A Study Of Senior High School English Teachers' Teaching Beliefs And Teaching Behaviors On Cultivating Students' Cross-cultural Awareness

In recent years,the study of teachers' beliefs has become a hot topic in the field of education research.More and more studies begin to focus on teachers' teaching beliefs,teachers' teaching behaviors and the relationship between them.The researches on teachers' beliefs and behaviors have achieved the fruitful results abroad.However,the researches on teachers' beliefs and behaviors are still in infancy at home.Moreover,most of the studies mainly consider foreign language teaching as a whole to explore teachers' teaching beliefs and behaviors from a macro perspective.There are relatively few studies focusing on the special English teaching plate to explore teachers' teaching beliefs and teaching behaviors,especially,there is hardly any study of teachers' teaching beliefs and teaching behaviors on cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness.In addition,English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017)clearly points out that cultural awareness is one of the core qualities of the subject.It is necessary to expand the scope of students' cross-cultural knowledge and improve their sensitivity and identification ability to the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign cultures.Therefore,it is very necessary to explore senior high school English teachers' teaching beliefs and teaching behaviors oncultivating students' cross-cultural awareness,which not only helps to improve cross-cultural awareness teaching,but also effectively promotes teachers' professional development.Based on constructivism theory and English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017),this study investigated 15 English teachers and 150 students from a high school in H city through questionnaires,semi-structured interviews and classroom observations,aiming to investigate the status quo of senior high school English teachers' teaching beliefs of cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness,the status quo of senior high school English teachers' teaching behaviors of cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness,and the effect degree of senior high school English teachers' teaching beliefs on their teaching behaviors about cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness.The major findings of this study are as follows.1)Senior high school English teachers' teaching beliefs on cultivating the students' cross-cultural awareness are on the upper middle level.Teachers' gender,educational background and teaching age affect teachers' teaching beliefs on the content and methods of cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness,and the impact of cross-cultural awareness on students.2)In the actual classroom teaching,senior high school English teachers do cultivate the students' cross-cultural awareness.Teachers' different gender,teaching age and educational background lead to differentteaching behaviors on cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness.In terms of the frequency of cultivating cross-cultural awareness,the frequency of teachers' cross-cultural awareness input is not frequent.In the content of cross-cultural awareness cultivation,teachers' teaching content cannot be carried out in accordance with the requirements of the English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017),and the content of cultivation is single.In the way of cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness,the teachers generally use a variety of means to input cross-cultural awareness,including using multimedia,teachers' direct explanation,or organizing students' discussions and speeches.3)The effect degree of senior high school English teachers' teaching beliefs on their teaching behavior of cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness is moderate.Due to the influence of a number of factors such as the reasons of teachers' self-qualities,school,the social environment,system and so on,there is a certain gap between teachers' teaching beliefs and their teaching behaviors.The study explored senior high school English teachers' teaching beliefs and teaching behaviors from a micro-perspective of English teaching.Finally,the author hopes that the results of this study contribute to the further improvement of cross-cultural awareness teaching in senior high school.Based on the major findings of the study,this thesis suggests that senior high school English teachers should strengthen theirunderstanding of cultivating students' cross-cultural awareness and improve their practical ability of professional knowledge.