A Study Of Senior High School English Teachers' Beliefs And Practices About Reading Instruction

In last few years,the study of teachers' beliefs has been a hot issue in the field of teachers' education and professional development,because teachers' beliefs are a direct and important factor that influences teachers' teaching practices.In teaching and learning English language,it is believed that reading has always been a crucial component.A large number of studies on reading instruction have been conducted from the perspective of methods and models of reading instruction.However,there is limited research on senior high school English teachers' beliefs and their practices about reading instruction.Therefore,it is of great significance to undertake a research to explore senior high school English teachers' beliefs and their practices about reading instruction.The current study will be helpful to improve our understanding of senior high school teachers' beliefs about reading instruction and classroom practices.Meanwhile,it will help teachers make better instructional decisions when teaching reading to senior high school students and know how to teach in an effective way.This study investigates senior high school English teachers' beliefs and practices about reading instruction and analyze whether there are some inconsistencies between English teachers' beliefs and practices about reading instruction in senior high schools.Instruments applied in the study include questionnaires,interviews and classroom observations.There are 32 senior high school English teachers from Jinzhou Senior High School,Hubei province participating in this study,among whom four English teachers are chosen for classroom observations and interviews.The study contains two types of data.Data from questionnaires is used for the quantitative analysis with the help of SPSS 18.0 and observational and interview data are collected for the qualitative analysis.Main findings of the study are presented as follows: firstly,the investigated senior high English teachers have systematic beliefs about reading instruction.They put reading instruction in a very important status of English teaching and learning.Their purposes of English reading instruction are various,including passing exams,enriching experience,developing a lifelong interest in reading,critical thinking andhelping students improving writing ability and so on.They lay particular emphasis on the importance of English language knowledge.They provide different ways to improve students' reading ability and reading strategies are given more attention.Secondly,although teachers' beliefs about reading instruction mostly converge with their classroom practices,there are also some inconsistencies between English teachers' beliefs and practices about reading instruction in senior high schools.English teachers may have some advanced beliefs about reading instruction,but due to some objective and subjective reasons,not all of teachers' beliefs are applied to their teaching practices.