The Empirical Study of Web-based Teacher’s Ecological Niche〔*〕



The Empirical Study of Web-based Teacher’s Ecological Niche〔*〕

Sui Xiaobing,Cheng Lulu

(Public Institute of Foreign LanguageJiamusi University, JiamusiHeilongjiang154007)

Web-based college English with its openness, individuality richness is much better than the instruction mode in the traditional college English classroom teaching. Meanwhile, the teaching concept, teaching method as well as the teaching mode are impacted by this new teaching mode, which brings new challenge for the teaching abilities and scientificity. With the introduction of information technology to college English classroom, teachers need not only digest and understand the new technology, but also teach students how to use it. The researches show that the transformation of teachers' role and the update of teaching method will determine the success of teaching reform. Moreover, teaching belief, information literacy, and teacher training are the important factors in the implementation of new teaching mode. Therefore, from the perspective of ecological niche foreign language concept (Chen Jianlin, 2012), this paper aims at exploring the mismatches of teachers in the web-based college English classroom teaching, investigating background and causes, which provide the objective basis for optimizing college English classroom teaching and improves the teaching quality of web-based college English classroom.

Ⅰ.Research design

1.Participants

Participants were some English teachers from Public Institute of Foreign Language in a local university of Heilongjiang Province. There were 30 teachers and 5 teaching administration staff in total.

2.Research questions

(1) What will be the mismatches for teachers based on the teaching reform model? (Including teachers’ beliefs, PPT-assisted teaching method, teachers’ information consciousness and teacher training situation)

(2) What are the reasons for the above mismatches? What kind of optimization solution will be proposed?

3.Methodology

A research project with a mixed-method design was carried out. It is composed of quantitative and qualitative research methods. For the questionnaire was quantitative research, and qualitative research mainly included classroom observation, depth interview, etc. In this project, 30 pieces of questionnaires were distributed to teachers (not including managers and teaching affairs department personnel), and all the questionnaires were collected. Besides, more variables were collected based on the mismatches for teachers in web-based college English teaching, and then the final variables were formed after carefully analyzing. The drafted questionnaire was verified by testing, which would be helpful for adjusting and modifying the deficiency in questions (unspecific questions, incomplete form). At last, the final questionnaire was completed. The questions were in the form of Likert scale, Yes or No, and multiple choices. Moreover, the teaching experts examined the questionnaire, and made up for the deficiency, which guarantee the quality.

Ⅱ.Results and discussion

This section presents the results and discussion in terms of teachers’ beliefs, classroom teaching method, PPT-assisted teaching, literacy of teachers, and faculty training, etc.

The survey found that 66.67% of teachers who chose “language is a tool of communication” when investigating web-based language beliefs. Meanwhile, 23.33% and 33.33% of them thought that “learning is the interpretation of reality”, “leaning is the process of changing” separately. It could be noted that teachers had mastered language pedagogy such as cognitive theories. Besides, they had changed traditional teaching idea, which could be illustrated by the fact that 6.67% of them chose “language is memory”.

The result of interviews reflected that most of teachers in the university took the traditional teaching method, although they have tried web-based college English classroom teaching pattern, such as PBL. Because it was difficult for them to control the teaching pace, and conduct the assessment of learning effect, which could not be suitable for students with poor basic knowledge of English. Therefore, teachers were accustomed to teacher-centered method. In sum, teachers’ teaching methods do not match teaching reform model.

For the way of choosing teaching mode, 100% of teachers suggested that text was often used and 92.6% of them expressed that the problems of font and typeset were given special attention. Moreover, 72.3% of teachers inserted some relative pictures in PPT, while 20.6% of them could add animation, video and audio links. 81.8% of teachers showed that they first searched for the sources on the internet, and then resorted to the textbooks. In the following interview, we found that most teachers had used the original courseware supported by the Press, and made selective interpretation in the limited time.

When conducting a survey of the frequency of using PPT, 93.7% of teachers indicated that they almost used courseware every day. 20% (7) of them expressed that “we are very uncomfortable, which has a bad influence on the class.” 54.3% (19) of them thought that “I am ill at ease, and I feel it is difficult to continue my class.” 14.3% of them showed that “I feel inconvenience, which influences the progress delay.” 11.4% (4) suggested that “I can continue my class, and it can not affect my class” when answering the question that “How about your feeling when meeting power cut, projector malfunction, and mobile HDD forgetting?”

In terms of the question “Do you often attend computer and internet training?” Only 26.6 % of them admitted that they often attended such training.

When asking the question “To what extent, have you mastered the knowledge of computer operation system?” 36.7% of them(11) suggested that they have mastered, 43.3% of teachers (13) thought that they knew the exact way of operating text, and image processing software. Besides, 30.0% of them (10) indicated that they could make video and audio editing and composing in a fluent way.

We investigated on the teacher training by the ways of questionnaire and depth interview. 14 subjects (46.7%) showed that they have attended CAI and web-based teaching training, and in the following interview, they suggested that training indeed helped improve their English teaching. Moreover, as for the question “What kind of training do you want to accept?” 24 subjects (80.0%) implied that they wanted to attend the application methods training. Besides, 15teachers (50.0%) wished to have software training. Because most teachers have mastered the basic knowledge of computer and internet, and therefore only few of them planned to accept the application training.

In terms of the support and guarantee from universities, we conducted this survey and found that teachers wished they had over-all development opportunity, which could be illustrated in the following ways. 23 teachers (83.3%) hoped that they would have the effective application of computer and internet to college English classroom teaching training, and 25 of them (83.3%) thought that schools should encourage the interactive cooperation in order to develop web-based teaching resources. 27 subjects hoped that schools could gave funds to support seminar.

The results showed that teachers were lack of teaching reform training, and they longed for the effective application of computer and internet to college English classroom teaching training.

So far, we carried out the empirical research on the teachers’ beliefs, classroom teaching method, PPT-assisted teaching, literacy of teachers, and faculty training on the basis of the mismatches of web-based college English, etc. Based on the previous research results, this paper tries to build an applicable optimization framework of college English classroom teaching, which centers on teacher development.

Ⅲ.The optimization of college English teachers’ niche on the basis of web

1.The connotation of optimization of teachers’ beliefs

The results showed that teachers’ advanced beliefs did not match actual teaching process, they were teaching on their own way. Chen Jianlin(2006) pointed out that foreign teachers should first keep pace with the times and build correct teaching beliefs with the development of information technology. In addition to style of teaching, knowledge structure and professional ethnics, teachers should have reflective and critical teaching attitudes. Perhaps, what they should reflect was the transformation of web-based teachers’ beliefs.

Firstly, multi-role teachers should be emphasized as further improving the system of web-based college English teachers’ beliefs. Therefore, teacher’s role can be redefined as the following ways. Teacher can be the pre-class curriculum planner, the leader and evaluator of class as well as the after-class collaborator. The perfect transformation of teacher’s role needs to launch the on-job training which improves and optimizes teacher's?literacy?structure. In this way, information technology can be applied to the process of interaction, cooperation and research, which provides the ecological environment for students.

Furthermore, it is crucial for the transformation of web-based college English teachers’ beliefs as life-long education. Chen Jianlin (2010) emphasized that beliefs will become shaky if there were no support from social, school and humanistic environment. The stability and perfection of teachers’ beliefs are the basis of optimization of classroom teaching as well as teacher's information literacy.

2.The connotation of optimization of teachers’ information literacy

Teachers should possess the following basic literacy called “information-teaching”on the basis of the current situation of college English teaching reform. The first one is the ability of knowing how to use the “living books”, college English textbooks are three -dimensional, the contents are changed into “living books” through the network platform. Moreover, teachers can design the curriculum in a flexible way according to the students’ cognitive process and individual variations, and avoid the monotonous design of the traditional curriculum mode. The second one is the ability of selecting information resources. Information resources of web-based college English teaching have the feature of globalization, so teachers should have this ability. The third one is the ability of creating the virtual environment. The teaching environment of college English class possesses the characteristic of virtualization, teaching activities cannot be restricted by physical space and time. Teachers should create the foreign language teaching environment like virtual classroom and virtual scene according to the theme, technical environment, and cultural background and so on. The forth one is the ability of using the informationization teaching method. Information-based teaching has the feature of individuation, autonomization, and collectivization and so on. Teachers should take advantage of information technological environment to train students’ autonomous learning, and become provider, and leader of self-learning resources. Besides, they should also participate in students’ self-learning as an equal, help them design network cooperative learning, and accomplish their learning tasks as well. Meanwhile, teachers should possess the capacity of designing, organizing and evaluating teaching tasks.

3.The diversified teaching method from conversion to compatibility

Teachers should accomplish the following things in accordance with the principles of conversion, compatibility and diversification: the transformation of teaching methods from tradition to modern; the compatibility between traditional teaching methods and advanced teaching methods; establishing a teaching mode and diversified ecological teaching thoughts.

The first one is the transformation of teaching method from tradition to modern. The second one is the compatibility between traditional teaching methods and advanced teaching methods. The third one is the diversified teaching methods and teaching modes. In sum, teachers’ beliefs, teachers' information literacy optimization and the establishment of diversified teaching method concepts are the core of college English teaching optimization under the network environment. Besides, the optimization of these ecological factors needs the support of a framework of modern teachers’ development.

4.The supporting content of contemporary teachers’ development

The supporting content of contemporary university English teachers’ development frame includes the following points:

Firstly, it is the realization of university English teachers’ subjectivity. Teachers’ subjectivity includes internal subjectivity and external subjectivity. The internal subjectivity refers to teachers’ potential self-government and plans towards subjective world. External subjectivity refers to teachers’ rights of self-decision and self-domination towards teaching objective environment. The college English teachers should update specialized knowledge by means of continuous self-knowledge construction and reflection, and should emphasize teachers’ specialized development in a group atmosphere of academic studies and in an informative environment of modern information technology.

Next, teachers’ development platform of intelligence should be established, and with the help of alien species-techniques, teachers’ quality can be optimized for serving teachers’ development.

Thirdly, the training system of university’s English teachers can be improved, so that teachers should form a new teaching concept and improve the integration ability of information techniques and courses, and continuous educational training of university’s English teachers should be put into country’s training plan. Besides, “Manual Charging System” can be adopted by educational information technique training courses, which are to set up training courses of different modules, and can be chosen according to teachers’ own needs.

Fourthly, it is the informatization of training content. The training content should not only contain teachers’ specialized knowledge, but also help teacher correct teachers’ beliefs, change the traditional concept and improve information literacy (Dai Weidong & Wang Xuemei, 2011).

In sum, teachers’ development is an important channel towards the changes of teachers’ concept, improvement of information literacy and teaching methods. Teachers’ development frame should be set up at the core of upgrading teaching concept (teachers’ beliefs), teachers’ information literacy and teaching methods diversification. The overall quality will be noticeably improved through self-development of university’s English teachers and the organic integration of organization training and network intelligence training system.

Ⅳ.Conclusion

Based on the ecological theory, this study is about how to upgrade teaching ecological niche in the environment of network teaching for which this study provides a brand-new study perspective. As the study shows, the diversification of teachers’ role is the key point that further improves belief system of university’s English teachers in a network environment. Apart from four basic qualities of “information teaching” owned by university’s English teachers, we make a comprehensive conclusion on teachers’ information quality activities in the teaching process and set forth the transfer from traditional teaching methods to modern ones, the mutual compatibility of traditional teaching methods and the advance ones, and establish ecological teaching concept of teaching pattern diversification. In conclusion, the teaching concept of university’s English teachers, the upgrade of teachers’ information literacy and teaching methods diversification are one of the cores of university’s English class teaching upgrade in a network environment. The upgrade of ecological elements needs to be supported by a modern teacher development frame. We suggest setting up modern teachers development frame through self-development of university’s English teachers, which is the organic integration of teaching subjectivity, organization training, network intelligence training system and training content information. That doesn’t only enhance the concept of teachers’ subjectivity and lifelong learning, but also make clear the meaning of teachers’ training and teaching staff construction in the process of teachers’ development.

Notes:

〔1〕Chen Jianlin,The Integration of Computer and Networks into Foreign Language Curriculum — A Research Based on College English Reform,Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,2010.

〔2〕Chen Jianlin,On the Integration of Computer and Internet into Foreign Language Teaching Program — From An Ecological Point of View,Computer-Assisted Foreign Language Education,2006(12) , pp. 3-10.

〔3〕Dai Weidong, Wang Xuemei,On Foreign Language Teacher Professional Development in Information Environment:Connotation and Approaches,Computer-Assisted Foreign Language Education,2011(6), pp. 8-13.

〔4〕Kang Shumin,The Foreign Teaching Design from the Perspective of Educational Ecology,Foreign Language World,2012(5), pp.59-78.

Based on the previous research results and five principles, this paper tries to build an applicable optimization framework of college English classroom teaching, which centers on teacher development. According to this framework, teacher development should include the modernized teacher development framework with the core ideas of optimizing the teachers’ perception, teachers’ information literacy, and diversified teaching methods, in which the concepts of teachers’ self-development and life-long learning are emphasized. Moreover, the four important supporting contents were proposed: the teacher autonomy, the construction of intelligent teacher development platform, perfecting the training organization, and the informationization of teachers’ training.

network environment; English teachers; ecological niche

About the author：Sui Xiaobing, professor of Public Institute of Foreign Language,doctor,postgraduate tutor, research field: Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice; Cheng Lulu, lecturer of Public Institute of Foreign Language, master, research field: Foreign Language Learning Theory and Practice.

〔*〕This paper is funded by the key project of economic and social development of Heilongjiang Province(Specialized project for foreign languages discipline) titled with “The optimization research on web-based college English classroom teaching”(WY2014040-B); the foreign language joint research project of philosophy and social science of Heilongjiang Province titled with “The research on theory and practice of construction of web-based college English teaching mode from the perspective of educational ecology”(12H011); The key project of education and research development of Jiamusi University titled with “The empirical study of web-based autonomous learning and monitoring of learners”(JKA2013-024).