Exploring Primary EFL Teachers' Beliefs From A Socio-cognitive Perspective

The beginning of the 21st century witnessed a renewed attempt to expand English into the primary curriculum in China. Since the ultimate key to educational change is and has been in the hands of teachers who are instrumental to the success of curriculum as its developers, makers and transmitters (Shawer, 2010), there will always be a gap between policy rhetoric and classroom reality without a strong contingent of competent teachers.Although the proportions of primary EFL teachers with professional qualifications have increased greatly over the years after the curriculum reform, the quality of the teaching force is still low and cannot adequately meet the developing needs of primary EFL teaching. This unfavorable situation as well as the criticisms on the low efficiency of primary EFL teacher education and training was the original motive for the research.Also, educational innovations would not succeed if their objectives are incompatible with the beliefs of their users and executors (Rueda and Garcia, 1994; Fives, 2003;Anderson et al., 1991). Since teaching is a type of improvisational performance (Stern,1983), the notion of teaching as a thinking activity has emerged within the field of teacher education in recent years and is now making its way into second language teacher education (SLTE). This teacher-as-thinker metaphor captures the focus on how teachers conceptualize their work and the kinds of thinking and decision-making that underlie their practice. Borg (2003:81) states that teachers are active, thinking decision-makers who make instructional choices by drawing on complex practice-oriented, personalized, and context-sensitive networks of knowledge, thoughts, and beliefs. In this sense,the enactment of SLTE curriculum is not the linear "ends-means" process of discrete sequential stages, but grounded in personally evolved beliefs and self-efficacy about teaching and learning. If teachers, beliefs (TB) are considered as conceptualization that has the potential to become functional tools for orientation in actual teaching practices,teachers' self-efficacy be liefs (TSB) can be understood as the motive of teachers'engagement. The making explicit of beliefs and pedagogical reasoning skills can be ongoing focuses of professional primary EFL teacher development programs.The Social-cultural theory illuminates a path to explore beliefs as contextually situated social meanings emerging in specific sense-making activities while the Cognitive theory emphasizes the importance of what the learner-teacher brings to any learning situation as an active meaning maker and problem-solver and suggests that learning to teach must be situated in real world contexts. In a blended Social-cognitive perspective,this research tries to reconstruct TB and TSB frameworks responsive to Chinese primary EFL curriculum reform. Putting the related educational theories and the relative literature findings into the context of primary EFL curriculum reform in China, the researcher, who embraces the contextual and dialectic qualities of TB, reconstructs a plain TB framework specific to Chinese primary EFL teachers, which consists of six variables, including TB about learning and learner (TB11), TB about teaching (TBt), TB about how to organize classes (TBoc),TB about how to cultivate language skills (TBcls), TB about how to help pupils (TBhp) and TB about teacher professionalism (TBtp). Each variable includes five concrete items. In the same manner, she establishes a construct of TSB which includes 56 items classified into 8 sub-scales: English language knowledge and ability to use English(ELKAUE), English content knowledge (ECK), teaching cognitive ability (ECA), teaching design ability (EDA), teaching performance ability (EPA), teaching evaluation and reflection ability (TERA), teaching research ability (TRA) and humanistic literacy (HL).Compared with the TB and TSB frameworks in the existent literature, the researcher's reconceptualized frameworks are more comprehensive and pertinent to Chinese primary EFL teachers situated in the New Curriculum.In terms of the restructured TB and TSB constructs, the researcher established a questionnaire and conducted an on-line survey on Jiangsu primary EFL teachers' personal and professional backgrounds, their teachers' beliefs, their self-efficacy and their beliefs on the problems of primary English teaching for the time being. The study is guided by the following questions:1. What personal and professional factors are related to primary EFL teachers' beliefs and self-efficacy?2. Do intra-item and inter-item correlations exist between teachers' beliefs and teachers' self-efficacy?3. What are primary EFL teachers' beliefs about the present problems of ELT and their expectations on Educational Administrative Department for the countermeasures?The survey results yield the following findings. Firstly, the results show that significant differences are available in TB Total between the participants with various demographic factors except professional title and class frequency, and that remarkable differences exist in TSB Total between the prticipants with different personal and professional factors except gender, latest degree, views of the Critical Period, attitude to in-service study, professional concern and views of SLTE factors. Also, prominent differences exist in most of TB and TSB variables between the participants from different backgrounds. These differences reveal that the pertinent focuses of primary EFL teacher development programs should be TERA, TRE, HL, TBhp, TBt, TBoc and TBcls in the future and that teachers with similar personal and professional factors should be grouped into the same team in primary EFL teacher development programs.Secondly, the results show that inter-item correlations exist between TB and TSB and that most of TB and TSB variables are closely correlated to each other except that language proficiency and content knowledge level are not correlated with TBll and TBt. Hence, to become or to be a competent primary EFL teacher, one should be good at both content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge.Thirdly, the results show that the professional situation of Chinese primary EFL teachers has been changed in the aspects of occupational qualifications and professional contexts. For the time being, the participants believe in the key ideas of the New Curriculum, such as more emphasis on language skills and use, learning strategies,emotional attitude and cultural awareness. They realize the importance and urgency of extensive reading as a primary way of language input, high-quality teaching resources,optimal learning environments and teachers' professionalism. However, they undermine the significance of language knowledge with overemphasis on spoken English. It seems that they attribute their professional problems more to the external factors than to the dialogic interaction between teaching and learning, which is greatly fostered by TB and TSB levels of the teacher involved. They seem a little passive in reconstructing teaching and learning environments on their own in the open world, where information and resources are accessed whenever and wherever possible. These findings are totally in consensus with what the researcher perceives of primary EFL teachers' professional anxiety and burnout.On the basis of these findings, the researcher tried to establish an integrative model of teacher development which originates from TB and TSB situated in the the real context of teaching. It encourages interaction of pre-service education and in-service development,interaction between professional contexts, SLTE programs and teacher cognition,interaction between universities tutors,schools mentors and student or trainee teachers,interaction between informed theories, teaching practices and TSB & TB, and interaction between TSB & TB, teacher decisions and instructional behaviors. For primary EFL teacher development, there should be less emphasis on prescriptions and top-down directives but more emphasis on the inquiry-based and discovery-oriented activities that foster the spiral development of TSB and TB responsive to current Chinese primary EFL curriculum.