the next section.
Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs
Teachers’ beliefs, according to Lu (2003), refer to teachers’ own theoretical ideas or perspectives on pedagogy, curriculum, and learning. Teachers’ belief systems can
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be discovered from teachers’ objectives, values, and beliefs, and the teachers’ beliefs can help teachers make decisions or actions (Richards & Lockhart, 1996).
Sinprajakpol (2004) suggests that teachers’ beliefs have a considerable effect on the teachers’ actual classroom behavior because they were formed by the teachers’
judgments and perspectives, and the judgements and perspectives also affected the teacher’s actual practice in the classroom. Hence, teachers’ beliefs are important in teaching processes.
Many researchers defined teachers’ beliefs in different ways. However, in Richards and Lockhart’s (1996) book, Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms, they saw teachers’ beliefs as the teachers’ perceptions or thoughts about
teaching. In my study, I also focused on the teacher’s teaching belief about code-switching in the classroom. Hence, I adopted their definition.
The Sources of Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs
Teachers’ teaching beliefs come from different sources. Richards and Lockhart (1996) suggested that teachers gradually developed their beliefs over time, and that their beliefs included subjective and objective dimensions. There are six sources of teachers’ teaching beliefs, including the “experience as language learners, experience of what works best, established practice, personality factors, educationally based or research-based principles, and principles derived from an approach or method” (pp.
30-31).
According to Richards and Lockhart (1996), the first source of teachers’ teaching beliefs comes from their own experiences as language learners. Such beliefs are formed based on how they were taught as students before. Take vocabulary learning as an example. Richards and Lockhart exemplified one teacher’s explanation, “I remember when I was a student and I wanted to learn new vocabulary, it always
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helped to write down the words” (p. 30). Therefore, the teacher might think of vocabulary instruction as an important part in class. Second, teachers’ teaching beliefs are also based on the strategies they have used in the past. Richards and Lockhart gave an example of a teacher’s comment: “I find that when checking answers in a whole-class situation, students respond better if given the opportunity to first review their answers with a partner” (p. 31). In this case, the teacher
encouraged the students to review the answers with their partners. Third, teachers’
teaching beliefs are established by practices. That is, after years of teaching practice, the teachers will come up with the best teaching styles they prefer. Richards and Lockhart provided a teacher’s report, “In our school, we do a lot of small group learning. We’re encouraged not to stand in front of the class and teach whenever it can be avoided” (p. 31). In this example, because of the positive effect on students’
learning, the teachers were encouraged to do group learning instead of traditional learning. Fourth, teachers’ teaching beliefs are influenced by their personalities.
Teachers with different personalities prefer to conduct different teaching activities.
For example, an out-going teacher may prefer to ask their students to do drama in the class (p. 31). Fifth, teachers can form their own teaching beliefs based on some educational principles. For example, the teachers might apply cooperative learning into their own classes after taking a course related to it. The final source of teachers’
teaching beliefs is based on the methodological principles. It is possible that teachers believe some strategies are effective, so they apply the strategies into their own classrooms.
The previous section discussed the six sources of teachers’ teaching beliefs.
Such beliefs might be affected by their own past learning and teaching experiences.
Also, their teaching beliefs might influence their actual classroom behaviors. In the
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next section, therefore, the relationship between teachers’ teaching beliefs and actual practice was discussed.
The Relationship between Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs and Actual Practices Some researchers have looked at how teachers’ teaching beliefs and their actual behaviors interact in the classroom. Xu (2012) believed that teachers’ actual
practices were determined by teachers’ teaching beliefs because the way they planned lessons and the decision regarding the lessons they made would influence what they taught. In addition, Clark and Peterson (1984) reviewed other researchers’ studies, indicating that teachers’ planning and thinking might be influenced by their beliefs and vice versa. Therefore, the teachers’ teaching beliefs did affect their classroom behaviors. Some researchers have investigated the relationship between teachers’
teaching beliefs and their actual practices, including classroom management, vocabulary instruction, and writing instruction.
Evrim, Gökçe, and Enisa (2009) investigated how teachers’ teaching beliefs about classroom management were related to their actual practices. A 29-year-old female EFL college teacher in Turkey participated in their study. The data were collected through the questionnaire, and the participant’s classes were videotaped for three class hours. The teacher was also asked to write her own beliefs about
classroom management before observation. They found that the teacher’s teaching beliefs were consistent with her own actual teaching practice in the aspects of teaching, learning, and the teacher’s role. For example, in the teaching aspect, she believed that teaching should occur in a non-threatening and cooperative
environment. Such environment could best enhance students’ participation in classroom activities. And in practice, she created a comfortable learning environment and designed some tasks to promote students’ participation and
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cooperation with one another. In the learning aspect, she claimed that learning should account for students’ individual differences, like their backgrounds, interests, and learning styles. And in her actual practice, she provided different reactions for different students (e.g. the off-task hyperactive student and the wandering student).
As for the teacher’s role, she believed that being a guide or a facilitator could improve teacher-student relation. In her actual practice, upon seeing students who
misbehaved outside the class, she would forgive them, asking them to think about their behaviors.
Chen (2005) invited four EFL junior high school teachers in Taiwan to explore the relationship between their teaching beliefs and actual practices in vocabulary instruction. Their classrooms were observed by video- and audio-recording, and the data were collected through classroom observations, questionnaires, and interviews.
The major findings indicated that teachers’ teaching beliefs about vocabulary
instruction were not always consistent with their actual practices in four aspects: the keyword method, dictionary look-up, situational context, and vocabulary learning strategies teaching. For example, three of the teachers in Chen’s study claimed that they would ask students to look up unknown vocabulary in dictionaries, but in their actual practice, they did not do so. The reasons that caused the discrepancy between their teaching beliefs and practices were the students’ English proficiency level, the students’ learning motivation and interest, the students’ grade levels, students’
discipline, materials the teachers used, and students’ emotions.
Melketo (2012) conducted a case study to investigate whether teachers’ teaching beliefs were congruent with their actual practices in academic writing. Three EFL college teachers at one Ethiopian university were interviewed to elicit their teaching beliefs, and their classes were observed through audio-recording. The findings
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showed that their teaching beliefs did not always match with their teaching practices in pre-writing tasks, writing activities, and error analysis. Basically, the three
teachers claimed that they taught writing through the process writing approach. But, the teacher-centered writing instruction was conducted in their actual practices. The reasons why their teaching beliefs and actual practices were not aligned were due to the limited time, the lack of students’ persistence and motivation, students’
anticipations of the test, and the classroom management. Melketo concluded that the teachers’ teaching beliefs did not reflect what they actually did in the writing classes.
In conclusion, inconsistencies seem to exist between teachers’ teaching beliefs and their actual practices in the aspects of classroom management, vocabulary instruction, and the teaching of writing. Such inconsistencies indicated that the teacher’s teaching beliefs did influence their actual practices. In reference to teachers’ code-switching, the teachers’ language use in class might also be reflected by their teaching beliefs. Hence, to get a general picture of the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and code-switching, some empirical studies were reported in the next section.
Studies on Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs and Code-switching Some studies show that teachers’ teaching beliefs are crucial in affecting teachers’ code-switching (Flyman-Mattsson & Burenhult, 1999; Liu, Ahn, Baek, &
Han, 2004; Xu, 2010). For example, Liu et al. (2004) investigated the relationship between South Korean high school English teachers’ code-switching and their teaching beliefs. Thirteen high school English teachers’ classes were recorded, and they were asked to fill out a 13-item open-ended questionnaire. The finding pointed out that the teachers’ code-switching was influenced by their beliefs. For example, two of the teachers who claimed that using more English was not necessary spoke less
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than 25% English in class, whereas most of the teachers who considered English necessary spoke more than 55% English in class. In addition, Flyman-Mattsson and Burenhult (1999) studied two male Swedish teachers and one female French teacher, who could also speak Swedish, to see their code-switching. The data indicated that their teaching beliefs about the use of the students’ L1 (Swedish) to teach grammar matched with the teachers’ actual behaviors. To be specific, the teachers believed that students’ L1 was a beneficial means to teach grammatical structures. And in actual practices, the teachers did code-switch to the students’ L1 during grammar instruction. The findings mentioned above proved that teachers’ code-switching may be influenced by teachers’ beliefs.
Some researchers also found that teachers code-switch in the classroom because they believe doing so helps students’ language learning. Farjami and Asl (2013) conducted an interview study with 20 Iranian teachers from different universities, and found that these teachers believed that code-switching could increase positive
atmosphere, reduce class pressure, foster the students’ learning process, and help the students understand and comprehend the lectures. According to the findings, Farjami and Asl concluded that teachers believed that their code-switching not only assisted students to learn L2, but also helped create a stress-free environment, so that the students could get involved in the class.
Although teachers’ code-switching facilitates language learning, some studies have pointed out that discrepancies exist between teachers’ teaching beliefs and their code-switching practice. Edstrom (2006) audio-recorded her own Spanish class, kept reflective journals and filled out the questionnaire. She also calculated how much English she used in each class. Two findings were highlighted. First, she thought that she roughly spoke less than 10% of the L1 (English) in the L2 (Spanish)
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classroom, but she actually used 23% of the L1 in the classroom. Second, over the four months when her class was audio-recorded, the average use of English in April (42%) was much more than that in January (18%), in February (22%), and in March (17%). She explained three possible reasons why she spoke more L1 than expected:
building rapport with students, helping students achieve multiple objectives, and her being lazy. Also, Selamat (2014) found inconsistencies between the teachers’
teaching beliefs and their actual practices. Eleven teachers’ classes in secondary schools in Malaysia were observed, and they were asked to fill out questionnaires and interviewed. She pointed out that in spite of their preference for the use of L2 (English) in classrooms, these teachers still code-switched from L2 to L1. The reason why the teachers code-switched was due to saving time.
The relationship between teachers’ teaching beliefs and their actual practices have been discussed above. As Liu et al. (2004) proved, teachers’ teaching beliefs influenced their actual behaviors in code-switching. The teachers’ previous experiences or existing ideas did affect how they code-switch from one language to another in classroom. To my best knowledge, however, no research on the
relationship between teachers’ beliefs and code-switching had been conducted in Taiwan. Hence, I conducted the study to explore one college teacher’s teaching belief about code-switching and the relationship between his belief and actual practice in classroom.
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