A Study On Senior High School EFL Teachers' Beliefs Of Cultivating Students' Thinking Skills And Their Teaching Behaviors

With the development of English education reform,the cultivation of students' thinking skills is gradually becoming the hot issue in senior high school English curriculum reform.The beliefs and teaching behaviors of the senior high school EFL teachers about cultivating students' thinking skills have significant influence on students' thinking skills development.Thus,on the basis of the previous studies on teacher cognition and teaching behaviors,the qualitative research is mainly adopted in this research aiming to have a further exploration on the characteristics of the senior high school EFL teachers' beliefs of cultivating students' thinking skills.Meanwhile,this study also tries to analyze the influencing factors of the senior high school EFL teachers' beliefs of cultivating students' thinking skills.Last but not least,this study focuses on the exploration of the relationship between the beliefs and teaching behaviors of senior high school EFL teachers about cultivating students' thinking skills;The semi-structured interviews(pre-interview and post-interview)and class observation are adopted.The beliefs and teaching behaviors of five senior high school EFL teachers about cultivating students' thinking skills in No.12 Middle School of Chengdu in Sichuan province have been explored in this research.This research shows that the senior high school EFL teacher's beliefs of cultivating students' thinking skills havethose characteristics: persistent,re-constructional and regenerating.Meanwhile,the influencing factors of the senior high school EFL teachers' beliefs of cultivating students' thinking skills can be analyzed from those two dimensions: the contextual dimension and longitudinal dimension.The contextual dimension includes the micro-perspective influencing factors: the senior high school EFL teachers' knowledge and theories on English teaching and learning and thinking skills;the meso-perspective influencing factors: the influencing of senior high school EFL teachers' students,colleagues and the school's policy;the macro-perspective influencing factors:educational policy and English curriculum,etc.The longitudinal dimension indicates that the senior high school EFL teachers' beliefs of cultivating students' thinking skills are continuously reconstructing in the dynamic time and space of teaching practice.Finally,this research summarizes that the relationship between the beliefs and teaching behaviors of senior high school EFL teachers about cultivating students' thinking skills is not simply consistent or inconsistent,but mutually constructional in the paradoxical system of the consistency and inconsistency.Combining the cultivation of thinking quality in new English curriculum,this research has a further exploration on senior high school EFL teachers' beliefs of cultivating students' thinking skills and their teaching behaviors.This research aims to enhance the senior high school EFL teachers' beliefs of cultivating students' thinking skills and help them put those beliefs into practice.