On Differences Of Teacher's Beliefs Between In-service And Pre-service English Teachers

The 21^st century has seen the great changes arid reforms in China's education.In 2001, the "New National English Curriculum Standard" was issued and has been experimented in several provinces of China,aiming for implementing quality education and promoting educational innovation,and constructing a dynamic elementary curriculum system with Chinese characteristics.This reform brings forward both requirements and challenges to current English teachers for their teaching beliefs,teaching methods and approaches as well as the selection and organization of teaching materials in China's education environment.Successful reform of curriculum calls for more qualified and excellent teachers. Teacher's beliefs,as indispensable parts of teachers' quality,have been heatedly discussed and studied both abroad and at home during recent years.Many scholars and experts take different views and angles to investigate teacher's beliefs.But studies on pre-service teachers' beliefs haven't achieved satisfactory results.The current study is set under the macro-circumstance of China's new national English curriculum reform(CNNECR),relating to normal university students who major in Teacher Education of English.This study has chosen the angle of comparing the differences of teacher's beliefs between in-service English teachers(with subjects coming from four areas of Chongqing,and all of them are current high school English teachers) and pre-service English teachers(with subjects coming from Southwest University,and all of them are current sophomore normal students who major in Teacher Education of English) and doing empirical study which will be beneficial and crucial for pre-service English teachers' education and training program.We find the differences of teacher's beliefs between in-service English teachers and pre-service English teachers lie in both theoretical understanding and practical demonstration,of which we believe with more appropriate and constant professional training and practice of pre-service teachers,their differences can be narrowed down.The thesis consists of six chapters including both theoretical discussions and data analyses.Chapter One is the introduction part,which illustrates the background, objectives and significance of the current study,and it also offers the main structure of the whole thesis.Chapter Two is the literature review,which reviews those related researches of teacher's beliefs both abroad and at home,including the definitions,components, functions of teacher's beliefs as well as those factors influencing the development of teacher's beliefs.This chapter also gives an illustration of those related issues of China's new national English curriculum reform(CNNECR),including the background and rationales of CNNECR,its key concepts and impacts on teacher's beliefs.Chapter Three introduces the empirical approaches of the current study,including research objectives,subjects,data collection and instrumentation,and analyzing procedures of data.Chapter Four illustrates the empirical study,which describing the data analyses and what those data means and their potential influences.Finally,Chapter Five is the implications of the empirical study.It generalizes and describes what and how can we do to implement and improve normal university teacher education under CNNECR.This chapter also summarizes what we have achieved in the current study and it also points out the limitations of the thesis and offers some useful suggestions for further study.