An Exploration Of Teachers' Beliefs In Chinese EFL Context

The study of teachers' beliefs has received much attention in recent years, and has become part of the process of understanding how teachers conceptualize their work. Although previous studies shed light on teachers' belief about the practice of teaching, research on teachers' more specific belief still remains underexposed. Taken into account the shortcomings in prior research, the present study aims, first, to investigate the construct of teachers' belief system among EFL teachers, and examines how teachers' beliefs are related to each other and to teacher demographic characteristics such as gender and teaching years, then to explore the degree of discrepancies or consistencies between novice teachers and experienced teachers.Sixty-five English teachers from three middle schools in Weihai participated in the current study. Their ages range from 20-50 and their years of teaching vary from 1 to 24. The questionnaire is originally designed by Zhu and Ye (2003) and later used by Lü(2004) in his doctoral dissertation with slight adaptation. In the present study, the questionnaire is slightly revised for the current research is conducted in Chinese EFL context. The questionnaire adapted Likert scales, containing four parts—demographic information, Teacher Belief Inventory, Teacher Intrapersonal Intelligence Scale and Teacher Efficacy Scale. Demographic information mainly consists of background factors such as teachers' gender, age, years of teaching, present degree, graduate university, professional title. Teacher Belief Inventory includes 38 items. They are divided into four subcategories: teachers' belief about management of students, belief about curriculum, belief about teachers' job assessment and belief about students' learning. Teacher Intrapersonal Intelligence Scale is used to test the level of teachers' intrapersonal intelligence. Teacher Efficacy Scale includes 22 items and it is used to test the level of teachers' efficacy. The internal consistency reliability as measured for the Teachers' Belief Inventory, Teacher Intrapersonal Intelligence Scale and Teacher Efficacy Scale computed on 65 participants is respectively .71, .80, .78. Statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 15.0 is used to analyze the data. A series of one way ANOVA tests are conducted. The findings of the research first present us general belief EFL teachers hold. The results have also shown that the higher level the intrapersonal intelligence and teacher efficacy are, the more positive belief teachers hold. Besides, novice and experienced teachers hold different belief in terms of subcategory of curriculum. Furthermore, based on the findings, pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research are provided. On the one hand, from the perspective of the school authorities and teacher educators, they should provide opportunities for teachers to enrich their theoretical knowledge and adopt new ideas at regular interval. On the other hand, teachers should frequently make reflection on their teaching practices. At the end of the research, the author makes a brief summary of the present study, and suggestions for future research are also put forward.