A Study On High School English Teachers' Beliefs And Practice About Discipline Key Competencies

Teaching belief has the function of guiding teaching behaviors,and teachers' teaching practice is the embodiment of their teaching beliefs.The English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School(2017)clarifies the training goal of discipline key competencies,and emphasizes the comprehensive cultivation of students' language competence,cultural awareness,thinking quality and learning ability.However,to promote and implement the teaching reform requires teachers to have an accurate understanding and concrete practice about it.Therefore,it is of great significance to explore high school English teachers' beliefs and practice about discipline key competencies to promote the current English curriculum reform.The author reviewed and defined the concepts of teaching belief and teaching practice and explored their relationship based on the definition of core concepts like key competencies and English discipline key competencies.On the basis of reviewing and consulting the relevant research on discipline key competencies at home and abroad,especially on teachers' understanding and practice about discipline key competencies,the author conducted the study on high school English teachers' beliefs and practice about discipline key competencies,which aims to deal with the following three research questions:1)How do high school English teachers understand the concept of discipline key competencies?2)How do high school English teachers implement discipline key competencies in their teaching practice? What are the specific teaching behaviors?3)What problems do high school English teachers encounter in the process of implementing discipline key competencies?For this study,the author adopted mixed research methods,including literature analysis,quantitative and qualitative research methods.The author firstly summarized the relevant research at home and abroad by using the literature analysis,with the help of Cite Space and China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI),and determined the research direction on this basis.For the main stage of the study,the author mainly adopted the survey research method,to conduct a related study on the group of high school English teachers in H City,Zhejiang Province.The data were collected by quantitative and qualitative methods such as questionnaire,interview and classroom observation,and were mainly analyzed by Statistic Package for Social Science(SPSS23.0),and classification analysis method.Based on the above research process,the study found that:1)High school English teachers have a relatively deep understanding of the purpose and content(especially the core components)of discipline key competencies,but the understanding of the essence and teaching requirements of four competencies is not fully in place.Besides,teachers' beliefs about discipline key competencies has a certain impact on their teaching practice;2)The teaching practice of high school English teachers based on discipline key competencies has a certain foundation.Most teachers can carry out related teaching in setting teaching objectives,choosing teaching methods and designing teaching activities,and have achieved certain teaching effects,but the cultivation of students' different competencies is still not systematic and comprehensive enough;3)The overall level of teachers' teaching practice is lower than their beliefs,which highlights the problems that teachers' theoretical understanding of discipline key competencies is not in place,and the supporting system of teaching and research is not adequate.Based on the above research findings,the following suggestions are put forward:1)Teachers should strengthen the theoretical study of discipline key competencies and improve their teaching and research abilities;2)Teacher educators should give teachers the necessary support to promote teachers' theoretical understanding and practical experience through teaching research and teacher training;3)Schools should help teachers coordinate teaching and research to implement the goal of keycompetencies education.