A Sociocognitive Study Of English Teacher Cognition And Its Influencing Factors In Chinese Secondary Schools

Teacher cognition is one of the central themes of foreign language teachereducation research. Teacher cognition refers to what teachers know, believe and thinkwith regards to various issues related to teaching, such as curriculum, teaching,evaluation and teacher-student relationship. Its main research areas include teacherknowledge, teacher beliefs and teacher decision making. As teacher cognition is thedriving force of teacher behavior, studying teacher cognition has important theoreticaland practice implications for classroom teaching, curriculum reform and teacherdevelopment. In China, foreign language teacher cognition research has just emergedand many important issues remain to be explored. This study focuses on the cognitionof middle school English language teachers in the context of foreign languagecurriculum reform. It aims to examine the unique features of foreign language teachercognition in the Chinese secondary education context through theoretical andempirical exploration.This study first proposes a theoretical framework for studying foreign languageteacher cognition based on the sociocognitive perspective, which is a new theoreticalorientation in the field of second language acquisition. This framework guides thesubsequent empirical study. The main purpose of the empirical study is to explore theorientation, variation, characteristics and influencing factors of middle school Englishteacher cognition in the context of foreign language curriculum reform in China. Thestudy adopts a mixed design. First,900Middle School English Teaching Environment,Teacher cognition and Teacher Development Questionnaires were administered tomiddle school English teachers nationwide, and733valid questionnaires wereobtained. Then nine middle school English teachers took part in semi-structuredinterviews. The quantitative data from the questionnaires were analyzed with SPSSand the qualitative data from the interviews and the open-ended section of thequestionnaires were analyzed by thematic analysis. The qualitative and quantitativedata complement each other.It is found that on the whole, the cognition of middle school English teachers isconsistent with the sociocognitive perspective promoted by the foreign languagecurriculum reform, but both traditional and sociocognitive orientations exist. Teachercognition is multilayered, contextualized, individualized, complex and sometimescontradictory. A gap exists between teachers’ espoused theory and theory-in-use onsome issues. There is significant difference in school type, teacher’s degree and gender. The cognition of teachers with higher degrees and those who work in urbankey schools is more inclined toward the sociocognitive conceptions promoted by thecurriculum reform. Female teachers are more sociocognitive than male teachers.There is also some difference in age, with middle aged teachers around30more openminded than old teachers and novice teachers.It is also found that the cognition of middle school English teachers is affected byboth internal and external factors. Internal factors include teachers’ view ofprofessional development, educational background and gender. External factorsinclude foreign language curriculum reform, school culture, teacher incentives,colleagues, students, parents and so on. These contextual and teacher-related factorsintertwine to exert various positive or negative influences on teacher cognition. Therelationship between these factors is very complicated. Some factors promote eachother while others might contradict. Contradiction and conflicts are mainly reflectedin the relationship between Senior High School Entrance Examination and curriculumreform, and the ideals of curriculum reform and the reality of foreign languageeducation. These conflicts and inconsistencies have brought about puzzles andbarriers to middle school English teachers’ professional development and teachingwork. Through cross-examination and deep delving into the data, it is found that theunbalanced development of foreign language education is the underlying cause ofmany problems identified in the study. The issue of educational inequality interactswith other factors, shaping the complexity of foreign language teacher cognition inthe Chinese secondary education context.If the middle school English teachers are taken as a whole, the most importantfactor affecting their cognition is teachers’ view of professional development.However, there exists great individual difference among the teachers. In addition toteachers’ view of professional development, educational background, teachingexperience, personality and many other factors can also be the single most importantfactor affecting an individual teacher’s cognition. These findings to a large extent areconsistent with Wu (2007), which studied the expertise and professional developmentof English teachers at the tertiary level. Although compared with Wu’s influentialstudy on university English teachers, this study has approached teacher cognitionfrom a different perspective, using different samples and different methods, itconfirms many findings of Wu’s study and also provides valuable information uniqueto middle school English teachers, thus shedding light on the professionaldevelopment of Chinese English language teachers in different educational levels and contexts.This study has both theoretical and practical significance. First of all, in terms oftheoretical innovation, it proposes a theoretical framework for studying foreignlanguage teacher cognition based on the sociocognitive perspective. This frameworkguides the empirical study and on the other hand, the findings from the empiricalstudy also support the validity of the framework. In addition, this study enhances ourunderstanding of English teacher cognition in the Chinese secondary educationcontext and reveals the complex influence of various contextual and teacher-relatedfactors on teacher cognition. The research findings have implications for foreignlanguage curriculum reform, teacher development and many other important issues inforeign language education in China. In a word, this study provides theoretical andempirical insights for studying foreign language teacher cognition in the Chinesecontext.