Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background This study is to explore L2 (second language) teacher educators’ beliefs about theknowledge base of language teaching, to provide a thick description of their beliefsin the field of SLTE (Second Language Teacher Education) in the U.K and China,and to compare the ways that the teacher educators’ beliefs are framed in the twocontexts in question. A certain body of literature explored L2 teachers’ beliefs andthe knowledge base of language teaching (e.g. Freeman & Johnson, 1998; Woods,2017), but there is still a lack of studies on teacher educators’ beliefs about theknowledge base of language teaching, especially in eastern contexts, such as China.I decided to focus on this study because I had the opportunity to study in thedepartments for cultivating English language teachers in the U.K. and China. Thisled to my interest in comparing two SLTE programmes set in different contexts.Both the MSc TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)programme in the U.K. and the MA ELT (English Language Teaching) programmein China aimed to develop student teachers’ knowledge and understanding of thetheories in language teaching and learning and to apply these theories in classroompractice. Moreover, the two programmes both provided courses related withlanguage learning theories, teaching methodology, material development, languagecurriculum, language testing, and research methods, etc. Despite that the aims andcourses of the two master’s programmes appeared to be similar to some extent, thedifferent beliefs held by the teacher educators in the two countries seemed to lead totheir distinct ways of unpacking the courses. A comparison of the aims and coursesof the MSc TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) programmein the U.K. and the MA ELT (English Language Teaching) programme in China is
1.2 The Study This study was carried out from April to September 2017. Interview was used as themain method of data collection to gain insights into the teacher educators’ beliefsabout the knowledge base of language teaching situated in the British and Chinesesociocultural contexts. The participants were three teacher educators who taught onMA ELT at a leading university in China and three teacher educators who taught onMSc TESOL at a leading university in the U.K.The most important consideration in this study was how the teacher educators’beliefs were framed in their sociocultural contexts. In other words, it was assumedthat the beliefs held by the teacher educators participated in the study would beaffected by their specific sociocultural contexts in China and the U.K. Datacollection in this study generated sets of complex data with regard to how the L2teacher educators from both countries in this study perceived the knowledge base oflanguage teaching. A number of themes emerged from a careful analysis of the data,which illustrated not only the similar and different beliefs held by the teachereducators participated in this study, but also the ways their beliefs were framed in theChinese and British sociocultural contexts respectively.
1.3 Significance of the study It is important to carry out such a study in that it might facilitate the development ofSLTE in the light of globalisation in the 21stcentury, the call for teachers as agentsof change by social justice teac，英语论文网站，英语论文范文 |
