The relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices

國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

11

Bennis, 2013; Feryok, 2008; Phipps & Borg, 2009), school atmosphere, classroom and school layout (Borg, 2003). For example, one teacher in Farrell and Bennis (2013) was found to abandon his favored inductive approach of a particular task due to students’ lack of interest. Lin (2011) analyzed the stated beliefs of 159 vocational high school English teachers in Taipei City. In this study, the participants of different school qualities, duty and programs were found to verbalize different grammar instructional behaviors. Shih (2011) examined the reasons that shaped teachers’

beliefs in an English remedial course in northern Taiwan. The two participants’

instructional decisions were only slightly impacted by personal learning experiences and professional coursework. It was the contextual factors, including the interaction with the administrator, other teachers’ comments, students’ responses, and the attitudes of students and parents toward the remedial program that strongly influenced their practices.

2.1.3 The relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices

The relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices has long been a focus of investigation in the field of teacher education. Due to the complicated nature of beliefs mentioned in 2.1.1, beliefs and practices do not always coincide. There have been mixed results about the relationship between beliefs and practices in education.

Some studies showed great consistency between the two, while others revealed some tensions.

2.1.3.1 Convergence between beliefs and practices

Johnson’s (1992b) study on literacy instruction was an example of

correspondence between teachers’ theoretical beliefs and classroom practices. In this study, about 60% of participants reported clear theoretical beliefs that reliably guided

‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

12

their teaching practices. Another study by Lin (2010) reached similar conclusions.

She selected eight elementary school English teachers and tried to deeply understand their beliefs and practices about pronunciation instruction. The results showed no significant differences between teachers’ beliefs and practices. Participants’ beliefs corresponded with their classroom practices in issues like role of pronunciation, ways of pronunciation instruction and teachers’ role. Inceçay’s (2011) study also

documented a case whose English teaching beliefs were in great consistency with teaching practices. Describing ideal English learners as risk-taking and active in his stated beliefs, the participating teacher encouraged students to hold such attitude in his class. Students in this teacher’s class were witnessed to be risk-takers who were active in learning and were also able to maintain classroom order at the same time.

2.1.3.2 Tensions between beliefs and practices

Except for the consistency documented in previous literature, a considerable amount of research has discovered differences between beliefs and practices (Borg, 2003; Farrell & Bennis, 2013; Feryok, 2008; Inceçay, 2011; Pearson, 1985).

Freeman (1993) terms these differences ‘tensions’, which he defines as “divergences among different forces or elements in the teachers’ understanding of the school context, the subject matter, or the students” (p.488). Lee (2009) analyzed language teachers’ tensions about written feedback in Hong Kong. She reviewed teachers’

written feedback on students’ texts and observed ten salient mismatches incongruent with teachers’ stated beliefs. For example, one mismatch was that although teachers valued organization and ideas in writing, they still paid the most attention to language accuracy. There existed a clear tension between teachers’ ideal teaching environment and situational constraints. In another study, Feryok (2008) was interested in EFL teachers’ claim about communicative teaching practices. One teacher who claimed

‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

13

to adopt Communicative Language Teaching method (hence, CLT) in her EFL classroom was interviewed and observed. Although most of her stated beliefs were reflected into her practice, some signs of tensions were also identified. For example, the act that the teacher gave assistance during students’ construction of phrases and sentences may be in conflicted with her stated beliefs about encouraging student participation and free expression. This is, as Feryok (2008) speculated, probably due to the teacher’s less familiarity with CLT. Her adoption of CLT may not be long enough for her to fully develop appropriate practices in line with CLT spirit.

Previous studies have also pointed out some possible reasons behind tensions.

Among them, “time” was most commonly mentioned in the literature. For example, both the novice teacher and the experienced teacher in Farrell and Bennis (2013) regarded the constraint of time as the reason that hindered them from fully implementing their ideal beliefs. One Hong Kong English teacher in Wu (2006) chose to employ lectures instead of group work due to the packed curriculum. She thought group work was too “time consuming,” which was not an appropriate teaching technique under such a tight schedule. Similar to the test-oriented situation of Hong Kong, Hsu (2006) also found that Taiwanese junior high school teachers were under a lot of time pressure in order to finish designated content within a certain period of time. He stated,

Time is probably one of the major external factors over which teachers have little or no control and that appears to affect the implementation of beliefs,

especially in the context of the Taiwan education system (p.109).

Besides the aforementioned studies, Phipps and Borg’s (2009) research shed new light on the study of tensions. Using Green’s (1971) framework of core and

‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

14

peripheral beliefs, they believe the reasons that cause tensions are due to the fact that core beliefs and peripheral beliefs do not always work harmoniously. Through a longitudinal 18-month research, they found that the teachers tended to justify their inconsistency with deeper, more general core beliefs about education. They further hypothesized that core beliefs are the beliefs that are “experientially ingrained,”

while peripheral beliefs are the ones that are only “theoretically embraced.” Calls were also made to encourage continuing research to verify their claims. Their study is of great value for researchers studying tensions in the field of language teaching.