This study aimed to investigate the factors that affect the continuance intention to use technology among English teachers in China, mainly by examining the direct effects of help seeking, interest, effort regulation, growth mindset, facilitating conditions, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use on continuance intention (CI), and the indirect effects the above factors have on continuance intention through self-efficacy. The study sample comprised 459 English language teachers from junior secondary schools in different regions in Western China. A questionnaire involved the above variables was used, and it was validated using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The results revealed significant direct effects of help seeking, effort regulation, growth mindset, facilitating conditions, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use on the continuance intention to use technology. However, the results showed that interest did not have a direct effect on the continuance intention to use technology. The findings also demonstrated that growth mindset, interest, effort regulation, help seeking, and perceived usefulness did not indirectly affect the continuance intention to use technology through self-efficacy. Nevertheless, the findings indicated that facilitating conditions and perceived ease of use did have an indirect effect on the continuance intention to use technology through self-efficacy. In light of these findings, some suggestions and recommendations were presented.
Relevant research shows teachers’ “psychological power” plays a more essential role in promoting their professional development compared with the powers provided by various external factors, and it is therefore held that exploring college English teachers’ individual psychological power is of great significance. To this end, this study investigated college English teachers’ psychological empowerment (CETPE) via the development and validation of CETPE’s scale. Based on our literature review on psychological empowerment and analysis of teachers professional development’s status quo, we made a working definition of CETPE as a system involving perception of their occupation, sense of competence, experiencing of autonomy, judgment of their impact and understanding of their status. In our study, firstly the literature review and the interview with 17 college English teachers were adopted to conceptualize the dimensions of CETPE, and an exploratory factor analysis of data was conducted from 227 college English teachers and then the subsequent confirmatory factor analysis of data collected from another sample of 1030 generated 15 items belonging to five factors. The findings reveal that CETPE is systematically composed of teachers’ positive perception and experience of work meaningfulness, teaching autonomy, occupational competence, professional impact and social status. This study provides a new path for teachers’ professional development via strengthening their intrinsic driving force and thus helps improve the college English teaching effects.
Form-focused instruction occupies an important position in China’s secondary schools. However, middle school English teaching has been criticized for the sustainability of form-focused instruction. The new English Curriculum Standards for China’s secondary English teaching suggest that grammar teaching should be integrated into communicative activities, but no precise guidance is provided on how to integrate grammar into communicative activities. This study investigates teachers’ beliefs and practices about form-focused instruction, as well as the factors influencing their beliefs and practices, in the context of China’s secondary schools. Data were collected through 33 classroom observations and interviews with 3 teachers with different levels of experience. The findings reveal that, overall, the teachers preferred form-focused instruction, focus on forms and explicit teaching. The teachers with more teaching experience adopted communicative approaches of form-focused instruction, integrating form and meaning at different times inductively. The teacher with fewer teaching years adopted traditional, isolated, and deductive methods of grammar teaching. The differences between the teachers were found to be influenced by various factors, including teaching and research activities, curriculum standards, examinations, and learning experience. The teachers’ beliefs and practices and the gaps and connections between theoretical domains and classroom practices were discussed and implications were provided.
This study examined how Chinese college teachers developed their Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) by situating the learning process in three interactive activity systems during teaching English as foreign language (EFL) online in China. Data were collected from teachers’ diaries, in-depth interviews, and various records of online teaching. Findings indicated that teachers employed cultural artifacts, social relations, and beliefs and concepts to cope with difficulties that confronted their online teaching. They also performed sideways moves to new activities that provided systemic implications for the previous form of activity. Hence, the teachers constructed their TPACK through bi-directional learning within and between an online teaching activity system and its two interactive systems. This study highlighted the situativeness and distribution of TPACK development, and assumes significance in sustainable teacher development and further integration of information and communication technology (ICT) in English language teaching.
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