A Study Of EFL Teachers' Beliefs & Affecting Factors

This thesis focuses on the comparison of the difference between novice teachers and experienced teachers in their beliefs and their different degrees of job devotion and job satisfaction. The 66 subjects of this research are the EFL teachers from the middle schools in different districts of Jiangxi province. Their ages are from 25-45 and their teaching experience is from 1-25 years. The subjects are divided into three groups according to their teaching years. The group of novice teachers whose teaching years are less than 5 years occupies 34.33% in the subjects. Meanwhile the experienced teachers are separated into two groups: the group of experienced teachers with 6-15 teaching years, which is 34.33% in the subjects; the group of experienced teachers with 16-25 teaching years, which occupies 29.86% in the subjects.The research has applied three questionnaires to investigate whether there are differences between novice teachers and experienced teachers in EFL teachers'beliefs and teacher job devotion and job satisfaction. The instruments of the research are the questionnaires used the study of Zhu and Ye (2000), and in the Lü(2004) doctoral dissertation but they are also adapted according to EFL teachers'beliefs. There are four parts in the investigation. The first part is about the personal information of the subjects. The second part is EFL teachers'beliefs, which is revised based on the categories of teachers'beliefs presented by Elbaz (1981, 1983). The third and the fourth parts of the investigation are about teacher job devotion and teacher job satisfaction. The reliability of the revised questionnaires has been tested by SPSS 13.0, which shows the high reliability of the instruments.The statistics and results of this research have been analyzed by SPSS13. The first result shows that there is significant difference between novice teachers and experienced teachers in EFL teachers'beliefs (p<0.05), especially in the dimension of the beliefs of curriculum, teacher job assessment, and student management. The second result reflects that novice teachers have significant difference from experienced teachers in teacher job devotion and teacher job satisfaction, especially with the experienced teachers with 6-15 teaching years. These two results indicate novice teachers'EFL beliefs and job devotion and job satisfaction is changeable with the accumulation of teaching years. The results of the research show that the period of 1-5 teaching years seems to be a key point for EFL teacher development. All these results provide answers to the research questions of the research, and they are consistent with the former researches.The thesis probes into the importance of teachers'beliefs in teacher development, analyzes the key period in the EFL teacher development, and proposes some important implication in EFL teacher education and teacher development.