A Study Of The Relationship Between College English Teachers’ Learner-centered Beliefs And Their Classroom Practice

College English curriculum innovation has been implemented widely in Chinasince the issue of College English Curriculum Requirements in2007, which highlyadvocates the shift from teacher-centered to more learner-centered instructions. In fact,the change of teachers’beliefs can be a vital part in smoothing the educational reform.Therefore, researches on teachers’ beliefs and classroom practice have come intofavor in recent years. However, at present, there is still a lack of studies of therelationship between College English teachers’ belief and practice in terms oflearner-centeredness. What’s more, relevant studies on the teachers’ learner-centeredbelief and practice that adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods are evenrarer. Hence, the present study is intended to explore the College English teachers’learner-centered beliefs and their classroom practice in order to put forward somesuggestions on teachers’professional development.The present study investigates the learner-centered beliefs and practice of theCollege English teachers from Shandong Normal University.34College Englishteachers and680students taught by these teachers are involved in this study. Bothquantitative and qualitative methods are adopted, including the questionnaires,classroom observations and semi-structured interviews. SPSS17.0was employed toanalyze the data collected from the questionnaires. In order to have a deepunderstanding of the teachers’beliefs and their classroom practice, three teachers withdifferent teaching experience and titles are selected to be observed in their class andinterviewed after class. The present study attempts to figure out the generallearner-centered beliefs held by these College English teachers; their actual classroompractice; the relationship between those English teachers’ learner-centered beliefs andtheir classroom practice and the contributing factors of such kind of relationship.The major findings from the questionnaires, classroom observations andinterviews can be summarized as follows: Generally speaking, the beliefs held by theparticipant English teachers tend to be more learner-centered on learners, learning andteaching. And the teachers overestimate their learner-centered practice than their students on several aspects. There are both consistencies and inconsistencies betweenthe English teachers’ expressed learner-centered beliefs and their classroom practice.Factors contributing to such relationship mainly include the teachers’ learning andteaching experience, the students’ English proficiency levels, the tight teachingschedule and the limitation of teaching time, etc.Based on the findings of the study, some suggestions are put forward for CollegeEnglish teachers and teachers’ professional development. Teachers should frequentlyreflect on their own beliefs and teaching practice. And great importance should be laidon the communication and interaction with their students and colleagues. In addition,some pre-service as well as the in-service training programs concerninglearner-centered teaching are of high value for teachers’ development and promotionof their beliefs and practice.