qualitative methods were employed to analyze the knowledgeformation and development of pre-and in-service middle school English teachers.Scientific methodology was adopted to analyze the relationship betweenEnglish teacher knowledge sources and professional development, from a socialcognitive epistemic perspective. Through literature review, the study clarifies thegeneral trends of the SLA theories, with which it puts forward that teacherprofessional development is a dynamic cycle of “learning-teaching-relearning”,with the help of the social cognitive theories. Under this premise, the empirical studyreported in this dissertation is planned as follows:Both qualitative and quantitative methods were adopted to collect data.Quantitative data were collected through three questionnaires, including EnglishClass Learning Environment Evaluation Questionnaire(ECLEEQ), English TeacherTeaching Knowledge Sources Questionnaire(ETTKSQ), English Teacher Teaching Belief Questionnaire(ETTBQ). Through exploratory factor analysis, the internalconsistency and reliability of the questionnaires were proved satisfactory. Qualitativedata were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed throughthematic analysis.The main findings are as follows:Firstly, there are a variety of knowledge sources for middle school foreignlanguage teachers, and different sources will form different knowledge: mainlyknowledge basis sources and practical knowledge sources. Through descriptivestatistics, ETTKSQ was analyzed, and through mean values of ETTKSQ and its twodimensions-knowledge basis and practical knowledge, overall knowledge conceptof English teachers was analyzed as well(as described in Chapter V). It shows that,on one hand, generally pre-service and in-service middle school English teachersvalue both knowledge basis and practical knowledge, and tend to value the lattermore. On the other hand, there are some obvious differences between theirknowledge concept: pre-service teachers are ready to construct and develop theirpractical knowledge, and they tend to accept the knowledge from theorists,researchers and teachers equally; however, in-service teachers are prone to constructand develop the practical knowledge. The gap between the pre-service and in-serviceteachers block their continuous professional development.Secondly, through parameter estimate and significant factor of logisticregression analysis, the study examined how each knowledge source of ETTKSQaffects the specific professional knowledge development(as described in Chapter V).The results show that, on the whole, pre-and in-service teacher knowledge mainlycomes from their reflection in personal experience, not from large scaled teachereducation and training. The evaluation of pre-and in-service English teachers towardteacher knowledge sources can be classified into three: the most important, the lessimportant and the least important. They evaluated that “personal teaching experienceand reflection” and “daily communication with colleagues” are the most importantsources;“practice courses like teaching practice, class observation and investigation”is less important;“in-service academic education” and “teaching skill courses likemicroteaching” is the least important. To be specific, for pre-service teachers, notonly “personal teaching experience and reflection” but also “personal learningEnglish experience” are the most important;“some pre-service teacher educationcourses” and “in-service academic education” are the less or least important sources.For in-service teachers,“self-learning professional materials” are the most importantbesides “personal teaching experience and reflection” and “daily communicationwith colleagues”. According to the above evaluation of knowledge sources by English teachers,“apprenticeship” observation, teaching practice in real teachingenvironment are the main sources of foreign language teacher personal theories,while pre-and in-service teacher education is evaluated as the less or the leastimportant one. The above data show that there remain some problems in pre-andin-service teacher education and training, which hinders teacher professionaldevelopment.Thirdly, through correlation analysis and stepwise multiple regression withECLEEQ and ETTBQ as independent variables and ETTKSQ as dependent one, andthrough interviews(as described in Chapter VI), the study comes to a conclusion thatEnglish teacher knowledge is developed under multiple influences both by objectiveenvironment and subjective cognition, between which internal factors are motivesand external ones are catalysts. Compared with external factors, internal ones aregenerally identified as the main factors of teacher change and development byEnglish teachers. Teacher development concept was the most predictive factor whichcan directly influence teacher knowledge development. Besides, internal factors suchas professional concept and knowledge concept can push forward the whole teachergroups, and teaching concept and teacher personal factors can promote teacherpersonal development.The findings of the study could provide some theoretical and practicalimplications for English teacher knowledge and professional development.Theoretically, the study provides important implications for theory construction andresearch in English teacher knowledge and professional development. These findingsalso contribute to the development of teacher training programs. In practice, thesefindings could provide implications for English teacher professional developmentand teaching practice.