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study, Phipps and Borg argued that peripheral beliefs are the ones that are
“theoretically embraced” but haven’t “experientially ingrained” yet. In other words, the theoretical conceptions that have not fully undergone the “first-hand experience of their effectiveness” tend to turn into peripheral beliefs (Phipps & Borg, 2009). In the present study, although Jane acknowledged the significance of English as a tool, putting teaching focus on practical use was still not a priority option because it was not how she acquired this language in the past. Apart from past learning experience, Jane’s previous teaching practice also experientially shaped the intensity of different beliefs. Having taught English for almost thirty years, she admitted that the
traditional grammar translation method almost dominated her classroom practice throughout her teaching career. It wasn’t until recent years that she started to include the “theoretically embraced” philosophy into actual teaching practices. This also confirmed Green’s (1971) point of view that core beliefs are usually resistant to change and difficult to modify.
5.3 Classroom practices
Jane’s classroom practices were the results of the intricate interaction between core beliefs and peripheral beliefs. Her teaching sequence within one lesson started with the warm-up section, followed by sentence pattern, vocabulary, reading, dialogue, and finally ended with the exercises in the textbook and workbook. This teaching sequence basically followed the PPP model (see Willis, 1996) in grammar instruction, but there still existed some variations. As already described in the previous chapter, she began a new grammatical point by “presenting” its features to students first, and then she required them to copy the key points and example sentences to the textbook. Most examples she offered were decontexturalized sentences that had little to do with students’ personal experience. Besides, the
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sentences were often quite short, as Jane thought “students are more willing to copy short sentence down.” After sufficient explanation on the grammatical features, she would then assign textbook exercises for them to “practice” and familiarize sentence structures. However, the third “P – produce” in the PPP model was not witnessed during the whole observation period. After finishing the first two stages,
presentation and practice, Jane directly moved to the vocabulary section in the dialogue. Students were never invited to participate in any free situation which allowed for the natural production of newly acquired grammar. By the same token, three out of four Hong Kong teachers in Wu’s (2006) study also carried out this teaching pattern, omitting the last “production” stage of the PPP model.
Another feature salient in Jane’s classroom practices was the constant
inclusion of grammar instruction and terminology. In one stimulated recall interview, she elaborated the reason why students can benefit from the instruction of
terminology:
T: Their reading experience is scarce, and they don’t read voluntarily. However, this kind of questions [about gerunds and present participles] are still very common in tests. When they see the questions with so many words in the form of “-ing,” they may feel bewildered. That is why I talked about it.
R: So it’s because of the tests?
T: Yeah. The circumstance now still expects teachers to teach for the tests. So far, our students do not have enough reading experience for developing language intuition. Therefore, it would be easier for students to pick up this language if we directly tell them the terminology and its principles.
From this excerpt, it was observed that Jane’s reason for using grammar
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terminology was twofold. First, the traditional concept about “teach for the test” still played an important role in Taiwanese teaching context (Lai, 2004). Therefore, Jane presumed that both students and parents expect teachers to offer instructions on the knowledge that may show up in the test paper. Second, she believed that grammar terminology was efficient in explaining how a language works, especially to those who do not have enough language exposure.
Jane’s practice about “teaching for the test” was found in another example. In one episode, Jane was asking students to mark an adjective phrase in a sentence, saying that
“This is called adjective phrase. Generally speaking, we [school teachers] don’t put terminology like this into your monthly exam. Nevertheless, sometimes you may still see it in the commercial test paper. It would be safer if you know what this terminology means.” Here, her emphasis on terminology and the substantial time she devoted in grammar can be interpreted as a result of social expectation, a well-documented factor behind teachers’ practices (Borg, 1999b; Borg, 2003; Feryok, 2008; Golombek, 1998;
Lai, 2004; Phipps & Borg, 2009). The trend of tests, question types in commercial test paper, students’ expectation about what counted as a responsible teacher all had deep influence on her grammar teaching practice.
5.4 Tensions between beliefs and practices
According to Green (1971), people tend to organize similar beliefs together and form independent clusters in their belief systems. The clusters act like “protective shield,” making it possible for people to hold contradictory beliefs (Green, 1971). In this section, the investigator will first elaborate the way in which Jane’s core beliefs and peripheral beliefs interact with each other. Attempts will then be made to describe the tensions between beliefs and practices.
Due to the fact that Jane’s core beliefs and peripheral beliefs generated from two
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different aspects respectively, it was not surprising to find some contradictions between them. Jane indeed made some attempts to include beliefs from another cluster into practice. However, since core beliefs still occupied the first priority, only part of the peripheral beliefs can be actualized into practice. The rest peripheral beliefs that had not yet been carried out thus become “tensions” (Basturkmen et al., 2004; Feryok, 2008; Freeman & Richards, 1993; Phipps & Borg, 2009). This indicates that teacher beliefs are indeed a complex set which may not always been implemented into classroom practices (Basturkmen, 2012; Borg, 2003; Farrell &
Bennis, 2013; Johnson, 1992b; Phipps & Borg, 2009).
Jane’s statements in the interviews were mostly in line with the observed classroom practice. Still, tensions seemed to be more salient in three aspects: the inclusion of extracurricular teaching resources, proportion of grammar, and the use of grammatical terminology. These tensions were mainly generated from two clusters of beliefs mentioned earlier, knowledge transmission perspective versus ideal English education perspective. A synthesized overview of Jane’s tensions is listed in Table 1.
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First, Jane emphasized the inclusion of extracurricular teaching resources in the interviews. For her, these materials opened another window for students and enabled them to realize the practical use of English. However, these teaching resources were seldom seen during classroom observations. In one stimulated recall on which two interesting online articles were presented, the investigator asked Jane why she did not include the materials in previous classes:
R: Do you usually show them the extracurricular materials when you teach dialogue and reading?
T: Not really. Actually as long as there is one minute or two, I’ll put the materials in.
R: But I didn’t see you using them [the materials] in previous classes?
T: Well, it depends on time. If I finish the arranged schedule of that day and still two or three minutes left, I’ll give them a break [by showing them the
materials]. (J-12-435-439)
Tensions During interviews During observations
Extracurricular teaching resources
･Highly valued.
･Showing students that “English is a tool”.
Rarely observed.
Proportion of grammar instruction
･Grammar should not be overemphasized.
Substantial time and effort were devoted to the review of grammar.
The use of grammatical terminology
･Mastery of basic grammar terminology was already enough.
･Knowing how to use the words was more important than
memorizing terminology.
Frequent use of terminology during lectures and inquiries.
Table 1 Jane’s tensions between beliefs and practices
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Like the participants in other studies mentioned in Chapter 2, this extract provides an evident example about how time pressure significantly influenced Jane’s actual teaching practices. Jane’ practical concern of time outweighed her ideal English teaching belief of interest developing. In fact, Jane had constantly been searching and gathering extracurricular teaching resources online. There were actually tens of clips and articles in her notebook computer, indicating that she was well prepared to demonstrate them the world of English beyond textbooks. Even so, her core belief still took the lead, making her postponed her peripheral belief until time was allowed.
The second and third tension concerned the effort that Jane dedicated to grammar instruction and terminology. It was also the struggle between Jane’s
perceived role of teacher versus her perceived role of grammar and terminology. On one hand, she was clearly aware that acquiring grammar knowledge and terminology only had limited contribution to true communication; what counted most was the courage to speak out and sufficient authentic exposures. On the other hand, her actual practice was again dominated by the same knowledge transmission spirit, in which teachers should acted as a guide who directed, organized and synthesized knowledge for her pupils (Wu, 2006).
As mentioned earlier, Jane’s classroom practices were the results of the interaction between core beliefs and peripheral beliefs. Core beliefs, knowledge transmission perspective, dominated Jane’s classroom practices. When situations allowed, she would include peripheral beliefs—ideal English education perspective into her practices. This was also the reason why the investigator only observed one occurrence of extracurricular teaching resources during six observation periods. If Jane had difficulty transmitting knowledge on schedule, the peripheral beliefs about
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ideal English teaching techniques wouldn’t be employed. Knowledge transmission perspective is more teacher-centered, expository and receptive in nature (Wu, 2006), while Jane’s ideal English teaching perspective is more student-centeredness,
self-discovery and regards constant exposure of new materials as indispensable (Brown, 2001; Feryok; 2008, Larsen-Freeman, 2000). Jane may value some tenets under ideal English teaching philosophy such as authentic exposure and student activeness, but she also believed in the crucial principles in traditional teaching methods. Both perspectives were crucial in her belief system; the only difference was the intensity they carried. In comparison with Lai’s (2004) work, Jane as well as the Taiwanese teachers in Lai’s study were clearly aware of the benefits of current teaching trends, trying to abandon traditional values and embracing the authentic use of language as part of their teaching beliefs. Yet in both cases, they also admitted that contextual factors often brought them back to the old teaching patterns. Instead of regarding tensions as the inconsistencies that impede teachers’ practices, it is more constructive for us to view them from another perspective. The inconsistencies were not as negative and undesirable as documented in the literature. In fact, as Phipps and Borg (2009) indicated, they were actually congruent with core beliefs that are so fundamental that teachers themselves may not be aware of.
Due to time constraint, the interpreter only had chances to observe Jane’s class in ninth grade, a grade that brought Jane the most pressure. In stimulated recalls, Jane mentioned three reasons that inhibited her from implementing ideal English teaching methods on ninth graders. First of all, 9th graders’ textbook content was the richest and the most difficult, so she was under huge time pressure to finish textbook knowledge in time. Second, due to the upcoming Basic Competence Test, reviewing previously acquired grammar seemed to be more urgent than having extracurricular activities to gain authentic exposures. Third, some of her classes were previously
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taught by other teachers who employed more traditional teaching methods than she did. Students in these classes were already used to receiving knowledge passively, making it difficult for Jane to change students’ existed learning pattern. All of these reinforced her frequency of grammar instructions, and meanwhile caused a
deduction to other teaching activities. In seventh grade and eighth grade where there were less time pressure, Jane claimed that she stressed less on grammar and
allocated more time on other activities such as group discussions and comprehension questions which may generate more student participation and authentic language use.
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CHAPTER SIX CONCLUSION
This chapter includes four sections. The first two sections contain an overall summary of the present study as well as the implication about tensions. The third section describes the limitations on issues that were unable to be discussed in the current study. At last, the suggestions for further research are raised for those who are interested in studies about teacher beliefs and practices.