There are a lot of discussions about the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and their teaching practices. Many investigations support the assertion that there’s “a strong relationship between teachers’ educational beliefs and their planning, instructional decisions, and classroom practices” (Pajares, 1992). Teachers’ beliefs are believed as predictors of teachers’ teaching behaviors and they lie at the very heart of teaching, and teachers’ behaviors in the classrooms are shaped or guided or governed by their beliefs, and teachers act on account of what they believe (Wallace & Kang, 2004; Luft &
Roehrig, 2007; Hermans et al., 2008, etc.).
It’s believed that belief is a ‘quasi-logical noun’, which is not completely in view of reason of rationality, but also comes from the perceptual and volitional judgment. So teachers’ beliefs not only have crucial influence on their teaching behaviors, but have high consistence with the behaviors, through the study of teachers’ behaviors teachers’
beliefs can be discovered, and then by changing teachers’ beliefs, teachers’ behaviors can be improved largely, which is considered to have a fundamental significance in the improvement of teaching practices. Moreover, teachers’ beliefs offer teachers the power of subjective will to manage and control the teaching in some kind of specific manner.
Beliefs do have the characteristics of being stable and deeply-rooted, and theoretically, teachers’ beliefs could guide teachers’ behaviors “either deliberately or spontaneously.
In a deliberate way beliefs are retrieved or constructed with a lot of effort in a certain context and they are assumed to guide goal setting and behavior” (van der Schaafa et al., 2008). However, as far as the natures of teachers’ beliefs are concerned, van der Schaafa et al. (2008) explain that they are hardly enabled to make the accurate assessment, for “teacher beliefs differ in specificity and in strength depending on the context, that they tend to be activated in clusters, and that incompatible beliefs may contend for priority”, but in the end, perhaps “only the most salient beliefs will
influence the execution of teaching tasks”, and all other beliefs actually have to be absent in teachers’ behaviors.
There’s a number of research which reports that teachers’ behaviors are not always consistent with their beliefs, and the connection between teachers’ beliefs and their teaching practices is not very strong (Vartuli, 1999; Chen, 2006; Correa et al., 2008;
Hermans et al., 2008; Mansour, 2009, etc.). Some researchers are more likely to believe that “the interaction between teachers’ beliefs and practice is complex, and a simple causal relationship should not be assumed” (Correa et al., 2008), and it is more like dialectical rather than unilateral, which means teachers’ behaviors do not always come after beliefs, but they actually are interdependent to each other and develop together (Mansour, 2009).
The main reason to be found is that “complexities of classroom life can constrain teachers’ abilities to attend to their beliefs and provide instruction which aligns with their theoretical beliefs” (Fang, 1996). Based on the former research, Marland (1993) has made a summary on the characteristic of classroom life teachers are encountered with every day that classroom life is characterized by uncertainty, volatility, ambiguity, inconsistency, contradiction and capriciousness, and is actually “a living, experiential, processual, flexible, creative, compilation of insights, memories, information, articulations that go into resourcing teacher decision-making and action, …far too complex, capricious and dilemma-riddled to be managed by recourse to a few general principles and isolated pieces of knowledge”.
Therefore, as Duffy and Anderson (1984) have found, although teachers are able to articulate their beliefs verbally when they are conscious of what they believe, their actual teaching behaviors are influenced and governed more by the nature of classroom life, since in a real and complicated class environment, as Duffy (1982) has suggested,
“it is difficult for teachers to remember that they are supposed to be cognitive information processors who make differential instructional decisions on the basis of rationally developed hypotheses” (Fang, 1996). It is echoed by a German teacher GRR1F who said in the interview, “when you teach, it is very difficult to think about
‘how can I make them (the students) more successful’, because you just work, you go on with your lessons, you use your books, and you do not really think about these questions”.
This research confirms that the complexity of classroom life does overwhelm the teachers’ prior beliefs, especially when the beliefs are idealistic, unrealistically optimistic, or even kind of insidious and dysfunctional, or they have “a self-serving bias that account for their believing that the attributes most important for successful teaching are the ones they perceive as their own” (Pajares, 1992). And it proves from the teachers’ experiences that the real class and school situations “can have powerful influences on teachers’ beliefs and, in effect, affect their classroom practice” (Fang, 1996).
Lederman (1992) declares that “the transposition of teachers’ beliefs into classroom practice is mediated by a complex set of situational variables” (Mansour, 2009), which actually act more often as the constraints affecting the enactment of teachers’ beliefs, and are responsible for the discordance between teachers’ beliefs and their teaching practices. Therefore, Mansour (2009) argues that “a complete understanding of the process of teaching/learning is not possible without a full understanding of the constraints and opportunities that impact upon the teaching/learning process”.
But, in order to “understand constraints to meaningful teaching and learning, attention is directed to recurring patterns of contextual constraints,” and how these constraints
“are collectively and interactively created to produce thinking that incorporates diverse perspectives and students” (Mansour, 2009). It has been found that “there are many elements that cause a mismatch between beliefs and practices” (Mansour, 2009), which can be divided into external and internal constraints that have effects on the consistency of teachers’ beliefs and practices, and to a large extent restrict the fulfillment of teachers’
beliefs. Below is a summary of what the literatures have mentioned about the constraints to the implementation of teachers’ beliefs.
The external constraints include family and peers, classroom events, different grades, work overload, school curriculum requirements, student characteristics and backgrounds, student discipline, time restraints, inappropriate scheduling, large classes, relationships with colleagues, expectations of students/parents/superiors, lack of resources, administrative demands and attitudes, non-teaching tasks, working conditions, educational policy, the system of assessment, examination system, school inspections, school climate/culture, state mandates and the system of education, etc.; the internal constraints include teachers’ personal theoretical and practical knowledge, personal
needs, culture, values, personality, life experience, educational experience, etc. (Fang, 1996; Vartuli, 1999; Hermans et al., 2008; Mansour, 2009, etc.).
From the interviews, what all teachers in both countries stress the most in common is “I have no time”, which was also proved by the study of Blasé (1986) on the teachers in the elementary, middle and high schools, who found out that “time was one of the most important constraints and that it could not be understood as independent of the other constraints that were perceived as directly interfering with the instructional time of teachers” (Mansour, 2009). As a result, teachers’ beliefs on creative lessons, interesting topics, individual teaching and independent study for example from this research have to be replaced by counteracting “the time constraints, lecturing and rote memorization …as the main instructional method” (Mansour, 2009), which happens in both China and Germany.
What’s more, almost all teachers in Germany have mentioned in the interview that “big class” is the top constraint in achieving their educational beliefs, which is consistent with Goelz’s research finding that indicates class size is a factor “as having a negative effect on their non-traditional teaching methods” (Mansour, 2009). Meanwhile, Goelz (2004) also finds that the “end-of-course tests” act as a stressful factor affecting teachers’ beliefs, which “force many teachers to maintain a strict schedule that does not allow for creative teaching methods requiring student-generated learning, reflection, and discussion” (Mansour, 2009), and largely “contribute to decreased willingness to adopt diverse instructional active learning strategies” (Vartuli, 1999), especially in China where the education is exam-oriented.
When talking about focusing on individual student, in the interview many teachers from both countries stressed instead that they must pay more attention to go through the textbooks fast within a very limited time, as Muskin (1990) also declared that, “because teachers have to complete all the material required for the tests, they feel obliged to spend very little time on activities that promote constructivist-styled learning”, and such a pressure from the time and tests especially in China “causes new teachers, who would otherwise like to focus on student-centered learning, to revert to the lecture style that many teachers hesitate to practice but often do” (Mansour, 2009). Therefore, even though teachers may have brilliant beliefs that they want to accomplish, in the context
of real classroom life full of high stress and tension, consistency between their beliefs and practices just simply cannot be expected.
It’s said that “a growing body of research argues that teachers’ beliefs should be studied within a framework that is aware of the influence of culture” (Mansour, 2009). The reason is simply that teachers’ beliefs are convinced to be formed and shaped in the process of enculturation and socialization since the childhood, and “it is within this socially constituted nature of culture that beliefs play an integral role in filtering information and determining what is considered important and to be of value” (Mansour, 2009). Olson (1988) further explains that “what teachers tell us about their practice is, most fundamentally, a reflection of their culture and cannot be properly understood without reference to that culture” (cited in Mansour, 2009).
From the perspective of socio-cultural theory, Wallace and Kang (2004) demonstrate that school culture expresses itself as the realistic construction in which teachers work, and exercises a strong influence on teachers’ beliefs. It’s found that the socialization in various contexts is so powerful as to result in different teachers’ beliefs, and teachers in the same school could be observed to share similar classroom practices (Wallace &
Kang, 2004; Mansour, 2009). With the increasing teaching years, the “powerful cultural influences, most especially, the school curriculum document continue to shape belief systems and educational decisions”, and in another way, those beliefs developed within the cultural contexts of the classrooms act as well as a social driving factor in teachers’
classroom decisions (Wallace & Kang, 2004).
Most of the research focusing on beliefs reveals that teachers’ beliefs are situated and contextual, which “cannot be examined out of context, but are always situated in a physical setting in which constraints, opportunities or external influences may derive from sources at various levels” (Mansour, 2009), and those contextual constraints, as it’s discussed above, are widely recognized as exerting significant effects on the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices (Pajares, 1992; Fang, 1996).
Nespor (1987) has explained the important role of the context in forming teachers’
beliefs, saying, “the contexts and environments within which teachers work, and many of the problems they encounter, are ill-defined and deeply entangled, … beliefs are
peculiarly suited for making sense of such contexts” (cited in Mansour, 2009), so teachers “may establish or validate their beliefs in context-specific environments where their instructional experience is successful” (Mansour, 2009). In all, the research on the relevance of contexts to the fulfillment of teachers’ beliefs concludes that “the relative strength with which various beliefs are held is dependent upon the particular context” in the complexities of the classrooms where the constraints on teachers’ teaching are not singular (Beswick, 2003).
This research confirms what Maxion (1996) has argued that “teachers’ beliefs are an integral part of classroom practice. When influencing factors complement teachers’
beliefs, classroom practice and beliefs are compatible, when these factors interfere with teachers’ beliefs, classroom practice and beliefs are disjointed” (Mansour, 2009).
Unfortunately, many teachers from this research admit that most of the time they are constrained from implementing their personal beliefs due to lack of time, big classes, an overcrowded syllabus, inadequate facilities, pressure of external examinations, parental and administrative expectations, class management problems, extensive and increasing curricular demands, and students’ problems, etc. (Vartuli, 1999; Mansour, 2009).
Here is the result that teachers answered the question if their beliefs direct their teaching:
coding GG GR GH CH CC CR
Yes, sure 3 3 4 4 3 3
Yes, but not all the time 3 3 2 0 2 2
Nearly no 0 0 0 2 1 1
The result of the question if there’s conflict or difference between beliefs and the reality:
coding GG GR GH CH CC CR
Yes 4 6 6 5 4 4
No 2 0 0 1 2 1
No idea 1
From the results above, it shows that most of the teachers involved in the interview from both China and Germany think that their beliefs direct their teaching in their
classes, and each country has 10 teachers out of 18 are quite positive on it. 8 German teachers and 4 Chinese teachers admit that they cannot do what they believe all the time, but sometimes when it is possible from the reality. There are 4 Chinese teachers who can hardly practice their beliefs in their daily teaching because of too many or too strong constraints.
However, when the teachers were asked if there’s some conflict or difference between their beliefs and the reality, almost all teachers answered “Yes” as the table above shows, and many Chinese teachers even state that the gap between their beliefs and the reality is very big, which, on one hand, confirms that some teachers’ beliefs can be too ideal to be fulfilled in the daily teaching, on the other hand, proves that teachers have not much possibility to put their beliefs into practices in the reality full of constraints.
Even though only 2 teachers from the Gymnasium don’t think there’s difference between their beliefs and the reality, the result tells again that teachers in the Gymnasium are more likely to keep and fulfill their beliefs than other 2 types of schools, Realschule and Hauptschule, in Germany. The 4 Chinese teachers, who believe in the consistency between their beliefs and the reality, have actually developed and adjusted their beliefs to the reality during the years of teaching, and their beliefs are more realistic. The following examples are from the summary of constraint factors that teachers have mentioned:
1) German teachers
① Lack of time and space and teachers, and the system is not effective
“It’s always the problem that you don’t have enough time and space to really reach the objectives as good as you want, especially if you want to concentrate on individual students, that’s quite impossible; you could always think about methods and what opportunities at school you could improve all these fields of learning in different ways of teaching and experience for students, but then there’s no possibility, because the system has to be more effective; more students are on the normal level of education, and you can’t afford doing in the ideal way, for you don’t have the people.” (GGH7M)
② Student difficult personality and lack of student discipline
“You often don’t have an atmosphere that’s good for learning because of lack of discipline, for there are personalities that are difficult to teach. If you have five or six of those personalities, all the rules on the walls won’t make it much easier, because they will talk and they will run around, and they will hit the others, and there were so many of them who did not want to do anything, their unwillingness to learn squares, and it can destroy the atmosphere in the class where teaching was almost impossible, then you really have a problem in reaching your aims.” (GGM10F)
③ No possibility to reach everyone
“You want your students to have the best education they can get, you want them to be responsible, you want them to be self-confident, but if you don’t even have the chance to actually talk to pupils individually, I can’t reach all of them, I just can’t reach everybody, so you can never fulfill the aims that I just mentioned, …I can’t help everybody, because if I try to be there for everybody, I would kind of destroy myself”.
(GGS5F)
④ Big gap of students’ abilities
“We’ve got a rather big variety of students, we’ve got excellent students who are quicker, but we have to watch all of them, and sometimes it’s not easy in a class when you’re in a so extreme position, very well educated students who do everything with pleasure, and others who just avoid to do what they should, so, that doesn’t make teaching easy”. (GHH38M)
⑤ No study motivation
“For them, there are other things which are more important than school, it should be important for them to really get information, to really concentrate on things, to learn something, to really do something, but for them it's just, “no, it's work, I don't want to”, they are not interested at all, sometimes, they really give themselves up sometimes. This is hard sometimes, and students they are just in there, in their own world sometimes.”
(GHK5F)
⑥ Big class
“Individualized is very important, we say to take every learner to vary his stands or her stands, and to make it good motivation for him or her in specific, but I have to say that sometimes it’s quite hard to do that for every single lesson, because the classes are too big and the conditions are not, the political conditions, they are not worked out for such a big aim for a teacher, it’s more an illusion, and that’s really sad, you can do it to build groups and to give them like tasks for their levels, but not for each student, it’s just not possible, if you are the only teacher in the class.” (GHW2F)
⑦ Lack of equipment
“All the classrooms (should) have good equipment with the computers, and TV, and a kind of library, so all the things are within the class, not always change the rooms to go from one room to the next one where there is a TV, so that you can arrange yourself, have a good learning arrangement with the groups in your room.” (GRB33F)
⑧ Lack of money
“Usually the school wants to get enough money to buy new things or new media, or what’s needed for them, even new books are very expensive, the school can’t buy any book, because they have to wait for the money first, this is not good”. (GRR1F)
2) Chinese teachers
① No learning interest
“Students are not very happy in class, I try to make them happy and interested. To be honest, I think none of them like study. Maybe 20% of them like challenge and thinking, and can be initiative to explore the unknown, all the others are very passive in study.
Students are interested in physical experiments, but if in some lessons almost all is about my lecture or only my presentation on some classical experiments, it’s hard to get them interested.” (CCD5F, translated)
② Unrealistic teaching theory
“Sometimes it’s not realistic if you only rely on professors’ theories like encouragement, because students in Grade 9 have hard tasks and big pressure from study, and the
encouragement and praise cannot work well to some students. Then you need to talk
encouragement and praise cannot work well to some students. Then you need to talk