This study aims at revealing the school culture and its professional development activities. In essence, it attempts to reveal the relationships among the context, teachers‘ beliefs, practices, and interactions. Little is documented as to how inservice teachers perceive English language teaching, how they actually teach, how they interact with colleagues, and how they continue to learn to teach in a Japanese learning environment. Using multiple data sources including interviews, observations, surveys, and documents of teachers in an English department, this yearlong study revealed that experiencing new teaching practices in classrooms was not sufficient for teacher learning toward professional development to occur in the school and department context. The teaching culture of this school was consistent and almost immutable throughout the study. Responses from these teachers revealed at least three rules for this particular teaching culture: (1) Managing students and managing various work took precedence over teaching; (2) Communication and collaboration centered on keeping pace with others and getting through the day, rather than solving teaching issues; (3) It was particularly important to teach the same way for the common test and to maintain classroom management. The teaching culture of this school was defined and sustained by teachers’ beliefs. As teachers worked together in this school culture, they identified with one another and shared the same beliefs about school norms and values, the subject matter, students, and other work. Thus, individual teachers prioritized their educational beliefs over any beliefs they may have brought to the context. Consequently, these teachers reinforced their beliefs, existing practices, and internal interactions in this school context. The study revealed that these EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers lacked many teacher learning opportunities in their context. Although the majority of teachers replied that they learned how to teach by watching other teachers in this school context, there had been only a few peer-observations throughout the yearlong study. Experienced teachers were reluctant to have their classes observed and critiqued, while young teachers socialized themselves to the norm of teaching as other experienced teachers did. It was evident that a few peer-observations only helped these young teachers master routine practices. In addition, experienced teachers reported that they had been teaching the same way based on their second language (L2) learning and initial teaching experiences. As long as they teach the same way according to the existing curriculum, they do not seem to need any new ideas. In fact, a majority of teachers continued to avoid attending workshops outside the school. In contrast, only a few teachers tried out new ideas, and then mainly in special classes. However, those teaching experiences were little reported or shared, and innovation remained marginalized in this school and department context. As a result, individual trial and error generated few teacher learning opportunities for professional development in this school and department context. The study described the teaching culture through comprehensive investigation of the relationships among context, beliefs, practices, and interactions. The study revealed the context-specific nature of beliefs, which prioritized managing students and various kinds of work over teaching the subject in this school context. As long as teachers maintain such beliefs, they choose not to participate in many teacher learning opportunities in this context. This study calls for reconceptualization of teacher development in school contexts. Future questions remain as to how teachers can be life-long learners in their workplace.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/253751 |
| Creators | Sato, Kazuyoshi |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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