A Case Study Of Teachers' Beliefs And English Language Teaching From A Constructivist Approach

As one important branch of cognitive psychology, constructivism has been given more and more attention in recent decades, and it has recently reached new levels of acceptance in educational circles. Constructivism maintains that individuals actively construct understandings or knowledge themselves, rather than simply taking in ideas and memorizing them; and that the purpose of instruction is to support this construction of knowledge, rather than the transmission of information. As the most important interactants to students, teachers' teaching behavior could greatly influence the development of individual students. According to the constructivist view of education, teachers' beliefs are far more influential than knowledge in determining their teaching practices in the classroom. Therefore, teachers should become more self-aware of their beliefs and realize that their actions and their interactions form part of every individual learner's own construction of knowledge.This study is a case study investigating the relationship between the beliefs of a female English teacher who has been strongly influenced by constructivism and her actual classroom practices with the descriptive and qualitative analysis. In the very beginning, the study aims to explore the teacher's general understanding of beliefs, and her beliefs about her roles, her students and their learning through the interview with the teacher. Then a questionnaire is conducted over the teacher to examine her view of the importance of each aspect of mediation to evaluate her awareness of her own mediation in her class. Finally, the study investigates if the teacher's beliefs are reflected in her actual classroom practices through the questionnaire over her students and the researcher's classroom observations.The study indicates that the teacher's beliefs can not only highly influence her classroom practices, but also greatly affect her students' interest in study. Accordingly, teachers should be fully aware of their beliefs and attach importance to these factors which would affect their beliefs. Meanwhile, teachers should become the reflective practitioners to constantly monitor how far their actions reflect their beliefs or are in keeping with them.