A Study On The Relationships Between University Teachers' Teaching Beliefs,Engagement And Approaches

Nowadays,China's higher education has entered the stage of popularization.Improving the quality of higher education and realizing the connotative development of Higher Education has become the core task of our country's higher education.The natural duty of universities is to educate people and cultivate talents.However,the overall quality of classroom teaching of universities in our country is not high at present,which has seriously restricted the further improvement of the high education's quality.Few studies have paid attention to the relationships among university teachers' teaching beliefs,engagement and approaches.Considering this,this study explores the relationships among them through empirical investigation in order to provide a reference for improving the quality of higher education in China.A questionnaire survey was conducted among 206 university teachers in a research M university.The questionnaire is a self-made scale with good reliability and validity.The study examined M university teachers' teaching beliefs,engagement,and approaches,together with the relationship between them.The main conclusions are as follows:Firstly,from the whole,university teachers generally hold the teaching belief of knowledge transmission,while the teaching belief of ability development is low,which needs high attention.University teachers have higher scores of teaching engagement,indicating that their teaching behaviors are positive and teachers are responsible.University teachers tend to adopt student-centered teaching approaches.Secondly,there are individual differences in university teachers' teaching beliefs,engagement and approaches.In terms of gender,female teachers' total teaching engagement and teaching preparation engagement are higher than male teachers.In terms of professional title,professors' knowledge transmission's teaching belief is the highest.With the decrease of professional title,the ability development's belief is improved,the teaching preparation engagement is increased,and the assistant gets the highest score and the professor gets the lowest score.In terms of educational experience,the scores of teachers' knowledge transmission belief,total teaching engagement and student-centered teaching approaches decrease with the improvement of teaching experience.In terms of speciality,the humanities speciality teachers get higher scores than those of the science and medical teachers in ability development teaching beliefs;the social science teachers get the lowest scores in teaching engagement,the preparation engagement and the professional development engagement;the medical science teachers put the highest engagement in professional development.In terms of post types,scientific research teachers have the highest ability development belief;teaching teachers have the highest engagement in teaching preparation and professional development.In the course teaching types,the public course teachers tend to adopt the teacher-centered teaching approaches.Based on the above results,we should pay attention to the influence of individual variables on teaching in teaching reform.Thirdly,as for the relationship between them.(1)There is a significant positive correlation between the transmission knowledge belief and the two teaching approaches,while the correlation with teacher-centered teaching approach is greater than that with student-centered teaching approach.(2)The overall and three-dimensional degree of teaching engagement have significant positive correlation with the two types of teaching approaches.However,the correlation between teaching engagement and the student-centered approaches is greater.Fourthly,teachers' teaching beliefs influence teaching approaches through teaching engagement.The concrete manifestation is that knowledge transmission teaching belief affects the student-centered teaching approaches through affecting the student-centered teaching engagement and the total teaching engagement.The characteristics of knowledge and the special educational environment in China require university teachers increasing their engagement in teaching,and then teachers tend to adopt student-centered teaching approaches.This study puts forward the following countermeasures for universities:firstly,university teachers should change their teaching conceptions,attach importance to the ability development teaching beliefs,treat the two kinds of teaching beliefs reasonably,pay attention to the development of students' abilities and stimulate their interest in learning.Secondly,university teachers should pay attention to teaching approaches,abandon the teaching pattern phenomenon,and reasonably choose the corresponding teaching approaches.Finally,universities should encourage and stimulate teachers to increase teaching investment for ensuring the quality of higher education.