Teachers’ Beliefs Held By EFL Teachers In Guizhou Provincial-level Model High Schools Located In Guiyang, China

High school EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teaching challenges havebecome more severe under the new curriculum reform since2003. Faced with greatpressure as well as challenges, high school EFL teachers need to find how to enhancetheir teaching effectively to meet the requirement of the reform. Meanwhile, somestudies have been done to explore EFL teachers’ professional development from theaspect of teachers’ beliefs.The present study aims at investigating what teachers’ beliefs on learning,teaching and learners high school EFL teachers hold and whether high school EFLteachers’ beliefs vary regarding gender, years of EFL teaching experience andteaching grades. All the EFL teachers in the three leading model high schools inGuiyang have been involved in the present study. In order to validate the research, themixed methods of the qualitative (a semi-structured interview) and quantitative (aquestionnaire) have been adopted. In addition, the data from the questionnaire havebeen analyzed with SPSS software.Based on the findings of the collected data, the present study demonstrates thathigh school EFL teachers hold positive and optimistic beliefs on learning, teachingand learners. The study further indicates that female high school EFL teachers havestronger teachers’ beliefs than males. Besides, it can be seen that high school EFLteachers’ beliefs vary regarding EFL teachers’ teaching years. However, the studyalso shows that high school EFL teachers’ beliefs have minor significance in relationto teaching grades.The implications of the present study show that high school EFL teachersshould lay stress on the importance of building a proper teachers’ beliefs systembecause it would make great differences on their EFL teaching decisions, instructionsand behavior. Moreover, high school EFL teachers’ reflection on teachers’ beliefs isthe key to achieving EFL teachers’ professional development.