The Changing Role Of Language Teacher Under Social Constructivist Model

In an age of knowledge and economy, education is a key point that affects the development of a country. Stepping into the 1980s, the voice of educational reform is rising throughout the world. In China, foreign language teaching, as a part of fundamental education, is becoming the focus of the reform to further adapt to the economic globalization. However, the current wave of reform has laid much on the revision of syllabus, the assignment of curriculum, the adjustment of textbook and the introduction of teaching methods. Recently, with the continual introduction of cognitive psychology into language teaching field, more emphasis is put on the study of learning mentality and learning process. While little attention is paid to how the teacher reacts to the reform and how he improves his professional abilities. In fact, the teacher works as the practitioner and participant of the reform, his professional abilities directly influence the result of it.Constructivist, serving as a dominant trend of cognitive psychology, has become a hot topic in the field of education and has great enlightenment on the training of the creative teacher. While, it is new to most language teachers. This article, therefore, aims to provide a coherent psychological framework—social constructivist model—consisted of behaviorism, constructivism, humanism and social interactionism, and makes the language teacher himself aware of his changing roles in the educational reform. This article will develop and analyze from the following four interdependent periods, that is the expectations on the teacher's role, the conceptions on the teacher's role, the acceptance of the changing role and the application of the changing role. Consequently, the language teacher can know something about educational psychology as well as those familiar teaching theories or skills, and his belief and value will be embodied in the teaching process, which will be more educative and the educational reform can also be carried out successfully.