Influence Of Vocational College English Teachers’ Beliefs On Classroom Practice

Nowadays, teachers’ beliefs as the crucial part of teachers’ cognition have beenheatedly discussed and studied both at home and abroad. Both quantitative andqualitative methodologies were employed in the present study to explore the beliefsheld by vocational college English teachers and examine the influence of vocationalcollege English teachers’ beliefs on their classroom practices.A questionnaire was used to elicit information about vocational college Englishteachers’ beliefs. The questionnaire consists of two parts. Part one is about personalinformation. Part two includes statements of beliefs which can be further divided intothree categories, that is, beliefs about teachers’ roles, beliefs about language learning,and beliefs about learners&language teaching. Ninety participants from fourvocational colleges in Qingdao reported their beliefs, five of whom were selected asrepresentatives to be observed and interviewed. SPSS17.0was used to analyze thedata collected from the questionnaires. The notes of classroom observations and therecordings of the interviews were combined to find out the links between theparticipants’ beliefs and their classroom practice.The results of the study can be briefly summarized as follows: firstly, most of theparticipants share the core beliefs on teachers’ roles, language learning, and learners&language teaching; secondly, different behaviors may originate from one belief,while different beliefs may be realized via the same behavior. There also exist gapsbetween teachers’ beliefs and their classroom practices. Thirdly, many influentialfactors contribute to the inconsistencies between teachers’ beliefs and practices,including previous learning experiences, teaching experiences, and personalities.This thesis is composed of five chapters.Chapter one is the introduction, which presents the research background, purposeand significance of the study. Chapter two reviews teachers’ beliefs, including the definition of belief anddifferences between belief and knowledge, followed by reviewing the nature ofteachers’ beliefs, and relationship between teachers’ beliefs and classroom practiceand finally gives a brief introduction of empirical studies at home and abroad.Chapter three centers on the research design of the study.Chapter four reports the results from the questionnaire, classroom observationsand semi-structured interviews before discussing the results.Chapter five summarizes the major findings, discusses the implications of thestudy for teachers and teachers’ education&development, as well as the limitationsand further suggestions.It is hoped that this study can help arouse vocational college teachers’ awarenessof the significance of their beliefs in teaching practice and help them adapt themselvesto the fast development of language teacher education.