The dynamic interactive relationship between Chinese secondary school EFL teachers' beliefs and practice

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, the study of language teachers' beliefs has attracted much attention. One important strand of this research has been the exploration of the relationship between teachers' beliefs and their practice, generating a recurring research theme of identifying ‘consistency’ and ‘inconsistency’ between teachers' beliefs and practice. The relationship between the two has been shown to be highly complex, dialectic and interactive. The present study employs complexity theory to illuminate aspects of the dynamic interactive relationship between Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning and their instructional practice in the context of the National Curriculum Reform in China. It comprises a case study focusing on six EFL teachers from five secondary schools in China. The data were collected over a period of six months using semi-structured interviews, observations and stimulated recall interviews. The study revealed the co-existence of core and peripheral beliefs. Drawing on evidence of interaction between core and peripheral beliefs, the study indicated that the teachers' core beliefs about EFL teaching objectives and EFL learning processes played an important role in influencing their practice. Evidence from the teachers' classroom actions implied variability in their understanding of the national curriculum standards. Some theoretically supported notions had not been strongly established because the teachers lacked first-hand experience of the effectiveness of these notions in promoting immediate learning outcomes. An eclectic approach to classroom practice was adopted by the teachers to meet different teaching objectives, which sometimes resulted in inconsistency between beliefs and practice. Therefore, the mechanism underlying the relationship between the teachers' beliefs and practices lies in the interaction between their core and peripheral beliefs in different teaching contexts. In this sense, the network of interactions between beliefs and practice can be theorised to be complex, dynamic and interactive, which more accurately represents the diversity of teachers' belief systems.