Abstract
This chapter investigates the features of six EFL teachers’ professed beliefs about EFL teaching and learning to be heterogeneous and interactive. On the one hand, the teachers’ professed beliefs are heterogeneous in that there are variations in the teachers’ different areas of belief about EFL teaching and learning, including beliefs about EFL, EFL teaching, EFL learning and EFL learners and teachers. On the other hand, four interactive features between different areas of the teachers’ beliefs surfaced from the study. Different areas of the teachers’ professed beliefs are either positively connected or held with tensions. They also demonstrate different degrees of conviction and strong influences from prior experiences. The chapter accordingly draws the conclusion that the teachers’ beliefs about EFL teaching and learning are constantly constructed through a process of interaction with contexts, which necessitates the examination of the teachers’ beliefs with their experiences of classroom practice.
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Notes
- 1.
In the notation L.1, ‘L’ refers to Li; ‘1st interview’ refers to times of the interviews with Li. This format of notation is used throughout this chapter: T refers to Tang; X refers to Zhixi; P indicates Zhiping; Y indicates Ying; L indicates Li; J indicates Juan. All the quoted citations from the teachers in this book were translated from Chinese.
- 2.
‘Chinglish’ refers to an unidiomatic way of English expression which indicates following the Chinese way of thinking.
- 3.
His English Poker and Activity Handbook are named ‘English in Fun’, which were granted national patents.
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Zheng, H. (2015). Complex Features of the Teachers’ Professed Beliefs About EFL Teaching and Learning. In: Teacher Beliefs as a Complex System: English Language Teachers in China. English Language Education, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23009-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23009-2_4
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