A Study On The Influence Of The Teaching Practice On Pre-service EFL Teachers’ Beliefs

With the development of teacher education, more and more researchers focus on teachers’ beliefs.Beliefs are found to be more influential than knowledge in determining how individuals organize anddefine tasks and problems, and were better predictors of how teachers behaved in the classroom (Williams&Burden,2000). Teaching practice is the warm-up phase of the pre-service teachers, during which theycan experience teachers’ actual life and have some new points of views about teachers’ beliefs. So teachingpractice has a significant influence on the pre-service teachers’ beliefs.This research aims to find out the influence of teaching practice on pre-service teachers’ beliefs. It ishoped that through this research, some potent measures could be found out to help the pre-serviceteachers establish more positive teachers’ beliefs, which can have some implications for pre-service teachereducation. According to the research aim, the researcher raises three research questions:1. Are there anychanges in the pre-service teachers’ beliefs after their teaching practice?2. How do they change if they do?3. What’ s the relationship between the pre-service teachers’ beliefs and their classroom behaviors?In order to answer the questions above,30senior English majors were chosen from NorthwestNormal University as a sample to be surveyed. And two of them participated in the case study of their ownaccord. Questionnaire, interview and classroom observation are the main research instruments.Questionnaires was based on TBQ (Teachers’ Beliefs Questionnaire) that is developed by Zhu Yuanyu(2003). There are30items in the Questionnaire and they are divided into five dimensions of teachers’beliefs: beliefs about English; beliefs about learning; beliefs about learner; beliefs about teaching andbeliefs about teaching as a profession. Before and after the teaching practice, the questionnaires wereapplied to investigate the pre-service teachers’ beliefs. The data collected from the questionnaires wereanalyzed by SPSS13.0. Through comparison, it is found that, pre-service teachers’ beliefs changed tosome extent in some dimensions. These changes of the pre-service teachers’ beliefs were identified into sixsorts: a. Belief enhancement, b. Belief weakening, c. Belief stabilization, d. Belief reformation, e.Generation of new belief, f. Uncertain belief.For the purpose of investigating the changes in pre-service teachers’ beliefs detailedly, the researcherinvestigated two of the subjects and had interviews with them before the teaching practice. At the end ofthe teaching practice, classroom observations and after-classroom interviews were made. What’ s more,the researcher found that pre-service teachers’ beliefs and their classroom behaviors were closely related, but there were some inconsistencies.The findings of the study can be summarized as follows:1.Pre-service teachers’ beliefs are notunchanged.2.Teaching practice has different effects on different pre-service teachers’ and their differentdimensions of beliefs.3.The link between pre-service teachers’ beliefs and their classroom behaviors isinteractive with each other.Based on the study, some suggestions are made for the pre-service teacher education. The course onteacher profession and teacher’ beliefs should be added into Pre-service Teacher Education. A timely anddynamic system should be established to help normal universities or colleges advisers know the changes ofstudent teachers’ beliefs in the teaching practice. More chances of teaching practices should be given todevelop the student teachers’ beliefs.