Examining the Teaching Beliefs and Practices of Experienced ESL Teachers : A Sociocognitive-Transformative Perspective

Examining language teacher beliefs and practices has been the subject of inquiry for the past 20 years. While some studies confirmed the consistency between teachers’ beliefs and practices, others also confirmed that beliefs are not always reflected in their classroom practices. It has also been found that teachers’ beliefs and practices do not always integrate the recent and established principles in second language teaching. To this end, this study sought to explore the teaching beliefs and practices of experienced ESL teachers and to determine whether these beliefs and practices run consistent with the current principles in ESL pedagogy from a sociocognitive-transformative perspective. For the stated purpose, five experienced ESL teachers were interviewed. The findings revealed that while there are consistencies between their beliefs and practices, some divergence were also observed. These results were attributed to several factors such as the abstractness of principles and attitude toward students. Implications for teacher education and future studies are discussed.


INTRODUCTION
Examining language teacher beliefs and practices has been the subject of inquiry for the past 20 years.These studies have confirmed that teachers' beliefs are influenced by their own experience as learners (Holt-Reynolds 1992), outweigh the effect of teacher education (Kagan 1992, Richardson 1996), have significant effects on instructional decisions (Johnson 1994), resistant to change (Pickering 2005), and are not always reflected in their classroom practices (Pearson 1985, Phipps & Borg 2009).
It has also been found that teachers' beliefs and practises do not always integrate the recent and established principles in second language teaching (Breen, Hird, Milton, Oliver & Thwaite 2001).Ellis (1998) posits that teachers operate in classroom contexts that require them to make immediate decisions on what and how to teach.In short, teachers apply practical knowledge (acquired from actual experience) and not theoretical and more technical knowledge (product of SLA research [Borg & Burns 2008]) when working in the classroom.It is also a known fact that a gap exists between the recent teaching-learning principles and teaching beliefs of ESL teachers; and this gap even becomes wider when teachers put to use their beliefs in language classrooms.
One recent approach in English as second language (ESL) pedagogy is the sociocognitive-transformative approach (Barrot 2014, Barrot 2015a, Barrot 2015b).This approach integrates the most recent and established principles in ESL teaching from both theoretical and practical perspectives.However, no studies have yet attempted to investigate whether experienced ESL teachers are aware and apply the principles that the approach has set.To this end, this paper sought to determine the beliefs and practises of five experienced ESL teachers from a sociocognitive-transformative perspective.This study would shed light on whether the identified principles in sociocognitive-transformative approach are accessible and practicable even for experienced ESL teachers.Consequently, intervention programs can be adopted to address the identified tensions.

SOCIOCOGNITIVE-TRANSFORMATIVE APPROACH
Sociocognitive-transformative approach (Barrot 2014, Barrot 2015a, Barrot 2015b) is a pedagogical concept that aims to develop communicatively competent and 21 st century literate learners.Its development was prompted by the lack of a model that integrates the sociocultural, transformative, and pragmatic aspects of learning as well as the concept of 21 st century literacy.Theoretically, the model is anchored in sociocognitive approach (Atkinson 2002) and transformative learning (Mezirow 1978).Sociocognitive approach claims the interdependence between social, cognitive, and cultural aspects of language whereas transformative learning relates to learners' behaviour in order to participate and contribute to society they live in.
Underpinning this model are the 17 recent and established principles in L2 teaching and learning.The first three relate to the theoretical underpinning of the model while the next seven principles relate to pedagogical principles (principles 4 to 10).The last seven principles relate to teaching activities and learning goals (principles 11 to 17).These principles are as follows (Barrot 2014, pp. 444-445): 1. Teaching-learning processes need to adhere to the principles of constructivism 2. Language acquisition and development are best facilitated when both social and cognitive factors are taken into account.3. Teaching-learning processes need to allow learners to perform social actions, participate in communities, and contribute to social and self-transformation. 4. Teaching-learning processes need to take into account learners' individual differences by employing differentiation and by aligning content and tasks to the their social realities and psycholinguistic ability.5. Teaching-learning processes need to be contextualised by providing learners authentic language experience.6. Forms, skills, and various text types need to be revisited at increasing levels of difficulty and sophistication.7. Language is effectively learned through social interactions and collaboration between and among learners, teachers, and community.8. Information and communication technology needs to be integrated in the teachinglearning processes with emphasis on developing 21 st century multiliterate learners using integrative CALL.9. Teaching-learning processes need to adopt a process orientation.10.Reflection is a fundamental component of teaching-learning processes.11.Language teaching and learning involves the integration of all macro skills: speaking, listening, reading, writing, viewing, and representing.12. Language teaching and learning involve the integration of grammar and vocabulary to macro skills explicitly or incidentally.13.Teaching-learning processes need to adopt form-meaning connections and integrate form-focus instruction and meaning-based activities.14.Assessment needs to employ contextualised self-, peer, and teacher assessment in both traditional and alternative methods.15.Language teaching and learning involve the development and integration of multiple literacies aligned to 21 st century learning.16.Language teaching and learning involve a balanced emphasis on all components of communicative competence with due consideration on pragmatic competence.17.Teaching-learning processes need to integrate language and culture in order to prepare learners to become intercultural speakers who have the ability to understand the language and behaviour of different cultures and establish their own identity as users of another language.

TEACHER COGNITION
Teacher cognition is a crucial part of teacher development and teaching practices.It is "the unobservable cognitive dimension of teaching-what teachers know, believe, and think" (Borg 2003, p. 81).This definition is based on the assumption that teachers are active decision-makers who make choices as to the whats and hows of teaching based on their network of knowledge, beliefs, and thoughts (Borg 2003).Beliefs can be triggered by personal factors and professional contexts where the teacher is working and can also influence how the teachers execute activities and chose materials (Hashim, Alam & Yusoff 2014, Richards, Gallo & Renandya 2001).Janzen (2007) emphasised that the choice of learning materials is closely related with the teachers' desire to teach effectively at different proficiency levels.Effective teachers choose texts that are related to students' background or contained illustrations that might stimulate the learners' schema (Barrot 2013, Barrot 2015c).
They do not also rely on one series of texts; instead, they jump from one textbook to another (Sadeghi & Nikou 2012).Further, teachers choose a variety of materials with due consideration on different genres and cultural background of learners.As to their practice, they tend to be eclectic on the surface level (Breen et al. 2001).
Two different but related concepts linked to teacher cognition are teacher beliefs and teacher practices.According to Richards et al. (2001), teachers' belief is a crucial part of teacher development and considered to have two forms: core beliefs and peripheral beliefs (Pajares 1992).Core beliefs are more stable while the peripheral beliefs are more variable.Beliefs can also be triggered by personal factors and professional contexts in which the teacher is working.They also influence how the teachers execute activities and how they chose materials.However, several scholars (Borg 2003, Karavas-Doukas 1996, Phipps & Borg 2009) argued the existence of tension between teacher beliefs and practices.Such a tension is viewed as something undesirable.

TEACHER BELIEFS AND PRACTICES IN ESL PEDAGOGY
Many studies have been conducted on the relationship between teacher beliefs and practices.Some of these studies were in the context of grammar teaching (Farrell & Lim 2005, Phipps & Borg 2009) while others are contextualised in certain language teaching approaches (Nishino 2008, Zheng & Borg 2014).Farrell and Lim (2005) investigated and compared the grammar teaching beliefs and actual classroom practices of two experienced ESL teachers in a primary school in Singapore.Specifically, the study sought to understand teachers' beliefs on how grammar should be taught and on how they actually teach inside a grammar classroom.Using a qualitative case study approach, findings revealed a significant divergence between their beliefs and practices.Farrell and Lim (2005) attributed this divergence to time factors and teachers' reverence for traditional grammar teaching.
A similar study was conducted by Phipps and Borg (2009) who examined the tensions between teachers' teaching beliefs and practices in grammar teaching.Three experienced teachers, who were working at a private university in Turkey, participated in the study for more than 18 months.Observation was used to determine how they teach grammar while interview was done to identify the beliefs that underpinned their practices.The findings revealed that teachers' practices are consistent with their generic beliefs but not with more specific sets of beliefs.Thus, Phipps and Borg (2009) concluded that it is the core beliefs that influence teachers' instructional decisions.
Unlike the first two studies, Nishino (2008) investigated the beliefs and practices of English teachers as regards the use of communicative language teaching (CLT) approach.
This exploratory study also aimed to identify the contextual factors that should be changed to utilise CLT more effectively in language classrooms.Twenty-one (21) English teachers who participated in the study were interviewed and asked to complete a questionnaire.The results showed that the participants have solid knowledge of CLT.However, findings also revealed that they experienced difficulties in implementing some of the principles associated with CLT.These include the use of communicative speaking and listening activities.
More recently, Zheng and Borg (2014) examined the beliefs and practices of Chinese secondary English language teachers as regards task-based language teaching (TBLT).Using observations and semi-structured interviews, their implementation of TBLT and the factors that affected this implementation were identified.The findings also revealed that the teachers narrowly define TBLT and significantly incorporated a formal element of grammar into their lessons.
No studies have yet attempted to explore the teaching beliefs and practices of experienced ESL teachers from a sociocognitive-transformative perspective.To this end, this study sought to explore the teaching beliefs and practices of experienced ESL teachers.Specifically, this study sought to address the following questions: • What are the teaching beliefs and practices of experienced ESL teachers?
• Do experienced ESL teachers' beliefs and practices run consistent with the current principles in ESL pedagogy from a sociocognitive-transformative perspective?

METHODOLOGY
Five experienced ESL teachers participated in this study.They were chosen as the participants based on the following criteria: • at least a master's degree in applied linguistics, language teaching, or language education • have relevant experience in materials development • at least 10 years of ESL teaching experience.
Table 1 shows the teaching and professional background of the five ESL teachers.As can be seen in Table 1, two teachers have already obtained their doctoral degree while three others are currently taking their doctoral degree in Language Education or Reading Education.Their teaching experience ranges from 15 to 47 years which is much higher than the set criteria.In addition, they had all satisfied the requirement of teaching in an ESL context and had experience in writing and evaluating instructional materials for these learners.

INSTRUMENT
The present study used an interview guide to examine the teaching beliefs and practices of the five experienced ESL teachers.This instrument contained 29 items and was divided into two parts.The first part, which contained four questions, focused on the participants' teaching background.The second part contained 25 questions that focused on their language teaching beliefs and practices (see Appendix A).
Prior to the actual interview, the interview guide was validated by three experts with the relevant teaching and research experience.These experts suggested that some items be consolidated and other questions be deleted to make the interview guide more brief and direct.One specifically commented that some questions might be too long for the interview and suggested that some examples be provided for questions B1 and B8 to make the items more concrete.All these suggestions and comments were considered and incorporated into the revised instrument.Thereafter, the revised interview guide was piloted to three teachers who possessed a similar profile to that of the actual participants.Piloting was performed to ensure that the required data would be elicited in the specified interview duration.
During the actual interview, a semi-structured format was employed because it allows a certain degree of flexibility for both the interviewee and interviewer (Nunan 1991).A semistructured interview uses predetermined questions or topics/issues that allow elaborations and is considered as one of the most appropriate methods for an interpretative research.The focus during the actual interview was the teachers' beliefs and practices as regards second language teaching.

PROCEDURE
The actual interview began with a briefing and explanation of what the research is all about and the purpose of the interview.In case the interviewees had questions, such were addressed prior to the actual question and answer.The interview proper adhered to the suggestions of Walker (1985).First, the interviewer and interviewee sat side by side for a more productive interview.Considering the strengths and weakness of various recording procedures, the interview used tape-recording to preserve the actual and natural language and to record data with utmost objectivity and accuracy.Each interview lasted for about two hours.After the interview, the data was transcribed and coded for analysis.
The transcribed data from the interview were subjected to content analysis.The participants' responses were analysed at the semantic level (word and group of words).First, each response was coded and placed under the 25 predetermined categories (part B of the interview guide).In cases where the responses could be placed in more than one general topic these were placed in the related topics (Janzen 2007).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
This study aimed to examine the teaching beliefs and practices of experienced ESL teachers.It specifically sought to determine whether these five experienced ESL teachers practise the current principles in ESL pedagogy from a sociocognitive-transformative perspective.Using content analysis via coding, the responses of the participants were summarised in Table 2.After exploring the teaching beliefs and practices of the five experienced ESL teachers, findings showed that teachers generally agree with the principles of sociocognitivetransformative approach.However, it appears that their level of awareness and application of the 17 principles in their respective ESL classrooms vary.
As regards theories that underpin their teaching beliefs and practices, findings revealed that all of them employed the principle of learner-centredness.However, only three explicitly claimed that they adhere to constructivism while the other two appeared to put emphasis on assessment-based teaching.Interestingly, all of the teachers used an eclectic approach.This finding supports previous findings that teachers are generally eclectic in practise (Breen et al. 2001, Dat 2008).The majority of them posited that the reason for their adherence to such approach is to address the different learning styles, preferences, and needs of the learners.Teacher 1 (T1) also added that her adherence to the eclectic approach is prompted by the nature of topic at hand which could only accommodate a particular approach.Moreover, the teachers also vary in their goals in teaching English.For instance, teachers T2 and T3 put prime on producing functional and productive citizens while teachers T4 and T5 focused on developing learners' communicative competence.T1, on the hand, aimed at helping learners understand why they use language.
On whether they adhere to the principles of transformative learning, findings revealed that all teachers agree with and practise transformative learning.However, three of the teachers (T1, T3, and T4) were partially aware and partially practise transformative learning.The same is true for critical pedagogy.Two teachers (T1 and T4) are partially aware and partially practise such a pedagogical concept.A divergence between teachers' beliefs and practices was observed regarding multiliteracy.While T1 and T4 are aware and agree with the concept of multiliteracy, they claim that they fail to fully practise this principle in their respective classrooms.
While examining their level of awareness, agreement, and application of pedagogical principles (critical pedagogy, differentiation, process orientation, contextualisation, collaboration, spiral progression, reflective learning, and ICT integration), all teachers confirmed that they are all aware of and agree with these eight principles.However, the findings also revealed a divergence when it comes to the application of these principles.For example, while all teachers confirmed that they are fully aware and agree with the concept of differentiation and reflective learning, all of them failed to fully practise these two principles in their classrooms.Conversely, no divergence was found in the teachers' application of collaboration and integration of macro skills in their classrooms.One possible explanation for this is the high difficulty level of integrating reflective learning and differentiation into classroom teaching.For example, to use differentiation in class involves differentiating the content (topic and materials), process (activities), product (output of demonstration of understanding), and learning environment (classroom condition) (Tomlinson 1999).As for reflective learning, one factor that hinders the use of reflective learning is the students themselves.According to Hatton and Smith (1995), most students, though they understand how to write reflectively, reflect superficially and descriptively only.
The teachers were also asked about their specific classroom beliefs and practices.Findings showed that all of them are aware of, agree to, and fully apply the integration of vocabulary and grammar into the teaching of macro skills and application of various forms of assessment (summative and formative; traditional and alternative).The same is true for peer assessment and teacher assessment.However, a divergence between the teachers' belief and practices was revealed.While all the teachers were fully aware of and agreed with the concept of self-assessment, all of them failed to fully practise such a teaching process.One reason for this finding is that the teachers felt that students have the tendency to overestimate or underestimate their performance relative to their assessment.This observation is confirmed by several previous studies (Barrot 2015d, Brown & Hudson 1998, Cassidy 2007, Karnilowicz 2012, Lew, Alwis & Schmidt 2010, MacIntyre et al. 1996).
Regarding the teachers' beliefs on administering tasks, findings revealed that almost all of them administer a pretask for three purposes: to activate their schema, to engage learners, and to identify their baseline skills and weaknesses.Only T3 stated that she exclusively used a pretask to engage the learners.Nonetheless, all teachers confirmed that administering pretasks and main tasks is a crucial stage for input presentation.When asked about their guidelines and principles in choosing and administering tasks, four of them (T2, T3, T4, and T5) noted that tasks should be aligned to objectives/standards while three (T1, T2, and T4) of them professed that tasks should be graded accordingly to match learners' needs.

CONCLUSION
The present study sought to examine the teaching beliefs and practices of experienced ESL teachers and whether experienced ESL teachers practise the current principles in ESL pedagogy from a sociocognitive-transformative perspective.The findings revealed that while there are consistencies between their beliefs and practices, some divergence were also observed.Similar phenomena have been reported by previous studies (Farrell & Kun 2008, Karavas-Doukas 1996, Richards et al. 2001).In fact, even experienced teachers differ in their pedagogical principles and beliefs (Breen et al. 2001).
While this study provided some interesting insights, it also has some limitations.Methodologically, this study employed a case study.One limitation associated with this type of method is the difficulty of drawing generalisations.Therefore, caution should be made on the interpretation of the findings provided.Second, the teachers were not observed to determine their level of application of principles.What they have claimed during the interview may not necessarily reflect what they practise in their respective classrooms.Future studies may include other data gathering techniques (observation, document analysis [i.e., lesson plans]) to fully understand the underlying reasons for the divergence and to obtain more conclusive results.
Despite its limitations, the present study has clear implications for teacher education and research methodology.First, although the study cannot be generalised, its findings provide insights as to how sociocognitive-transformative approach can be better implemented in ESL classrooms.Second, teacher education programmes should focus on enhancing the principles which are not easily integrated even by experienced teachers.Finally, this study provides some future research directions as regards the operationability of some established principles in ESL pedagogy.

TABLE 2 .
Teaching beliefs and practices of ESL teachers