Comparative Study On Teachers’ Beliefs Of In-service And Pre-service English Teachers

Teachers’ beliefs is a heated topic in the recent years as an integral part of the teachers’ qualities. Different scholars and experts study teachers’ beliefs from different perspectives. However, many studies focus on the teachers’ beliefs of in-service English teachers or pre-service English teachers separately. Therefore, a comparative study on teachers’ beliefs of both in-service and pre-service English teachers may help with the development of these two groups of teachers.In the study, teachers’ beliefs carry eight dimensions:English, English learning, role of leaner, role of teacher, classroom management, curriculum, teaching and evaluation, and source of teachers’ beliefs. This comparative study aims to find out the similarities and differences in teachers’ beliefs of both the pre-service English teachers and the in-service English teachers, propose suggestions for promoting their professional development, and narrowing the gap between these two groups of English teachers.Two groups of subjects are involved in the study:81in-service English teachers of secondary schools who graduated from Collage of Foreign Studies in Guangxi Normal University within this decade and102junior students of Collage of Foreign Studies in Guangxi Normal University. SPSS17.0is used to analyze data and two methods of it are selected. The one is descriptive statistics which states number of items, minimum, maximum, mean and Std. deviation. The other is independent-samples T test which should be able to determine if there are statistically significant differences between the two groups.The statistical results report that:1) The pre-service and in-service English teachers have proper holistic understanding of teachers’ beliefs, but the pre-service teachers have more consensus than in-service English teachers.2) Both the in-service and the pre-service English teachers hold the same beliefs in English, English teaching, roles of learner, roles of teacher, and source of teachers’ beliefs.3) Significant differences between in-service and pre-service English teachers are identified in the three dimensions of teachers’ beliefs:classroom management dimension, curriculum dimension, as well as teaching and evaluation. In-service English teachers seem to be more out-dated than pre-service English teachers in the understanding of these beliefs.Therefore, it is suggested that more teacher training be provided for the in-service English teachers and more teaching practice be offered to pre-service English teachers.The limitations of the present study and the suggestions for further studies are also discussed at the end of this thesis.