Teacher narratives as theorisation of teaching: A Chinese teacher's perspectives on communicative language teaching (CLT)

Abstract

Teaching as a profession is unique in that all the people who enter the profession have had extensive experience of it, which was built up over many years in classrooms as students. However, the pre-existing set of beliefs about teaching and learning, which were based on, and reinforced by, their own experiences, might cause perplexity for teachers who work in different cultural contexts. How to balance pedagogical principles becomes one of the important considerations for these teachers when faced with the perplexity. This study, therefore, was taken to explore the beliefs of a Chinese language teacher, who was educated in a traditional teaching system (three-centeredness) in Mainland China and was teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages (TCSOL) in New Zealand. It was aimed to unveil how a TCSOL teacher coped with such challenges. Narrative inquiry and thematic analysis were adopted in examining this teacher’s experience. Results show that composite factors impacted this teacher’s beliefs about teaching and learning. The research process and findings are expected to offer some implications for fostering effective TCSOL teachers’ professional development.