A Study On The Current Situation Of High-School English Teachers' Reflective Teaching And Influencing Factors

This study,based on Dewey and Schon's reflective theory and related studies,investigates the current situation of high-school English teachers' reflective teaching and influencing factors in a moderately developed area in China.The data are mainly collected from a questionnaire and interviews.Based on the data analyses,the major findings of the study are drawn as follows:First of all,the survey results indicate that the overall situation of the teachers'reflective teaching is generally satisfactory.Specifically speaking,the content of reflective teaching is most satisfactory(M=4.11),followed by the strategies of reflective teaching(M=3.91)and the awareness of reflective teaching(M=3.74).As to the content of reflective teaching,the teachers reflect more on their teaching practice than on the psychological environment,which includes the learning atmosphere of the class and students.This finding is consistent with the position of these front-line teachers.As to the strategies of reflective teaching,reflecting by communicating with colleagues is the way most frequently used by the teachers while reflecting by reading relevant literature being the least used,which is partly due to the fact that teachers are too busy with teaching to have time left for reading.In addition,most teachers are doing better with their reflection-on-action and reflection-for-action than with reflection-in-action.This finding may be attributed to the lack of training,as reflection-in-action requires more of teachers' teaching experience,their class control ability and that of instant responses.On the whole,these teachers' reflective teaching methods are rather monotonous and lacking in diversity,which might have something to do with the shortage of school facilities and high demand of time and energy investment.As to the awareness of reflective teaching,although all the teachers have a good understanding of the significance of reflective teaching,they do not always do it,which is mainly because most teachers have not developed the habit of putting ideas into practice.Besides,as interview data indicate,young teachers find it hard to find time to conduct reflective teaching due to their lack of teaching experience and being unfamiliar with teaching materials.Secondly,the survey data show that various factors have affected the teachers,reflective teaching.Of all,school-related factors have the greatest effect on the teachers'reflective teaching(M=3.98),the next are personal factors(M=3.52)and social factors(M=3.43).Specifically,most school cultures seems favorable for the teachers' reflective teaching.As for personal factors,the teachers don't seem to have an active attitude towards reflective teaching,nor do they have adequate knowledge about reflective teaching.Data also reveal some negative social factors,such as the lack of teacher training or guidance for how to conduct reflective teaching,and the partial or inappropriate teacher evaluation has been mainly based on examination results.The interview data generally support the above findings.All interviewees agree that both the heavy teaching load and the administrator's over emphasis on students' scores have greatly damped their enthusiasm for reflective teaching.Based on the above findings,some tentative suggestions are put forward to help high-school English teachers learn to practice reflective teaching,with the hope to contribute to the change of the current situation for the better.