ENGLISH TEACHERS’ CONCEPTIONS OF TEACHING ENGLISH AND CLASSROOM PRACTICES IN THE SELECTED SECONDARY SCHOOLS OF EASTERN HARARGHE, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The study was conducted to explore English teachers’ conceptions of teaching English and their classroom practices in the selected secondary schools of Eastern Hararghe, Ethiopia. In addressing this, exploratory sequential mixed method design was employed. First, adopting phenomenological approach, semi-structured interviews and classroom observations were conducted with 19 purposively selected teachers. Including the participants in the first phase, 133 teachers participated in the study from three randomly sampled clusters of secondary schools. The qualitative analysis followed grounded approach to emerge categories from the data based on content analysis. The quantitative analysis followed descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage and mean) and inferential statistics (independent sample t-test, one way ANOVA, Pearson’s product-moment correlation and simple linear regression). The findings reveal that transmission of specific knowledge of language elements and exam preparation were identified as the most predominant categories of conceptions and indicators of good teaching. Conversely, the two facilitative conceptions of teaching English (facilitating students’ ability to learn the language, and ‘facilitating students’ ability to apply learned knowledge/skills) were the least reported categories. Hence, the study revealed that teachers’ conceptions of teaching English were predominately knowledge-transmission/exam-focused than learning-facilitation/ meaning-making-focused. The study also suggested that English classroom practices were predominantly one-way delivery mode of instruction where teachers mechanically transmit language structures to the students. Majority of the English teachers whose classroom practices were largely traditional showed consistent relationship with the conceptions they held about teaching English. In terms of the learning-facilitation conceptions of teaching English, there was no consistent relationship between majority of these teachers’ conceptions of teaching English and the approaches they undertake in English classroom. Teachers’ overreliance on traditional approaches, the nature of teaching students was accustomed to and the high expectations on achievements in exam were found the contributing factors for the gaps between the English classroom practices and the underlying EFL teaching and learning policy claims. Therefore, as part of continuous professional development, reflective practices in which teachers re-construct various meanings about their own teaching need to be designed as constant reflections may contribute to change teachers’ conceptions of teaching English and their approaches to teaching.