Teachers' Self-Efficacy Beliefs in Relation To
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University of the Pacific Scholarly Commons University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2019 TEACHERS’ SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS IN RELATION TO PERCEIVED ENGLISH PROFICIENCY AND TEACHING PRACTICES: AN INVESTIGATION OF CHINESE PRIMARY ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL) TEACHERS Yun Zhang University of the Pacific, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds Part of the Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Educational Administration and Supervision Commons, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, Educational Methods Commons, Language and Literacy Education Commons, and the Other Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons Recommended Citation Zhang, Yun. (2019). TEACHERS’ SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS IN RELATION TO PERCEIVED ENGLISH PROFICIENCY AND TEACHING PRACTICES: AN INVESTIGATION OF CHINESE PRIMARY ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL) TEACHERS. University of the Pacific, Thesis. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/3644 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 TEACHERS‘ SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS IN RELATION TO PERCEIVED ENGLISH PROFICIENCY AND TEACHING PRACTICES: AN INVESTIGATION OF CHINESE PRIMARY ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL) TEACHERS By Yun Zhang A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION Benerd School of Education Curriculum and Instruction University of the Pacific Stockton, California 2019 2 TEACHERS‘ SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS IN RELATION TO PERCEIVED ENGLISH PROFICIENCY AND TEACHING PRACTICES: AN INVESTIGATION OF CHINESE PRIMARY ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL) TEACHERS By Yun Zhang APPROVED BY: Dissertation Advisor: Marilyn E. Draheim, Ph.D. Committee Member: Justin Low, Ph.D. Committee Member: Qingwen Dong, Ph.D. Assistant Dean of Benerd College: Steven L. Layne, Ed.D. 3 TEACHERS‘ SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS IN RELATION TO PERCEIVED ENGLISH PROFICIENCY AND TEACHING PRACTICES: AN INVESTIGATION OF CHINESE PRIMARY ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL) TEACHERS Copyright 2019 By Yun Zhang 4 DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to Dr. Marilyn E. Draheim in honor of her retirement from active teaching for about 40 years in higher education including more than 31 years of teaching at University of the Pacific. 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, my heartfelt gratitude goes to Dr. Marilyn E. Draheim for her patience and guidance during the long and enduring journey of my graduate study. I wish to thank Dr. Justin Low and Dr. Qingwen Dong for agreeing to be my committee members. Thank you for your trust and approval to help me not only at the early stages of the doctoral course study but also for your insightful feedback and suggestions on the study. I am so grateful to Dr. Elizabeth Keithcart, who has been a mentor and a life-long friend. My thanks also go to Dr. McNair and Dr. Hackett for their inspiring teaching. Next, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my colleagues and friends, Dr. Juan Xu, who offered me immense help; Mr. Weizhu Dai and Mr. Wen Feng for their time, helpand suggestions on the study. My thanks also go to all those responding primary EFL teachers. Without their help, my dissertation would not have been possible to be done. Finally, I want to express my thanks for my family. I cannot thank too much to my mother, Shifeng Wang, for her support and taking care of my child during my dissertation writing. I also want to thank my beloved deceased father, Shuliang Zhang, who had always been the source of encouragement for my pursuing learning when I was her daughter. Thanks also go to my sisters, who had always been someone who listened to me for my life troubles and encouraged me to move up. Last, but not least, I wish to thank my son, Hexuan Xu, for his love and good behaviors during my doctoral study. He has been a good company and the source of happiness for me. 6 TEACHERS‘ SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS IN RELATION TO PERCEIVED ENGLISH PROFICIENCY AND TEACHING PRACTICES: AN INVESTIGATION OF CHINESE PRIMARY ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL) TEACHERS Abstract By Yun Zhang University of the Pacific 2019 Research on self-efficacy has been a productive field and abundant research has shown that teachers‘ self-efficacy beliefs influence teachers‘ actions and performances and thus affect students‘ learning outcomes. However, there is a lack of literature on EFL teachers‘ self-efficacy beliefs and even less research was set in Chinese EFL contexts. On the one hand, this study was conducted to provide a general picture of the current status of EFL teachers‘ perceived English proficiency, self-rated self-efficacy beliefs and self-reported teaching practices in terms of some demographic perspectives; On the other hand, it aimed to explore the correlations among Chinese primary EFL teachers‘ perceived English proficiency, self-efficacy beliefs and teaching practices. The quantitative study surveyed 217 in-service primary EFL teachers. The descriptive results showed that: (1) EFL teachers varied in perceived English proficiency in terms of age, years of teaching experience and college major; (2) age and teaching experience did while college major didn‘t make a difference for EFL teachers‘ self-efficacy beliefs; (3) the surveyed EFL teachers, in general, had a greater preference to communication-oriented language teaching (COLT) than form-oriented language teaching (FOLT). The results from 7 the correlational statistics showed that: (1) perceived English proficiency (PEP), on the whole, had a significant predictive effect on self-efficacy beliefs (SEB). It was striking that among the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) of English language, speaking had the most significant predictive effect on self-efficacy beliefs; (2) EFL teachers‘ self-efficacy beliefs (SEB) had a predictive effect on COLT practices whereas not on FOLT practices; (3) The mediation model of showing the causal impacts of PEP (through SEB) on COLT was tested. i.e. Chinese primary EFL teachers‘ self-efficacy beliefs played a complete mediating role between perceived English proficiency and communication-oriented language teaching. The findings of the present study added on the compelling evidence that self-efficacy beliefs matter in the realm of primary EFL teaching in China. In light of these findings, implications were generated to primary EFL teacher education and in-service EFL teacher training programs, such as courses related to improving English proficiency, especially speaking skills, should be offered for non-English major EFL teachers; training courses related to improving self-efficacy beliefs, especially on classroom management strategies, and the recommended communicative-oriented language teaching practices should be offered to pre-service and inexperienced in-service EFL teachers. Keywords: English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher, teachers‘ self-efficacy beliefs (SEB), student engagement (SE), instructional strategies (IS), classroom management (CM), perceived English proficiency (PEP), teaching practices, communication-oriented language teaching (COLT), form-oriented language teaching (FOLT) 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ 12 List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... 14 List of Abbreviations................................................................................................................ 15 Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................ 16 Chapter Introduction ..................................................................................................... 16 Research Background ................................................................................................... 18 Statement of Problem ................................................................................................... 20 Purpose of the Study ..................................................................................................... 24 Research Questions ...................................................................................................... 24 Significance of the Study.............................................................................................. 25 Theoretical Framework ................................................................................................ 27 Assumptions and Limitations of the Study .................................................................. 30 Chapter Summary ......................................................................................................... 31 Chapter 2: Literature Review ................................................................................................... 32 Chapter Introduction ..................................................................................................... 32 EFL Teaching in China ................................................................................................