| Teachers' efficacy is the perception and belief of their abilities in fulfillment of teaching tasks and achievement of teaching goals. It has been identified as a variable that has strong impacts on various aspects of teaching and learning. Given its documented powerful impact on teaching practices and student learning, examining college English teachers'sense of efficacy or confidence in teaching English appears to be particularly pertinent and useful in the college English teaching(CET) reform context. The present study, by adopting the notion of Bandura's social cognitive theory as the theoretical framework, explores the impact of an alternative form of professional teacher development designed to impact both general and personal teacher efficacy beliefs toward.the implementation of college English teaching reform. An in-service professional development study group (PDSG) was formed that consisted of a facilitator/participant and five college English teachers who were very interested in improving their college English instruction. The study group met over an academic school year in ten sessions to examine their own thinking and beliefs about college English teaching as well as the thinking of their students about college English learning.Results indicate that (a) general and personal teacher efficacy changed in a positive direction toward the implementation of college English teaching reform, (b) a small collaborative group of teachers with different teaching experiences may help solve teaching problems and effectively promote the development of teachers, (c) these results suggest that the implementation of college English reform may be facilitated when teachers have the opportunity to engage in a PDSG specifically designed to attend to teacher efficacy beliefs and support positive changes in those beliefs, and (d) how to improve college English teachers'efficacy is an important factor in the successful implementation of college English teaching reform.
|
PDF Full Text Request