The Impact of Teacher Education on In-service English Teachers’ Beliefs about Self

Abstract

This was a qualitative study carried out in the context of 2013 National Teacher Training Program for Junior High School English Teachers in Chongqing China, intending to reveal the impact of the program on four in-service English teachers’ beliefs about self (i. e., about English teachers). Rich data were collected throughout the process of training which lasted for 100 days, including semi-structured interviews, teachers’ class analysis reports, professional development plans, periodic summaries and so on. The findings were interpreted with the help of the classification framework of teacher belief change proposed by Cabaroglu and Roberts, which showed that the impact of the program on these four in-service English teachers’ beliefs about English teachers’ roles, excellent English teachers and English teachers’ professional development was considerable, however, the degree, the nature and the sources of the impact varied across individual teachers.