A Study Of English Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs In Junior Middle Schools Of Ganzhou

In the1960s, when the principles of behaviorism dominated the educational field,researches on language teaching mainly focused on the verification of plenty of teachingmethods in which imitation and drillings are emphasized in practical teaching. In the1970s, with the popularity of cognitive psychology and information processing theory,the focus of the researches shift to the relationship between teachers’teaching beliefs andtheir teaching practice, and so the importance of teachers’ teaching beliefs wasemphasized a lot. From this we can see that education researches have shifted the focusfrom ‘outside’to the ‘inside’ of teachers, which means that it is necessary to comply withteacher’s inner thinking in understanding real classroom practice. In China, as the furtherimplement of new English curriculum reformation we have recognized that theimportance of changing teachers’ traditional teaching beliefs and form the newprogressive and students-centered teaching beliefs.Therefore, this study tried to explore the current situations of English teachers’teaching beliefs in junior middle schools as well as the influential factors for thedevelopment of English teachers’ teaching beliefs by making use of questionnaires. Thesubjects of this study are English teachers of junior middle schools in Ganzhou andRuijin City, Dayu County, Nankang County and Xingguo County and Ningdu County.And in this study,200questionnaires were applied to carry on investigation and171valid questionnaires were collected. The questionnaire recovery rate is89％andeffectiveness is96％. It is hoped that this study can provide some references for juniormiddle school English teachers’professional development.Through statistical analysis, this study found that most junior middle school Englishteachers have accepted the new English teaching beliefs, for example, English teachingmust be student-centered, teaching reflection and evaluation must be combined withformative and summative assessment, etc.. But due to some internal and external factors,the transformation of traditional teaching beliefs is relatively slow. Internally, Englishteachers’ teaching attitudes directly affect the change of their teaching beliefs. Externally,school culture has a great influence on the development of teachers’ teaching beliefs.According to these factors, this study put forward some implications on three aspects like social environment, school culture and the teachers themselves for the development ofjunior middle school English teachers’teaching beliefs.