A Case Study Of The Relationship Between Senior High School Teachers' Beliefs And Classroom Behaviors In Creating Classroom Environment

“The High School English Curriculum Standards”(Ministry of Education 2003)advocates that: To create a relaxing,democratic and harmonious classroom environment,high school English teachers should pay special attention to students' emotion,organize cooperative learning activities,develop their spirit of cooperation,and establish channels of communication between teachers and students.Thus,the teachers play an important role in creating a good classroom environment.On the other hand,studies have shown that teachers' beliefs have a major impact on their teaching behaviors in the process of decision-making.Therefore,it is necessary to gain a better understanding of the senior high school teachers' beliefs and behaviors in the creation of the classroom environment,which contributes to a better classroom environment and teachers' professional development.In this paper,a questionnaire survey and case studies were conducted to analyze and investigate the relationship between the senior high school English teachers' beliefs and behavior in creating classroom environment,which provided insight into three primary questions:(1)what detailed beliefs do the high school English teachers hold in terms of the creation of classroom environment?(2)what's the relationship between their beliefs and the subsequent classroom behaviors?(3)and what influence such a relationship? The questionnaire data were collected from 27 senior high school English teachers in the Zizhong NO.2 Middle School in Neijiang,Sichuan province,and analyzed by SPSS 19.0.The case study data were collected through semi-structured interviews,classroom observation and stimulated recall interviews of 3 teachers and interviews of their 6 students.Findings from the questionnaire survey and case studies suggest that senior high school English teachers are fully awere of the importance of creating a good classroom environment in English teaching,and reach a consensus that an English teacher should give students full attention and scaffolding,establish a harmonious relationship,inform clear learning objectives,increase their English learning motivation,provide more cooperative learning opportunities and encourage them to actively participate in interaction to make the English classroom environment relaxing,harmonious,democratic and orderly.When creating English classroom environment,teachers' beliefs guide their teaching behaviors,and at the same time,teaching behaviors affect their beliefs through teaching reflection.The two interact with each other.In the specific teaching context,English teachers' beliefs and behaviors in creating classroom environment do have some consistencies,but teachers sometimes couldn't follow their beliefs faithfully during the teaching practices all the time and there still exists a big difference between the two,which are caused by various internal factors,such as students' ability,examination pressure and workmates' teaching theory,and external factors including the negligence of student's needs,insuffciency of profound teaching reflection and lack of guidance of linguistic theories and English teaching theories.Based on these findings,the paper puts forward the following two suggestions.First,More in-service training program should be given by the education management department,for helping teachers to renew linguistic theories and English teaching theories and gain in-depth understanding of new curriculum philosophy.In addition,to make their beliefs correspond to classroom behaviors,teachers should frequently reflect on their own teaching beliefs and classroom behaviors,drawing lessons from classroom practices,conducting persistently the student-oriented principle of focusing on needs of students,and applying linguistic theories and English teaching theories to the actual situation in a creative way.