Teachers’ Beliefs And Classroom Practice

Teaching is a complex processing which cognitive, affective, and behavioral factors are interacted. Alllong them, the cognitive aspect is the most crucial part for the fact that it is assumed that what teachers dois the reflection of what they believe. So, in recent years, research on teaching has attempted to understandteachers from the “inside” rather than from the “outside”.Successful reform of curriculum calls for more qualified and excellent teachers. Teacher’s belief’s, asindispensable parts of teachers’ quality, have been heatedly discussed and studied both abroad and at homeduring recent years. Many scholars and experts take different views and angles to investigate teacher’sbeliefs. But these are not enough for the research in the area of western China.This is a case study of investigating teachers’ beliefs and the corresponding behaviors in classroom.The study lasted for two months by applying the qualitative and quantitative research method.1) Whatgeneral beliefs are the junior high school English teachers holding in Gansu?2) What is the relationshipbetween teachers’ beliefs and their classroom behaviors? Are they consistent or not?3) What are thereasons for such consistency or inconsistency? Three research instruments: questionnaire, interview andclassroom observation are employed. The aim of the study is to explore what kind of beliefs the two seniorEnglish teachers hold about language learning, language teaching, teacher, learner and curriculum.The major findings are briefly summarized as the following： There is not high degree ofcorrespondence between teachers’ beliefs and their observed practices. In a word, practice does not comeafter beliefs. The classroom practice is indirect influenced from the outer circumstance various constraints,such as exams, time or students size.The thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter One is the introduction part, which illustrates the background, objectives and important of thecurrent 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 bothabroad and at home, including the definitions of teacher’s, definitions of teacher’s beliefs, components ofteacher’s, as well as sources of teachers’ beliefs those factors influencing the development of teacher’sbeliefs.Chapter Three is theoretical foundation, which introduces the constructivism theory.Chapter Four is the methodology of thesis, including data collection and instrumentation, and analyzing which describe the results of questionnaire and interview and their potential influences.Chapter Five is results and discussion. The results of questionnaires, interviews and classroomobservation and discussion related to teachers’ beliefs.Chapter Six is conclusion. This chapter also summarizes what we have achieved in the current studyand it also points out the limitations of the thesis and offers some useful suggestions for further study.