A Study On Junior High School English Teachers’ Beliefs And Practice About Stratified Teaching

Recently,it has become a trending topic in educational research to pay attention to students’ differences and promote their proximal development by adopting appropriate teaching methods.The English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011)stipulates that the designing of English curriculum should be diversified to satisfy all students’ learning needs and teachers should focus on students’ different features in competence,interests,cognition,etc.Therefore,it’s meaningful to implement stratified teaching within a class according to students’ individual differences.Researchers at home and abroad have studied stratified teaching since a long time ago.They mainly focus on conducting experiments on stratified teaching.There are relatively few studies that investigate stratified teaching from the perspective of teachers’ beliefs and practice.As an implicit cognitive system,teachers’ beliefs have a direct influence on their classroom practice.Therefore,the present investigation into junior high school English teachers’ beliefs and practice about stratified teaching has important meanings for teachers to adjust their beliefs,improve their classroom practice and English teaching effects.This study proposes three questions: 1.What beliefs do junior high school English teachers hold about stratified teaching? 2.How do junior high school English teachers conduct stratified teaching? 3.What’s the relationship between junior high school English teachers’ beliefs and practice about stratified teaching? If there are inconsistencies,what are the factors of influencing the inconsistencies between teachers’ beliefs and practice about stratified teaching? In order to fully answer the above three questions,both quantitative and qualitative research methods are used.First of all,thirty junior high school English teachers from M school are invited to participate in the questionnaire to investigate their beliefs about stratified teaching.And then,the author interviews three teachers and observes their classes to further explore their beliefs and practice about stratified teaching,and the relationship between their beliefs and practice.After classroom observation,the author interviews the three teachers again to find out the factors of influencing the inconsistencies between teachers’ beliefs and practice about stratified teaching.Through analysis and discussion,the research findings are presented as follows.Firstly,generally speaking,junior high school English teachers hold positive and similar beliefs with regard to these dimensions of stratified teaching: teachers’ cognition of stratified teaching,students’ differentiation,teacher-student roles and implementation strategies of stratified teaching.There are some slight differences in teachers’ beliefs.Besides,junior high school English teachers’ theoretical understanding of stratified teaching is not comprehensive.Secondly,junior high school English teachers can implement stratified teaching based on students’ individual differences to some extent.But teachers practice of stratified teaching is not comprehensive,especially in the aspect of implementation strategies of stratified teaching.Most teachers don’t design stratified teaching objectives,stratified homework and stratified assessment.Thirdly,there is a complex relationship between junior high school English teachers’ beliefs and practice about stratified teaching.Teachers’ beliefs about students’ differentiation and teacher-student roles in stratified teaching are basically consistent with their classroom practice.However,in regard to the implementation strategies of stratified teaching,a large gap can be detected between teachers’ beliefs and practice.Fourthly,this study reveals two kinds of major factors for the inconsistencies between teachers’ beliefs and practice about stratified teaching,including teachers’ personal and contextual factors,such as teachers’ inadequate understanding of stratified teaching and teaching experience,limited professional education of stratified teaching,heavy workload,score-oriented testing criterion and so on.According to the research results,there are two meaningful suggestions for teachers to fully and comprehensively conduct stratified teaching and help each student make optimal development in English learning.For one thing,teachers should upgrade their theoretical knowledge about stratified teaching.For another,they should constantly reflect on their classroom practice about stratified teaching.