Teacher’s Beliefs On Grammar-Instruction-To-Improve-Writing-Skills: General Tendencies Among The Participants In A Quantitative Study

Author(s):

Xavier Fontich(submitting)Marilisa Birello(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching

Format:

Paper

Session Information

27 SES 11 A, Learning Environments, Teacher Beliefs, and Educational Effectiveness

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-12

17:15-18:45

Room:

A-204

Chair:

Kirsti Klette

Contribution

In this proposal we present some results of a research on teachers’ beliefs about the effect of grammar instruction in students’ written compositions. Teacher’s beliefs have been a focus of increasing interest over the last decades. Several authors highlight that classroom practice is far more influenced by teachers’ beliefs than by teacher's own knowledge on the content (Nespor, 1987; Pajares, 1992).

Some studies have explored teachers’ beliefs on grammar instruction, and while some of these focus on L1 the vast majority focus on L2 (Falardeau & Simard, 2009; Jean & Simard, 2011; Borg & Burns, 2011). However, studies that analyze the connections between teachers’ beliefs, grammar instruction, and writing skills are scarce (see for instance Camps et al. 1996).

On the other hand, regarding methodology some authors urge for more experimental studies (Khader, 2012) since a great amount of studies are based on qualitative approaches, following ethnographic protocols both from a sociocognitive as wells as from a sociological perspective (Falardeau & Simard, 2009; Borg, 2006). In spite of these differences, the mainstream of studies do not go beyond descriptive procedures, and do not explore in which way the results on teachers’ beliefs studies can guide new models of teaching (Khader, 2012).

The niche of our study is twofold: (1) it focuses on teacher’s beliefs on grammar instruction for writing composition; and (2) it is the first part of a longer project based on action-research (funding Spanish Government) with the aim to explore new models to enhance grammar-writing teaching.

Objectives. 1) To describe primary and secondary teachers’ beliefs regarding four blocks of grammar instruction for writing: theory, methodology, classroom practices, and students’ expectancies. 2) To identify some general tendencies regarding classroom practices. 3) To compare these tendencies with the answers in the rest of the blocks.

Research questions. (1) What are teachers’ beliefs about grammar instruction for improving writing, especially regarding (a) theory, (b) methodology, (c) classroom practices, and (d) students’ expectancies? (2) What tendencies can we identify in (c)? (3) What is the degree of coherence/incoherence between (c) and (a)-(b)-(d)?

Conceptual framework.

(A) Grammar and writing composition. We follow those studies that consider grammar to be a powerful tool to enhance students’ writing composition skills (Brissaud & Grossman, 2009; Dolz & Simard, 2009; Locke, 2010; Camps, 2010) under certain conditions (Hudson, 2001; Myhill et al. 2012).

(B) Teachers beliefs. We consider sociocognitive studies that describe beliefs as a complex cognitive construction. Woods (1996) proposes the theoretical construct BAK (Beliefs, Assumptions, and Knowledge); Cambra et al. (2000) proposes that of CRS (Creencias, Representaciones y Saberes); and Borg (2003) highlighting the impossibility to separate ‘knowledge’ from ‘beliefs’ creates the expression “Teacher cognition” (related to what teachers know, belief or think).

(C) Teachers’ beliefs on grammar instruction. We follow especially the studies of Borg (2006) and Phipps and Borg (2009), which focus on the importance of taking into account teachers’ own experience as students, as well as beliefs teachers have about what students think about grammar.

Method

Our research is a quantitative study and the sample is formed by 94 public schools teachers (primary school: 44; secondary school: 50) from the metropolitan area of Barcelona. These teachers were asked to answer a Liker questionnaire and to work with these data researchers have used the SPSS software. We have followed the work of Burgess & Etherington (2002), Shulz (2002), and Jean & Simard (2011) to design this questionnaire, that aimed to explore what the teachers’ beliefs were regarding four blocks: (a) theory, (b) methodology, (c) actual classroom practices, and (d) students expectancies on grammar. For statistical reasons some of the sentences were given by the researchers a good consideration, in spite of the difficulty to define a single practice by itself without any context. The analysis has been divided in three parts: (1) Analysis 1 - general description: analysis of each of the four parts for the whole sample; (2) Analysis 2 - cluster analysis: analysis of the answers to the block (c) “actual classroom practices” to distribute the sample into different tendencies; (3) Analysis 3 - contrast of each of these tendencies with the answers given to the other three blocks.

Expected Outcomes

Analysis 1 shows two main features of teachers’ beliefs: firstly, teachers have a remarkable coincidence when considering grammar as an important discipline in school; but secondly, they differ quite a lot when referring their classroom practices. Through Analysis 2 we see four general tendencies in which teachers can be classified, ranging from considering classroom interaction as an important issue to feeling more comfortable in transmissive settings. And Analysis 3 shows some incoherencies between teachers’ answers to the different blocks. Teachers both in tendency 1 and 4 promote students’ “autonomy” and “interaction”. But in group 4 they also consider “explicit grammar instruction” to be important. When contrasting both groups with their responses in the last block (teachers’ expectancies of students), group 1 consider students well able to learn grammar whereas group 4 think that students are not. The response of group 4 seems to be contradictory, but this group is actually in tune with some studies that consider explicit grammar instruction to be of utmost importance in order to structure students’ reflections on grammar due to the difficulty of grammar (Camps et al. 2005; Myhill, 2000).

References

Borg, S. & Burns, A. (2011). Integrating grammar in Adult TESOL Classrooms. Applied Linguistics, 29/3, 456-482. Borg, S. (2006). Teacher Cognition and Language Education. London: Continuum. Burgess & Etherington (2002), Burgess, J. & Etherington, S. (2002). Focus on grammatical form. System, 30, 433-458. Cambra, M. (2000). Introducció. El pensament del profesor. In A, Camps, I. Ríos, & M. Cambra (coords.). Recerca i formació en didáctica de la llengua (pp. 161-172). Barcelona: Graó. Camps, A. (2010). Hablar y reflexionar sobre la lengua. In T. Ribas (coord.). Libros de texto y enseñanza de la gramática (pp. 13-31). Barcelona: Graó. Hudson, R. (2001). Grammar teaching and writing skills. Syntax in the Schools, 17, 1-6. [On line: retrieved May 2012] Jean, G. & Simard, J. (2011) Grammar teaching and learning in L2 : Necessary, but boring ? Foreign languages annals, 44(3), pp. 463-494. Khader, F. R. (2012) Teachers’ Pedagogical Beliefs and Actual Classroom Practices in Social Studies Instruction. American International Journal of Contemporary Research, 2(1), pp. 73-92. Myhill, D., Jones, S.M., Lines, H., & Watson, A. (2012). Re-thinking grammar. Research Papers in Education, 27: 2, 139-66. (doi: 10.1080/02671522.2011.637640) Pajares, F. M. (1992). Teachers’ beliefs and educational research: Cleaning up a messy construct. Review of educational research, 62(3), 307-332. Phipps, S., Borg, S. (2009). Exploring tensions between teacher’s grammar teaching beliefs and practices. System, 37, 380-390. Schulz, R. A. (2001). Cultural differences in student and teacher perceptions concerning the role of grammar instruction and corrective feedback: USA-Colombia. The Modern Language Journal, 85: 244–258. (doi: 10.1111/0026-7902.00107) Woods, D. (1996). Teacher Cognition in Language Teaching, Beliefs, Decision-Making, and Classroom Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Author Information

Xavier Fontich (submitting)

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Bellaterra

Marilisa Birello (presenting)

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona)

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.