英語教學 English Teaching & Learning 31.1 (Spring 2007): 43-76
Teachers’ Beliefs About Teaching English to
Elementary School Children
Posen Liao
National Taipei Universityposen@mail.ntpu.edu.tw
Abstract
It is generally agreed that teaching is greatly affected by the belief systems of its practitioners. However, teachers’ beliefs need to be probed before teachers can critically reflect on their teaching practices, and in turn facilitate changes to teach more effectively. In Taiwan, research is still at an early stage in terms of evaluating teachers’ beliefs about teaching children English. In order to deepen our understanding of teachers’ beliefs regarding teaching English to children, and discover what similar and different beliefs might be held by in-service and pre-service teachers, this study elicited teachers’ beliefs and also compared the belief systems of in-service teachers with those of their pre-service peers. A total of 99 teachers participated in this study. In an attempt to identify these teachers’ explicit beliefs in a more systematic way, a research instrument, The Questionnaire of Elementary School
English Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs, was developed. The
questionnaire asked participants to assess their beliefs about teaching children English in three major areas: (1) the nature of children’s English development, (2) teaching methods and techniques, and (3) self-efficacy as an English teacher. Moreover, one open-ended question about “qualifications of a successful elementary school English teacher” was added to the end of the questionnaire to elicit additional beliefs. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics, independent t test analyses, and content analysis. It is hoped that teachers in Taiwan can raise their own beliefs about teaching children English to a level of conscious awareness, and then further improve their classroom practices. Key Words: teachers’ beliefs, beliefs inventory, elementary school
INTRODUCTION
Recent trends in Taiwan’s educational policy have focused on meeting the challenges of globalization and internationalization. As English has achieved the status of a major international language, the government of Taiwan has been actively expanding the teaching of English as an essential part of the school curriculum. Starting in 2001, English education became a required course for fifth and sixth graders in elementary school. And in 2005, the English teaching policy changed again to require that elementary school students begin their English learning from the third grade onward. Such mandates, however, have not been strictly followed in all elementary schools around the nation. Further, in some more affluent cities, English is actually now a required subject starting as early as the first grade.
The implementation of an English curriculum in elementary schools has created a huge demand for qualified children’s English teachers, thus placing more importance than ever on studying the issues related to teacher education. However, the research in English teacher education thus far has focused on secondary and tertiary schools. Very little attention has been paid specifically to elementary levels of English teaching. Thus, this study is an attempt to examine issues concerning teaching English in elementary schools, with a particular emphasis on the role of teachers’ beliefs.
Virtually all English teachers have certain preconceived ideas or beliefs about how best to approach English teaching. They often come into an English classroom conditioned by their previous educational experiences, cultural backgrounds, and social interaction, which may
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Richards & Lockhart, 1996; Smith, 1996). Since English teachers bring their unique sets of beliefs to bear in situations and decisions related to language teaching, these beliefs are usually recognized as significant predictors for their actual teaching practices. Thus, understanding teachers’ specific beliefs about English teaching can inform researchers and teacher trainers about how teachers are likely to implement their teaching, and how to provide appropriate teacher education programs.
In studying teacher education and development, researchers have shown how teachers’ beliefs play a critical role in affecting their teaching and the kinds of thinking and decision making that underlie their classroom practices (Moon, 2000; Richards, 1998; Richards & Lockhart, 1996; Smith, 1996; Trappes-Lomax & McGrath, 1999). Furthermore, these beliefs are stable sources of teachers’ reference, are built up over time, and are related to teachers’ theories of language, the nature of language teaching practices, roles of themselves as teachers, and relationships with their students (Johnson, 1992b; Richards, 1998).
However, research is still at an early stage in terms of evaluating teachers’ beliefs in Taiwan, not to mention the paucity of literature on the subject of teaching elementary school English. In order to develop more effective teaching approaches for elementary school English programs, English teachers’ beliefs need to be understood well. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the teaching beliefs held by elementary school English teachers. Moreover, because teachers may derive beliefs from their current teacher training programs or teaching career (Johnson, 1992a; Selby, 1999), this study also attempts to compare in-service and pre-service
teachers’ conceptions of English teaching to determine if there exist any similarities and/or differences that result from their teaching status. The two research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:
(1) What core beliefs do English teachers hold about the process of teaching and learning English in elementary schools? Are these beliefs consistent with accepted learning principles or teaching approaches?
(2) What are the similarities and differences among in-service and pre-service elementary school teachers’ beliefs about English teaching?
LITERATURE REVIEW
In exploring the origins of metacognitive theories, Schraw and Moshman (1995) suggested that cultural learning, individual construction, and peer interaction all play important roles in the emergence of metacognition among individuals. It seems plausible that teachers’ beliefs develop along with and become part of their metacognitive theories because beliefs are usually internalized from one’s culture via social learning, are spontaneously constructed by individuals, and involve a process of social construction through peer interaction (Schraw & Moshman, 1995). Moreover, based on research conducted on the nature and effects of beliefs, White (1999) made the following claims: (1) beliefs have an adaptive function to help individuals define and understand the world and themselves, and (2)
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beliefs are instrumental in defining tasks and behaviors. Thus, the belief systems that teachers develop are often held to be true and can guide their teaching behaviors.
To put it another way, belief systems are dynamic and permeable mental structures (Muijs & Reynolds, 2001). Teachers’ belief systems, including their attitudes, values, expectations, theories, and assumptions about teaching and learning, are considered a primary source of teachers’ classroom practices. These beliefs are usually guided by a number of factors: their own experience as learners in classrooms, prior teaching experience, classroom observations they were exposed to, and their previous training courses at school (Richards, 1998).
Much of the literature on teacher education has suggested that teachers’ beliefs affect their teaching practices and instructional decisions in the classroom (Donaghue, 2003; Johnson, 1992a; Muijs & Reynolds, 2001; Richards, 1998; Richards & Lockhart, 1996), but Pajares (1992) noted the difficulties involved in investigating teachers’ beliefs due to several factors including “definitional problems, poor conceptualization, and differing understanding of beliefs and belief structures” (p. 307). He argued that a broad psychological construct like beliefs must be context specific and relevant to teaching behavior to be useful for empirical study. Brown and Rodgers (2002) agree with this idea and suggest sub-classifying different areas of language teachers’ beliefs in order to operationalize the construct of beliefs.
In fact, teachers’ beliefs have already been classified into various sets of categories by some researchers (Johnson, 1992b; William & Burden, 1997). William and Burden (1997) divided their discussion
of teachers’ beliefs into three areas: (1) about language learning, (2) about learners, and (3) about themselves as language teachers. Likewise, Johnson (1992b) identified and grouped ESL teachers’ beliefs into three methodological approaches. Most teachers in his research held beliefs that clearly reflected one of the following theoretical orientations: (1) a skill-based approach, which views language as consisting of discrete skills such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking; (2) a rule-based approach, which sees language as a process of rule-governed activity; and (3) a function-based approach, which focuses on the use of authentic language in social context. All these teachers were observed in classrooms, and they were found to be generally consistent with their reported orientations.
Furthermore, a number of studies have attempted to investigate the beliefs of ESL teachers through questionnaires or inventories (Hsieh & Chang, 2002; Johnson, 1992b; Kern, 1995; Liao & Chiang, 2003; Richards, Tung, & Ng, 1992; Yang, 2000). For example, Richards, Tung, and Ng (1992) reported that English teachers in Hong Kong held a set of relatively consistent beliefs relating to such issues as the nature of the ESL curriculum, the role of English in society, the relevance of theory to practice, the teachers’ role in the classroom, and others. In the educational context of Taiwan, Yang (2000) discussed prospective teachers’ beliefs in four areas: (1) general beliefs about child development, (2) general beliefs about language learning, (3) specific beliefs about teaching English to children, and (4) self-efficacy and expectations. More recently, five categories of teachers’ beliefs were investigated in Hsieh and Chang’s (2002) study,
Liao: Teacher's Beliefs About English Teaching
including: (1) beliefs about the role of culture in EFL learning, (2) beliefs about aptitude in EFL learning, (3) rule-based beliefs, (4) skill-based beliefs, and (5) function-based beliefs. These two Taiwan-centered studies measured and identified a wide variety of beliefs held by prospective and current elementary school English teachers respectively, but little research has compared the beliefs held by these two groups of teachers for similarities and differences. Thus, a further study to demonstrate the relationship between pre-service and in-service teachers’ beliefs seems necessary in order to give a better picture of elementary school teachers’ beliefs about English teaching.
METHOD
Research Design
The current study primarily involved a survey, comprised of two sets of questionnaires concerning teacher’s beliefs and their biodata information. Although data obtained from a questionnaire survey only provide indirect evidence of teacher’s thoughts, they can still serve to broaden our understanding of the role of beliefs and their relation to decision making in terms of teaching (Richards, 1998). The survey used in this study, through its standardized and structured design, aimed at identifying and comparing beliefs about English teaching shared among in-service and pre-service elementary school teachers in Taiwan. The researcher personally administered the survey. After the participants finished the survey, their responses were collected for analysis.
Participants
Convenience sampling (Nunan, 1999) was used to select participants based on the availability of respondents. A total of 99 subjects agreed to participate in this study, including 21 in-service English teachers teaching in various elementary schools around northern Taiwan and 78 pre-service teachers taking credit-based training courses at a Teachers College in northern Taiwan. Some of the pre-service teachers were already teaching English to children at private language schools or cram schools. However, because of the limitations in terms of research sites and the unequal number of teachers in each group, the sample used in this study may not be truly representative of the population of all elementary school English teachers in Taiwan as a whole.
Research Instrument
In an attempt to identify, in a more systematic way, these teachers’ explicit beliefs about teaching children English, a research instrument, The Questionnaire of Elementary School English
Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs, was developed by the researcher. The
researcher first reviewed available theories related to teachers’ beliefs to lay out a conceptual framework, and then drew on a number of related questionnaires (Horwitz, 1987; Hsieh & Chang, 2002; Oxford, 1990; Yang, 2000) to devise items for the current questionnaire, thereby contributing to the validity of the instrument.
This questionnaire is written in Chinese, is composed of 40 discrete items and is organized into three major categories to assess participants’ beliefs about teaching children English: first, the nature
Liao: Teacher's Beliefs About English Teaching
of children’s English development (items 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 13, 16, 22, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 34, 37, 38, 39); second, teaching methods and techniques (items 8, 9, 10, 15, 19, 20, 21, 23, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36); and third, self-efficacy as an English teacher (items 4, 11, 12, 14, 17, 18, 40). In the questionnaire, the participants were asked to assess their beliefs about teaching English to elementary school students on a five-point Likert scale, by indicating the extent to which they agreed with each statement using (1) SD = strongly disagree, (2) D = disagree, (3) N = neither agree nor disagree, (4) A = agree, or (5) SA = strongly agree.
In addition to the selected-response items on the questionnaire, one open-ended question was added to the end: “What qualifications
does a person need to acquire in order to be a successful English teacher in an elementary school?” Teachers could respond in Chinese
to this question using their own words so that we could elicit free-form responses about additional beliefs from the participants.
Data Analysis
The quantitative analysis of the questionnaire data involved descriptive statistics and independent-sample t tests. Frequencies, means, percentages, and standard deviations were first computed to identify the overall pattern of the participants’ teaching beliefs in order to answer the first set of research questions. Next, to address the second research question, an independent-sample t test was calculated to discover the similarities and differences between in-service and pre-service teachers’ beliefs.
Regarding the content analysis of the teachers’ answers to the last open-ended question, the data were transcribed, segmented, coded,
and analyzed, and this served as an additional source of information to supplement the questionnaire survey. The researcher examined the teachers’ statements to find areas of commonality or recurring patterns, and then to generate general categories. Soon after the questionnaire survey was completed, informal interviews were conducted with some of the respondents to have them further clarify or explain their own written statements. The interviews were held in Chinese and tape-recorded.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Reliability of the Survey
First of all, internal consistency reliability was calculated for the participants’ responses to The Questionnaire of Elementary School
English Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs, and a Cronbach alpha coefficient
of .71 was obtained, which indicated the teachers tended to respond to the questionnaire items with a relatively high level of consistency.
Statistical Analysis of the Survey
The specific means and standard deviations for the 40 items in the questionnaire are presented in Appendix. Among the 40 items, 27 items had means greater than 3.5, whereas only 3 items received means lower than 2.5. In general, most participants agreed with most items. Further analysis using independent-sample t tests revealed that significant differences were found between in-service and pre-service teachers on only three items (items 10, 20, 37). Due to space
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limitations, the following discussion will only summarize highlights of the quantitative data results rather than examine each item exhaustively. Overall comparisons across both the in-service and pre-service teacher groups were also made through the following three major areas in the questionnaire: the nature of children’s English development; teaching methods and techniques; and self-efficacy as an English teacher.
The Nature of Children’s English Development
Several items in the questionnaire address the issue of how elementary school children learn English in the classroom. More than 90% of the participants agreed or strongly agreed with the statements that doing activities with English, moving around, having fun, and interacting with others in the classroom (items 1, 5, 25, 29, 30) and getting support from teachers and parents (items 6 and 7) can facilitate students’ English learning, and students should study English with their own learning styles (item 16). Further, more than 80% of the teachers supported the statements that children have individual differences in their cognitive development (item 3) and that it was important for them to comprehend the lesson content (item 26). However, more than a third of the teachers (38.4%) did not believe that children should learn English the same way as they learn their mother tongue, Chinese (item 38). The findings from these teachers’ beliefs about children’s English development appear to be generally compatible with the literature on children’s second language learning and development (Brown, 2000; Cook, 1996; Moon, 2000; Vale & Feunteun, 2003). For instance, Moon (2000) suggested that physical activities such as playing games, making things, action songs, rhymes
and drama can provide excellent contexts for children to learn English. When children are having fun, they usually want to continue the activities. Children also need individual attention and support from the teacher to make them feel more confident and secure about learning English. In addition, it may be most helpful to view children’s native language as a useful strategy and resource for checking understanding and for communicating with others. In a similar manner, to criticize the direct analogies between first and second language acquisition, Brown (2000) dispelled the myth that second language teaching should resemble first language teaching.
With respect to the results of the independent-sample t tests, the two groups of in-service and pre-service teachers differed significantly in their responses only to item 37 in this category. While 52% of the in-service teachers supported the statement that it is best for children to learn English from as early as the first grade, only 27% of the pre-service teachers supported this statement. This suggests that in-service teachers might be prone to believe that younger children are better English learners and should consequently reach higher levels of proficiency. This belief may explain the fact that many elementary schools with strong financial support have implemented English instruction as early as the first grade. On the other hand, the lower percentage of pre-service teachers’ agreement with the same statement may reflect more of their willingness to follow the Ministry of Education policy to begin teaching English from the third grade onward.
This different belief held by in-service and pre-service teachers touches on the issue of the relationship between age and English
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acquisition. From the neurological perspective of language acquisition, Lenneberg (1967) hypothesized that there is a period in a child’s development during which language can be acquired more easily than at any other time. This critical period is believed to last until around puberty. Piaget (1972) further outlined children’s intellectual development through different stages, and stated that during the concrete operational stage (8-11 years), children depend more upon concrete referents before they become capable of formal thinking which transcends concrete experience and direct perception. Therefore, lower-order processes such as pronunciation are learned optimally in elementary school, while higher-order language functions such as semantic relations (e.g., grammar, vocabulary), which are more dependent on late-maturing neural circuits, could be acquired more efficiently later on (Walsh & Diller, 1981). Moreover, empirical studies conducted locally in Taiwan often suggest that teaching English to children at an early age might not necessarily prove as efficient as allowing the children to wait until their analytical abilities have improved. However, the significant difference of opinions between the two groups of teachers might indicate that more in-service teachers are inclined to take the stance of “the younger, the better” in terms of their students’ English acquisition.
Teaching Methods and Techniques
Teachers’ understanding of how children learn English will determine their philosophy of teaching, teaching styles, methods, and classroom management techniques. In terms of these teachers’ reported teaching methods and techniques, the majority (more than 90%) considered the use of multiple assessments, singing,
role-playing, games, multimedia equipment and culture teaching to be essential (items 9, 27, 28, 35, 36). Additionally, more than 80% of them endorsed the statements that it is necessary for children to learn English listening and speaking skills (item 8), but not spelling and grammar (item 32), in the early stage of teaching. Furthermore, only a few teachers (9%) believed that teaching children English vocabulary is the most important thing (item 23).
Up to this point, these teachers’ beliefs seem compatible with some underlying teaching principles of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Certain major characteristics of CLT described by various researchers include: role plays or skits help students to adjust their use of English to different social contexts; games are important because they are real communicative events; the focus is on the spoken language, with reading and writing taught only after an oral base in lexical and grammatical forms has been established; and less attention is placed on grammatical rules in terms of their overt presentation (Brown, 2001; Celce-Murcia, 2001; Larsen-Freeman, 2000). Indeed, as currently promoted by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan (Ministry of Education, 2001), the CLT curriculum implemented in elementary school English programs is required to develop students’ communicative competence, which could explain why most teachers’ beliefs are in line with CLT. Most elementary school teachers may agree with the use of a CLT curriculum, in contrast to their peers using the Grammar Translation Method (GTM) at secondary schools, where the teaching focus is more on grammar parsing and translating sentences from English texts into Chinese.
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significant differences between the in-service and pre-service teachers, who seem to have different ideas about how to assess students’ learning achievement and when to correct their English mistakes. For example, around 33% of the in-service teachers agreed (but none strongly agreed) with the statement that paper-and-pencil tests should still be widely used in the English classroom (item 10), whereas more than 55% of the pre-service teachers tended to agree or strongly agree. In addition, while 67% of the in-service teachers believed that if they do not correct beginning students’ errors, it will be more difficult to correct them later on (item 20), many more pre-service teachers (80%) expressed the same thought. These results may imply that pre-service teachers tend to have a somewhat restricted view of English learning in comparison with their more experienced peers.
First of all, paper-and-pencil tests are just one of a number of possible types of assessment in the classroom. The Nine-Year Curriculum Guidelines in Taiwan mandate the development of multiple assessments as one of the core objectives in the elementary school English curriculum. To follow such a guideline, Hsu (2003) has promoted the use of multiple assessments in elementary school English classrooms. In her study, she documented how multiple assessments, including portfolios, journals, activity-based assessments, oral tests, role plays, group work, observations, student-teacher conferences, and other tasks could serve as effective assessment measures for children’s English abilities. Pre-service teachers may need to expand their repertoire in assessing learners’ overall performance for their future teaching career.
Next, teachers often feel that students can learn from their mistakes, and so they need to make sure that everything students say
or write is correct. However, as indicated by Doff (1988) in his teacher training handbook, it is now widely believed that teachers do not have to correct students all the time, as this may lead to students becoming unwilling or unable to produce any output. If teachers, especially pre-service ones, maintain the belief that they should be directive and even authoritarian in correcting students’ every mistake, such teaching behaviors may lead to a high degree of language anxiety on the part of learners (Young, 1991). It is recommended that elementary school teachers be realistic and tolerant of students’ errors, so that students feel they can express themselves more freely and develop fluency in using English.
Self-Efficacy as an English Teacher
This category of self-efficacy mainly deals with teachers’ personality factors and the affective domain of English teaching by investigating how they place worth and value on their teaching career. Teachers are more likely to engage in certain teaching behaviors when they believe they are capable of executing those behaviors successfully, or in other words, when they have higher self-efficacy. In this study, most teachers (90%) overwhelmingly felt that teaching English in elementary school is a meaningful job (item 12) and they are capable of doing this job well (item 14). Likewise, more than 80% of them also agreed or strongly agreed that they are confident of being (or becoming) good teachers (item 18), are having (or will have) a lot fun doing this job (item 17), and can get along with children (item 11). Nevertheless, only 12% of the teachers either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that teaching English in elementary school is (or will be) easy (item 4).
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As Brown (2000) pointed out, “people derive their sense of self-esteem from the accumulation of experiences with themselves and with others and from assessments of the external world around them” (p. 145). Teachers in this study make and maintain self-evaluations as English teachers working in Taiwan’s societal and educational contexts. The survey results indicate that these teachers generally express a high level of self-efficacy, and believe themselves to be capable, significant and worthy of their jobs.
Research on educational psychology also tells us that people’s self-efficacy affects aspects of their behavior, including their choice of activities, their effort and persistence, and ultimately their achievement (Bandura, 1977; Ormrod, 1999; Schunk, 1989). Although teachers in this study felt that they face a challenging job in terms of teaching English in elementary schools, they still believe in their ability to accomplish the teaching tasks and requirements. Furthermore, after conducting a t test, this study found no significant difference between in-service and pre-service teachers in their self-efficacy levels. Both groups of teachers seem confident and determined insofar as teaching elementary school English is concerned.
Content Analysis of the Open-Ended Question
In the present study participants were asked to answer one open-ended question: “What qualifications does a person need to acquire in order to be
a successful English teacher in elementary school?” However, some
teachers did not give any response, while others provided numerous statements. In the data base of teachers’ responses, a total of 100
summary statements were collected. Among them, 39 statements were recorded from the in-service teachers and 61 from the pre-service group. Through the use of content analysis, all written responses were transcribed, segmented, coded, and examined for patterns. Finally, five major categories were classified as follows:
(1) English proficiency: referring to teachers’ good command of English as a foreign language, particularly their pronunciation, oral communicative competence, and other general English skills.
(2) Teachers’ personality: regarding teachers’ personal traits and attitudes toward their jobs dealing with children, such as gentleness, kindness, patience, and enthusiasm about teaching; in addition, they also need to be optimistic, cheerful, flexible, motivated, and open-minded to do the job well.
(3) Teaching skills: including their understanding and application of various teaching methods and techniques, their classroom management abilities, as well as their awareness to keep up to date and acquire the latest knowledge and information in the field of elementary English teaching.
(4) Student-centered concerns: mainly about developing good teacher-student relationships by creating a fun, secure learning environment; also, teachers need to care about children, to respect, support, and encourage them to learn, and to build up their confidence and autonomy.
(5) Physical readiness: concerning their health state or the stamina needed to cope with the stressful and tiring teaching job for a long period of time on an almost-daily basis.
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teacher groups and make a brief comparison, the following two tables rank these five categories by the frequency and percentage of responses made by the in-service and pre-service teachers respectively.
Table 1
The Ranking of In-service Teachers’ Beliefs about a Successful Elementary School English Teacher
Rank Category f % 1 Teacher’s Personality 11 28.2 2 Teaching Skills 9 23.1 3 English Proficiency 9 23.1 4 Student-centered Concerns 6 15.4 5 Physical Readiness 4 10.2 Table 2
The Ranking of Pre-service Teachers’ Beliefs about a Successful Elementary School English Teacher
Rank Category f % 1 Teacher’s Personality 21 34.4 2 Student-centered Concerns 15 24.6 3 Teaching Skills 13 21.3 4 English Proficiency 12 19.7 5 Physical Readiness 00 00.0
reported beliefs from both teacher groups center on the role of the teacher’s personality. They also share somewhat similar percentages in terms of beliefs for the categories of teaching skills and English proficiency. However, the two groups of teachers differ quite sharply in their beliefs about student-centered concerns. A higher percentage of pre-service teachers (24.6%) than in-service teachers (15.4 %)
believe that teachers should build a rapport with their students. One possible explanation for this difference may be that, owing to pre-service teachers’ initial excitement and enthusiasm about beginning their teaching career, they would usually care more about students’ perceptions regarding their performance, and possibly try harder to impress the students.
One further interesting finding from this comparison lies in the category of physical readiness. Apparently, in-service teachers (10.2%) were more concerned about this issue, while none of the pre-service teachers mentioned this. This may lead to the hypothesis that as teachers increase their teaching experience, they are more likely to recognize the fact that teaching children English at the elementary school level is indeed a highly demanding job, both mentally and physically. Pre-service teachers may not yet be consciously aware of the importance of their physical readiness to face the challenges of this profession. They would do well to heed the words of Harmer (2001), who suggested that all English teachers should care for their physical well-being in order to counteract stress and possible burnout, so that they can survive, learn, grow, and achieve a balance between mind and body.
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CONCLUSION
English teachers usually have certain beliefs about how to teach English. These beliefs are based on their earlier learning experiences, teacher training courses taken at school, and their cultural backgrounds. It is generally agreed that teaching is greatly affected by the belief systems of its practitioners. However, teachers’ beliefs need to be explored before teachers can critically reflect on their teaching practices or facilitate changes to teach more effectively.
The results of this study reveal that elementary school English teachers in Taiwan, both in-service and pre-service ones, share a similar and consistent set of beliefs. Most of them have common beliefs about: (1) the nature of children’s English development, which is in accord with the research literature on foreign language learning, (2) English teaching methods and techniques employed in the classroom, which are basically in tune with the teaching principles of CLT, and (3) a strong sense of self-efficacy as English teachers in terms of doing their work, which may have a positive impact on their performance based on the research findings of educational psychology. Moreover, from their open-ended responses, successful elementary school English teachers are generally thought to have such key characteristics as: (1) a pleasant personality and an optimistic attitude towards teaching, (2) ability to effectively use various classroom teaching and management skills, and (3) a good command of the English language.
Considering that the majority of Taiwanese teachers share a common native language, educational experience and cultural heritage, the above research findings are perhaps not very surprising.
Also, school teachers often exchange their perspectives about English teaching in discussions with their colleagues. Teachers’ beliefs may greatly influence and be influenced by those of their peers.
Nevertheless, a few mismatches between in-service and pre-service teachers are worth noting. The two groups of participants did vary on certain aspects, especially in the areas of: (1) the optimum age for children to start learning English, (2) when to correct students’ errors, and (3) ways to assess students’ learning. What is more, based on the participants’ own written statements, the two groups of teachers also differ considerably in the importance they attribute to: (1) fostering harmonious relationships with their students and (2) taking care of their own physical fitness to face the challenging job. Differences in their beliefs may result from their years of teaching experience, and training received currently or in the past.
Implications
In recent years, it has become more crucial to view teachers as active thinkers in the language teaching process (Richards, 1998). This study attempts to make a contribution to English teacher education in Taiwan by highlighting the role of beliefs in the teaching process, and thus responses to each item in the questionnaire serve as important descriptions of teachers’ views about English teaching. It is also hoped that the above research findings will encourage more language researchers and educators to learn more about teachers’ beliefs. Researchers may use the results from this study to become better aware of elementary school English teachers’ specific beliefs, and then help teachers expand their repertoire of teaching principles
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and strategies. Moreover, questionnaires of teachers’ beliefs like the one used in this study may help teachers to bring their own beliefs about children and English teaching to a level of conscious awareness, which will further allow them to compare beliefs with those of other teachers and with their own classroom teaching practices. Other activities such as journal writing, peer discussion, or viewing videotapes of their teaching also can serve as modes of reflection for teachers to monitor their own beliefs and practices (Richards, 1998).
In addition, the findings of this study may support the need for elementary school English teacher preparation programs in Taiwan. Teacher trainers may draw insights from the findings to better design their training programs to address the needs of teacher-trainees. For example, teacher trainees should be required to study first and second language acquisition to improve their understanding of the effects of age on English acquisition. A course on multiple assessments should be mandatory for pre-service teachers so that they may understand and administer more alternative assessments in the classroom. By paying more research attention to elementary school English teacher training as well as providing teachers with opportunities to reflect on their beliefs for positive change in their professional life (Pennington, 1990), we can be assured of a gradual improvement in the quality of elementary school English education.
Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Study
Despite the research findings and implications described above, this study is not without limitations. The first limitation concerns the use of a questionnaire as the means of investigating teachers’ beliefs. Questionnaires only measure beliefs in theoretical aspects without
referring to teachers’ actual teaching behaviors in the classroom, and thus do not provide a complete picture of the complicated factors involved in the teaching process and educational context. Thus, an open-ended question was added in an attempt to enhance the validity of this study. The second limitation is rooted in the relatively small and unequal sample size of the two groups of English teachers participating in this study: the generalizability of these teachers’ beliefs to other populations with different educational settings or backgrounds may be limited.
It may be of interest for future researchers to explore the sources, development, or changes in teachers’ beliefs, or how teachers teach children English based on their own beliefs. For studying constructs such as beliefs, Kalaja (1995) proposed employing discourse analytic methods to analyze naturalistic discourse data obtained from the subjects. Additional research in this area could also adopt qualitative interviews and observations to elicit more open-ended responses from the teachers. These types of additional information may provide us with more insights into the role of teachers’ beliefs in their English teaching.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Posen Liao is an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Foreign Languages at National Taipei University. His current research interests include academic writing, second language acquisition, and translation studies.
APPENDIX
Means and Standard Deviations for the Questionnaire
Item Description Teachers M SD
In-service 4.67 .48 1. Children acquire English easily when they are
doing activities. Pre-service 4.24 .72 In-service 3.57 1.08 2. Male and female students develop English
proficiency at different rates and respond to instruction differently.
Pre-service 3.68 1.00
In-service 4.57 .60 3. Children have obvious individual variations
in their cognitive development process. Pre-service 4.21 .83 In-service 1.90 1.04 4. Teaching English in elementary school is (or
will be) easy. Pre-service 2.18 .88 In-service 4.38 .50 5. Children should be given opportunities to
move around in the English classroom. Pre-service 4.31 .69 In-service 4.05 .74 6. Children are willing to build up a close
relationship with their English teacher. Pre-service 4.05 .75 In-service 4.52 .51 7. If parents care about their children’s English
performance, these children will perform better.
Pre-service 4.26 .86
In-service 4.38 .67 8. It is important to teach elementary school
children English listening and speaking skills. Pre-service 4.13 .94 In-service 4.81 .40 9. Multiple assessments should be implemented
to evaluate students’ English performance in the classroom.
Pre-service 4.56 .57
In-service 2.71 1.10 10. Paper-and-pencil tests should still be widely
Liao: Teacher's Beliefs About English Teaching
In-service 4.43 .68 11. I get along with children well in English class.
Pre-service 4.23 .68 In-service 4.14 .65 12. To teach English in elementary school is a
meaningful job. Pre-service 4.32 .65 In-service 3.90 1.04 13. How children use their mother tongue would
affect their capabilities to learn English. Pre-service 3.40 1.14 In-service 4.24 .77 14. I believe that I am capable of teaching
children English. Pre-service 4.31 .54 In-service 3.48 1.21 15. The English immersion program is more
effective to teach English than the bilingual program using both Chinese and English.
Pre-service 3.15 1.20
In-service 4.29 .64 16. Every child learns English with different
learning styles in the classroom. Pre-service 4.32 .55 In-service 4.10 .77 17. Teaching English in the elementary school is
(or will be) a lot of fun to me. Pre-service 4.03 .56 In-service 4.24 .70 18. I am confident of becoming a good
elementary school English teacher. Pre-service 4.26 .64 In-service 3.52 1.17 19. English pronunciation, vocabulary, and
grammar should be taught in an integrative manner, rather than separately.
Pre-service 3.22 1.14
In-service 3.38 1.16 20. If beginning students are permitted to make
errors in English pronunciation without teacher’s correction, it will be more difficult to correct them later on.
Pre-service 3.92 1.03
In-service 3.33 1.06 21. Children do not need to memorize what they
In-service 4.29 .64 22. Children can learn English faster than adults do.
Pre-service 4.03 .82 In-service 2.20 .83 23. The most important element in teaching
children English is vocabulary. Pre-service 2.23 .87 In-service 3.29 1.19 24. The earlier English is taught to children, the
better the results. Pre-service 2.75 1.14 In-service 4.67 .48 25. Interesting classes can speed up students’
English learning process. Pre-service 4.59 .55 In-service 4.33 .66 26. Children can learn English better if they fully
understand the content of the lesson. Pre-service 4.08 .80 In-service 4.48 .51 27. Singing and role-playing are appropriate
English teaching activities. Pre-service 4.47 .60 In-service 4.33 .58 28. We need to teach children foreign cultures
coupled with English language. Pre-service 4.33 .68 In-service 4.43 .60 29. Children learn English through interactions
with other people. Pre-service 4.32 .76 In-service 4.62 .50 30. Children learn English better when they are
using English to do activities. Pre-service 4.53 .57 In-service 3.15 1.14 31. The most important element in teaching
children English is pronunciation. Pre-service 3.44 1.01 In-service 4.33 .91 32. It is not necessary to teach children English
spelling and grammar in the early stage of instruction.
Pre-service 4.17 .73
In-service 4.10 .89 33. The most important element in teaching
children English is oral conversation. Pre-service 3.78 .88 In-service 3.29 1.23 34. Every child can learn English well.
Liao: Teacher's Beliefs About English Teaching
In-service 4.52 .51 35. To integrate games into English instruction
can facilitate children’s learning. Pre-service 4.50 .62 In-service 4.57 .51 36. It is important to use multimedia equipment
(e.g. audio and video tapes, CD-ROMs) in teaching children English.
Pre-service 4.38 .71
In-service 3.48 .87 37. It is best for children to learn English from as
early as the first grade. Pre-service 2.78 1.09 In-service 2.71 1.10 38. Children should learn English the same way
as they learn Chinese. Pre-service 2.31 .98 In-service 3.33 .91 39. It is important for elementary school children
to read and write in English. Pre-service 2.86 1.07 In-service 4.05 1.16 40. My English teaching capabilities are as good
