A review of role shifts among China's secondary school EFL teachers from a social-constructivist perspective

Abstract

Teacher development has been a focus of innovation in China's English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction with much attention given to teachers' professional promotion, which is aimed at rendering students' enhancement in learning. With the emphasis on facilitating learner autonomy and lifelong education in recent reform efforts, it has become significant that students should try to self-control their learning and become more active thinkers and problem-solvers. To ensure learner-centered EFL instruction, teachers have to highlight the development of students' independence and autonomy by re-orienting their roles from knowledge disseminators to organizers, partners, consultants, and facilitators. As such, the current paper raises concerns about the review of secondary school EFL teacher roles in China from the perspective of social constructivism which encourages language teachers to interact with their students and help them to apply the language themselves instead of only providing them with the language knowledge. At this point, language teachers are really mediators rather than knowledge-givers. Hopefully, this review paper would contribute to the shift of today's EFL teacher roles in China from disseminators or knowledge-givers to mediators of students' language learning for the further sake of providing reference evidence for policy makers, curriculum developers, and educators in this regard. © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.