A Survey Into English Classroom Teaching-reflective Behaviors In Junior High Schools

The New Curriculum has given teachers new roles as a material developer anddesigner, a promoter, a cooperator, a researcher as well as an executor, organizer andmanager of English teaching. This has been a great challenge to teachers who sticks on thetraditional role as a mere knowledge provider. Traditional roles and traditional teaching hasinevitably been in the way of the implementation of the New Curriculum. To fit into thenew roles, English teachers have to change their views about teaching as well as their waysof teaching. One of the effective ways of making this happen is a constant reflection onteaching behaviors. Through reflections on the experience, a teacher will find problemsand then try to fix them. This process has caused an innovation of teaching skills andteaching views, which is a great help to teachers’ role-changing. On the other hand,reflective practice is also efficient for professional development. Studies have proved thatreflective practice is one of the most effective and important ways for teachers’professional development. Teachers reflect on various teaching events to improve teachingskills and to change the theories and ideas behind for professional development.Reflections not only expand teachers’ knowledge storage and strengthen their teachingskills, but also produce a creative use of the knowledge (experience), which will surelyenrich their practical knowledge. Thus, reflective thinking has been put into teachingpractice by many practioners to promote teachers’ professional development. This situationhas drawn many teachers or researchers to survey into teachers’ reflective behaviors and togive quite a few suggestions. There have been surveys on teachers’ reflective practice, acontrast among reflective teaching behaviors, the problems on teacher’ reflective teachingand so on. However, these studies focus more on the general reflective teaching or teachingreflections than the specific reflective behaviors like classroom teaching reflections. In fact,there are few researches on classroom teaching reflections. As classroom teaching isessential, reflections on classroom teaching is also quite important. This research, focusingon classroom teaching reflections in junior high schools, is to find the current situation ofEnglish classroom teaching reflective behaviors and the features of its development. A questionnaire focusing on reflective contents was designed in the form of27multiple-choice questions. The reflective contents are divided into five aspects: teachinglanguage, teaching design, classroom management, students’ learning and teaching beliefs.The questionnaire were made among17English teachers from five junior high schools indifferent cities. At the same time, reflective journals of English teachers were collectedfrom one of the five schools. The statistics and material were analyzed in the perspectivesof reflective content, reflective levels and reflective process. After a quantity and qualityanalysis, the conclusions have been made. The current situation is that classroom teachingreflections are teachers’ main reflections, teachers’ reflective capability has beenstrengthened and classroom teaching reflections are mainly technique-oriented, more self-criticized, and are kept away from professional development and influenced most byoutsiders. The features of its development are that it is proceeding forward with a slow butpositive tendency, more complete procedures but halt on a technich-oriented level. Basedon the findings, suggestions have been made to the school administrations and teachers.Suggestions to the school administrations are as follows. The school should take theclassroom teaching reflective practice as a long-term job and stick to it. The classroomteaching reflective practice should be under the guide of experts. The school should inspireteachers to have higher levels of reflection and a whole process of reflection. It also needsto give teachers more time and space for reflections on various aspects of teaching. Tohave better reflections on classroom teaching, teachers need to change too. They need tohave a firm belief of professional development. They also need to have the courage ofquestioning, try different levels of reflections, and do teaching cases studies and writings.