Lei Man, Medwell Jane
Foreign Languages College, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.
School of Education, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 6;13:904071. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.904071. eCollection 2022.
The New Curriculum Standards for teaching English introduced major changes in the culture of teaching and learning English in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Changes have been linked to changing goals for English instruction and a revision of Confucian values in schooling. In this article, we argue that this English curriculum proposes a new role, with new demands, for English-as-foreign-language (EFL) teachers in the PRC. In order to implement the curriculum reform successfully, teachers involved in the reform are required to have a shared understanding of its nature, purposes and scope. However, little is known about to what extent EFL teachers understand and engage with their new roles. This study examines teachers' understandings of the new curriculum and of the new, demanding role of teachers implied by the curriculum. This is a mixed methods study involving an analysis of the curriculum document, a survey ( = 227) of EFL teachers and semi-structured interviews with a sample of teachers in the cohort ( = 18). The findings suggest that many teachers know the content of the curriculum document, but expressed uncertainty about the implications of changes, uncertainty about what a shift to student-centered teaching and learning means and confusion about new professional development demands. The findings of this study have wider implications for EFL teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policy makers in the PRC and similar national contexts. This article highlights that, from an international perspective, introducing new ideas and practices should consider teachers' existing understanding and experiences of the curriculum as well as the way in which they understand the purposes of the changes, and should promote a shared understanding of policy intentions.
《英语教学新课程标准》给中华人民共和国的英语教学文化带来了重大变革。这些变革与英语教学目标的变化以及学校教育中儒家价值观的修订有关。在本文中，我们认为这一英语课程对中国的外语教师提出了新的角色和新的要求。为了成功实施课程改革，参与改革的教师需要对其性质、目的和范围有共同的理解。然而，对于外语教师在多大程度上理解并接受他们的新角色，我们知之甚少。本研究考察了教师对新课程以及课程所隐含的教师新的、高要求角色的理解。这是一项混合方法研究，包括对课程文件的分析、对外语教师的调查（n = 227）以及对该群体中部分教师（n = 18）的半结构化访谈。研究结果表明，许多教师了解课程文件的内容，但对变革的影响表示不确定，对转向以学生为中心的教学意味着什么感到不确定，并且对新的专业发展要求感到困惑。本研究的结果对中国及类似国家背景下的外语教师、教师教育工作者、研究人员和政策制定者具有更广泛的意义。本文强调，从国际视角来看，引入新思想和实践应该考虑教师对课程的现有理解和经验，以及他们理解变革目的的方式，并且应该促进对政策意图的共同理解。
