| The globalization and diversification in different fields such as politics,economy and culture,the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative,the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the advocacy of a Community of Common Destiny all make it increasingly essential for culture teaching to be implemented in English teaching in senior high schools.Besides,the new English curriculum reform requires that current English teaching should include and stress culture teaching.Additionally,the emerging and thriving of cognitive psychology made teacher beliefs arrest more and more attention from researchers.Thus,much research aimed to examine the relationship between teacher beliefs and their teaching practices.Yet,relatively limited studies have been done on the relationship between English teacher beliefs and practices about culture teaching in senior high schools.Therefore,this case study explores teaching beliefs and practices about culture teaching of 92 English teachers in three senior high schools in the Inner-city of Qujing,including the researcher’s school,attempting to interpret the reasons for any potential inconsistency between them.The study is trying to answer three research questions:(1)What beliefs do these senior high school English teachers hold about culture teaching in English teaching?(2)What are their teaching practices about culture teaching in English teaching?(3)Is there any inconsistency between their beliefs and teaching practices about culture teaching ? If any,how and why does it come about ?Three research methods were applied: interview,classroom observation and questionnaire.Firstly,a questionnaire was completed by the teachers,among whom 7were interviewed.Secondly,4 of the 7 interviewed teachers were observed in their classrooms and 197 students of them were asked to complete another questionnaire.Major findings are as follows:(1)The teachers claimed high awareness of not only the significance but also the goal of culture teaching but most of them manifested a high level of uncertainty about what to teach concerning cultureteaching.Meanwhile,they felt at a loss regarding how to teach culture for lack of scientific approaches,activities and principles about culture teaching.Teaching resources and comment they chose for culture teaching were limited.They held the belief hat some internal factors like teachers’ insufficiency of culture knowledge and their lack of understanding of the content of culture teaching combined with external factors like educational policies,teaching contexts and exam-oriented society hindered the successful implementation of culture teaching.(2)Their teaching practices were consistent with their beliefs to a great extent but discrepancy still existed.They claimed equal concern to different categories of culture but mainly lectured foreign behavioral cultures appearing in texts in their practices.Then they thought that great significance should be attached to infiltrating and transmitting Chinese culture,but Chinese culture was seldom mentioned or manipulated by most teachers in their teaching practices.Additionally,though showing high awareness of the significance of CT but less effort was made to conduct culture teaching in their practices.(3)The gender,teaching experience and work load of teachers were found to have certain relationship with their beliefs and practices about choosing the approaches and content in implementing culture teaching.Male teachers showed a better understanding of the content of CT.Experienced teachers and department leaders were found relatively more flexible in choosing the content and approaches in implementing CT both in beliefs and in practices.Pedagogical implications are finally proposed to make culture teaching more approachable and appropriate.(1)Optimize teachers’ beliefs on culture teaching.(2)Adapt internal and external factors affecting the implementation of culture teaching.(3)Design tailored teacher education programs about culture teaching. |
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