A Self-study: Reconstructing An English Teacher's Beliefs

The new curriculum in China, approved by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, was published by People's Education Press in April 2003. In the process of implementing an educational innovation, teachers have been recognized as residing at the core. The educational theory is prosperous and how the teacher should do has been discussed a lot, but we neglected the question of "what the teacher should be", that is, we will lose our standing point if we seldom put emphasis on realistic circumstance. The research methods adapted in this case study are self-study, ethnography and narrative inquiry by which I try to demonstrate through narration into explanation.This study, which lasts for a whole academic year from October 2008 to June 2009, is conducted in the Foreign Languages College, Zhejiang Normal University when I took my postgraduate courses for MA degree. By employing narrative inquiry approach, this research makes an attempt to dig out the beliefs that teachers believe in and to explore personal beliefs of education which are formed during the one-year learning during my postgraduate study. The purpose of this research is to develop personal understanding of teacher's belief by analyzing the data recording during this year. This study attempts to explore the following three questions:1) What beliefs do teachers hold about the English language teaching, students and themselves as language teachers? 2) How are teacher's beliefs rebuilt during the further study?The case study was based on my own teaching and experiences. The data used in this study are qualitative in nature, derived from my diaries, reflective journals, emails and notes. I make an attempt to remain my real situation, feeling and thoughts and understand my personal teacher's beliefs.Theories on teacher's professional development are introduced firstly. And then there is a further illustration of constructivism, G. Kelly's personal-construct theory and the teacher as reflective practitioner, which plays a significant role in language teaching. Based on these theories, the importance of teacher's beliefs, including its definition, teacher's beliefs and its classification are illustrated in detail. In this thesis, teacher's beliefs are shown into three areas:English language teaching, learners and themselves as language teachers. Stories are relived and retold in the interpretation process to explore how I reconstruct my teacher's beliefs.An analysis of the data suggested that my teacher's beliefs have been changed greatly and reconstructed. The main findings show that the academic factors such as training-theory, teacher's further study have a great effect on reconstructing teacher's beliefs, so teachers should sustain professional development, not only for the development of themselves, but also for better education in the future.