A Study On The Correlation Between English Teachers' Perception Of Mediation And Teaching Self-efficacy In Senior High School

Teachers play an indispensable role in the education,which has a great impact on classroom interaction mode and students' learning effects.For students,teachers serve as a mentor and facilitator;for schools,teachers act as the organizer and manager;for themselves,they are the reflector and researcher.Researchers nowadays draw more attention to teachers' role as mediator,which was based on the theory of social interactionism.In Lev Vygosky's "zone of proximate development" theory(1978),there exists a capable person who plays an important role in helping students move from the present level to the next higher level.Feuerstein(1980)defined these significant individuals as mediators and then he put forward twelve key features of mediation.And what those teachers achieve during their teaching is called teaching self-efficacy,which directly affects teachers' educational teaching behaviors,personal learning and professional development.With the deepening of new curriculum reform in our country,teachers devote themselves to practicing the new curriculum ideas and improving their teaching behaviors.And these changes keep direct correlation with teachers' teaching efficacy.Therefore,to conduct a study on the relationship between teachers' mediation and teachers' teaching self-efficacy has a certain meaning and value.In literature review,this study has reviewed two important theories of teachers' mediation and teaching self-efficacy,which are Feuerstein's theory of mediation and Bandura's social cognitive theory.These theories greatly enriched the effect of teachers as a mediator in teaching and the improvement of their own development.In this study,two questionnaires and interview are used as the research instruments,and the subjects are 115 senior English teachers from Jiangxi province.The English Teachers' Mediation Questionnaire is designed by Marion Williams and Robert L.Burden(2000).English teachers' teaching self-efficacy Questionnaire is developed from Mu Liyuan's Questionnaire(2013).There are five dimensions in this questionnaire: teaching efficacy of teaching plan and preparation,teaching efficacy of classroom teaching,teaching efficacy of teaching management,teaching efficacy of interpersonal relationship,teaching efficacy of teaching reflection and evaluation.The statistical analysis is conducted by SPSS 20.0.The three research questions addressed in the present study are:(1)What is thegeneral picture of English teachers' perception in senior high school on the twelve mediation?(2)What is the general picture of English teachers' teaching self-efficacy in senior high school?(3)Is there any relationship between English teachers' mediation and teaching self-efficacy in senior high school? If there is,what is it ?Through the study,the author has found out the following results:(1)English teachers have realized the importance of teachers' perception of mediation.Among the twelve mediation features,teachers regard "shared intention","a sense of competence",and “control of own behavior" as the most three important items.(2)English teachers' teaching self-efficacy of senior high schools staysat a upper-medium level.Specifically speaking,English teaching efficacy about classroom teaching ranks the top,followed by English teaching efficacy about teaching management,teaching evaluation and reflection,teaching plan and preparation and interpersonal relationship.(3)Senior school teachers' mediation and teaching self-efficacy are significantly correlated with each other.Some implications have been drawn from the results of the study for senior school English teaching.Based on these results,this thesis also provides some suggestions for the development of mediation and improvement of teaching self-efficacy.