ABSTRACT
This micro-ethnographic research explored the beliefs and practices of teachers at one public junior high school in light of how cultural models were represented in their English language instruction. The goals of this study were to present an overt description of the role of cultural models in English language teaching in the interaction of key informant teachers' belief systems and instructional practices, as well as to provide structure on how teachers can recognize coherence in their beliefs and teaching practices. Key informant teachers were interviewed to study their English language teaching belief systems (general and discipline-specific), which were drawn from their personal life histories, schooling experiences, professional experiences, and self-awareness. The resulting data, triangulated from interviews, video-recorded classroom observations, and instructional artifacts, were evaluated using inductive content analysis. Results suggest that prior experiences formed the basis for key informant teachers’ teaching beliefs regarding the roles of a teacher and students, teaching methods, teacher-student relationships, and what to teach and achieve in English language teaching, particularly in the teaching disciplines of grammar and reading. Succinctly, the data findings imply that key informant teachers’ beliefs about teaching grammar and reading were merely a little protrusion on the iceberg of deep-rooted beliefs that were transferred into their instructional practices. Overall, the results show that key informant teachers' belief systems and instructional practices provided a subtle channel for malleable cultural models that the majority of English language teachers may conceivably employ to make sense of the school setting and their teaching experiences in it.
Keywords: teacher beliefs, instructional practices, cultural models, English language teaching
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