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This book offers a comprehensive overview of the changes in foreign language teachers' cognition and practices during a four-year innovation project at a Chinese secondary school, and explores the factors that influenced the trajectory of those changes. It makes a substantial contribution to research on educational change by offering a longitudinal observation of the facts and voices in EFL settings in China; as such, the book offers a valuable resource for scholars, teacher educators, teachers, and others interested in initiating, managing and evaluating innovations in EFL classrooms.
List of contents
Acknowledgments.- Abstract.- List of Abbreviations.- List of Figures.- List of Tables.- Chapter 1 Introduction.- Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework of the Study.- Chapter 3 Research Design.- Chapter 4 Changes of Teacher Cognition within Curriculum Innovation.- Chapter 5 The Changes of Teacher and Student Behaviors in Project Classrooms.- Chapter 6 Teacher Cognition and Practices: Project vs. Non-project and Consistency vs. Inconsistency.- Chapter 7 Factors Influencing the Implementation of the Danyang Project.- Chapter 8 Conclusion.- Appendix 1 The English classroom teaching evaluation form used for unfocused classroom observation.- Appendix 2 A selected teaching journal with teacher educators' feedback.- Appendix 3 A selected action research report.- Appendix 4 A classroom observation scheme used for focused classroom observation.- Appendix 5 A selected sub-project agenda under group review.- Appendix 6 A selected excerpt of field notes.- Appendix 7 The codebook for coding qualitative data.- Appendix 8 A selected interview transcript with open coding.- Appendix 9 A coded classroom transcript.- Appendix 10 A public letter Marian sent to parents.- Appendix 11 A trial classroom observation scheme formulated by the office of Academic Affairs (Jiaowu Chu) at HES.
About the author
Dr. Yan Zhu is a Lecturer at the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Fudan University, China, and a research associate and teacher educator at the Shanghai Centre for Research in English Language Education. Dr. Zhu's research focuses on FLT curriculum innovation in basic education, task-based language teaching, in-service teacher education through university-school partnerships, and classroom instruction. Her publications have appeared in prestigious international and domestic journals, including Language Teaching, System, The Modern Language Journal, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Foreign Language World, Modern Foreign Languages, and Foreign Language Education, among others. She is currently the principal investigator for a project supported by the National Social Science Fund of China.
Summary
This book offers a comprehensive overview of the changes in foreign language teachers' cognition and practices during a four-year innovation project at a Chinese secondary school, and explores the factors that influenced the trajectory of those changes. It makes a substantial contribution to research on educational change by offering a longitudinal observation of the facts and voices in EFL settings in China; as such, the book offers a valuable resource for scholars, teacher educators, teachers, and others interested in initiating, managing and evaluating innovations in EFL classrooms.
