Guiding Principles in English Language Teaching Classrooms in the Age of Diversity

It is commonly believed that the core of all motives for teaching a foreign language is to enable the learners to use the language for their due purposes [1]; however, in practice, thanks to the presence of diverse teaching/ learning principles, including various instructional beliefs (also called minitheories, insights, cultures, assumptions, self-constructed representational systems, and conceptions of learning) teachers’ classroom behavior, and hence classroom teaching outcome varies, even in cases where two or more teachers are working under the same syllabus [2].


Introduction
It is commonly believed that the core of all motives for teaching a foreign language is to enable the learners to use the language for their due purposes [1]; however, in practice, thanks to the presence of diverse teaching/ learning principles, including various instructional beliefs (also called minitheories, insights, cultures, assumptions, self-constructed representational systems, and conceptions of learning) teachers' classroom behavior, and hence classroom teaching outcome varies, even in cases where two or more teachers are working under the same syllabus [2].
Cognitive psychologists believe that instructional beliefs are part of the underlying mechanisms of metacognition, and a driving force in teaching performance which are intertwined with factors such as self-concept, identity, self-efficacy, personality, and other individual differences [3,4]. Should that be the case, it can be inferred that if teachers intend to facilitate the kind of learning expected by the stakeholders, they, as the managers of the classroom, are required to work dynamically to bridge the gap between their own belief systems and those of the others, which usually come from diverse community resources, abilities, motivation, personality types, attitudes, age, previous life and learning experiences, and physical well-being [5,6].
The importance of diverse belief systems in the classroom outcome was also echoed by many other researchers. For instance, Buehl & Beck [7] argue that diverse beliefs may influence whatever teachers do in their career, from the roles and activities they adopt to the objectives and assessment methods chosen to define the expected outcomes. For this reason, researchers such as Corriveau, Ronfard & Cui [8] suggested that diverse belief systems must be synchronized by the teacher, and that teachers are first required to be aware of the instructional beliefs of the others towards a smooth classroom practice.
These facts point not only to the existence of a probable gap between the way teachers and the others see the classroom, but also to the dynamism of teaching/ learning and the importance of the teachers' dynamic adaptation in making the right decisions for the possible outcome of classroom teaching [9]. systems in three areas of the instructional approach, design and procedures?
Question i was then converted into the following null hypothesis.
H0) There is no gap between teachers' instructional beliefs against those of the others (course designers and students), as reflected in the course objectives, self-reports and the classroom teaching/ learning behavior.

Review of Literature
Beliefs guide the individuals to be selective in what to attend to, be admitted into, and keep out of one's environment. The notion of the power of belief in teaching and learning is not new. Indeed, in 1933, the prominent educational philosopher John Dewey noted that belief, as a kind of psychological filter, is the best indicator of the decisions that people make throughout their lives. Others too highlight the importance of beliefs in educational settings and point out that beliefs are central to the overall learning experience and achievements [10][11][12][13]. However, despite the importance of the teachers' instructional beliefs for students' learning behavior [14][15][16][17] and learning outcomes [10,18,19], it took some time for researchers to take this very important attribute into considerations, partly because any attempt to study teachers' beliefs is immediately surrounded by many conceptual and instructional difficulties.
Regarding the examination of the instructional teachers' beliefs, available literature indicates that many aspects such as belief referents, their source, their development and the extent to which they influence behavior have already been investigated by the researchers over the past years. For instance, Richards [20] studied teachers' belief referents and noted that "teachers' belief systems are stable sources of reference in their instructional approach, instructional design and instructional procedures. He further explained that approach represented the teachers' theoretical beliefs (theoretical perspectives about language, perception of language learning and pedagogical practice of language teaching), design reflected the ways teachers put those theories into practice (by specifying pedagogical emphasis, students' role(s), and program goals), and finally procedures specified the step by step activities teachers do in classrooms (The activities which are either cognitive oriented or interaction based) (pp.51-52) More recently, Zheng [21] addressed the interactional processes of teaching, and examined the substance of interactions between teachers' beliefs, practices and context. He concluded that the co-existence and interaction of different types of beliefs determined teachers' practice. Similarly, Kolb [22] claims that the knowledge systems, beliefs, attitudes, values, and experiences of individual teachers shape the procedures of teaching on a day-to-day and event moment-to-moment basis.
Agreeing with Richards that teachers' belief systems are stable sources of reference in their teaching practice, and with Kolb that teachers' experience shapes teaching procedures, the question raised by the present study is what guiding principles direct teachers to make the decision in the adaptation process between their own instructional belief systems and those of the others in English language classrooms? The results are significant because they would help teachers' insight into narrowing the borderline between diverse roles in the classroom.

Research site
The study was conducted in Guilan, the Northern State in Iran. This site is a good platform for conducting such a diversityoriented study for two reasons: first for its proximity to the Caspian Sea which allows for cross-cultural interaction, and second, for the antiquity of its cultural background which is known as being diverse, multi-active and dialogue-oriented.

Participants
A cluster sample of 19 classes was randomly selected from the public high school population of Guilan for this study. The teacher sample (14= 73.7% females and 5= 26.3% males) were diverse in terms of age (27-52; mean=35.38 and standard deviation= 7.91) and teaching experience (3-28; mean= 13.90 and standard deviation =7.73). Fifteen of them (79%) had already taken extra teacher training courses (TTC), and the other 4 (21%) did not have any experience other than what they had received in their degree programs at universities. As for the student population, the classes included 447 students (316= 73.2% females and 116= 26.8% males). The students too were diverse and of different age (15 -18; mean=16.68 and standard deviation= 1.26) and years of English learning experience (5.00-10.00; mean= 6.44 and standard deviation =3.01).

Instrumentation and procedures
This research employed three types of data collection instruments: a researcher designed questionnaire, overt observations and semi-structured interviews.
The questionnaire contained 9 sections. The first section addressed the demographic information (age, gender, education, school type, TTC, and teaching experience), and the other eight addressed the respondents' instructional 'approach' (Theoretical Perspective, Perception of language learning, and Pedagogical Practice), 'design' (Pedagogical emphasis, Students' roles , and Program goals) and 'procedures' (Cognitive/ learning style ,teaching style and their ability to make use of and interact in English). Each item in the questionnaire corresponded to Richards' [20] theory which defined the terms approach, design, and procedures. Responses were ranked on a Likert Scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). All the participants were asked to complete the questionnaire and indicate their degree of agreement or disagreement with different belief statements. To ensure the appropriateness and comprehensibility of the questionnaire items, four experienced instructors were consulted. The reliability coefficients (Cronbach's alpha) of the instrument was estimated, and the result is displayed in Table 1. As the result in Table 1 indicates the reliability coefficient was high enough (higher than 0.80) to allow for further statistical analyses. However, due to the concerns associated with using questionnaires alone, as well as the inability of the instrument to address the classroom behavior which was an important point of consideration in this study, overt observations, along with follow up semi-structured interviews were also used in the study.
For the observation process, the available classes were identified and three of them which expressed readiness to cooperate were contacted; next, one whole classroom session with an earlier announcement was observed and the prevalent practices in those classrooms were thoroughly recorded. To record classroom behavior, a checklist was used to mark the following features: Class size, Rapport (close relationship between students and teacher), Satisfaction (degree of engagement), Atmosphere (tone or mood of the classrooms), Activities (actions taken in pursuit of the objective) and the Language used (language in which the instruction was carried out).
For the interview, a random sample of 8 teachers and 20 students was selected to be interviewed. To assess their perception of the classroom environment, the questions targeted major concerns of language learning, namely: The most important influences on their language learning, Teachers' role, Learners' role, Error correction, Role of teaching facilities in English classrooms, the most important part of learning a new language, Role of L2 in teaching, Individual differences, and Homework.

Findings and Results
The results of the data obtained through the questionnaires, interviews and observations are presented for each instrument separately below.

Questionnaires
Teachers' beliefs regarding their instructional approach, design and procedures was elicited through the researchermade questionnaire. The responses were statistically examined through the nonparametric Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon tests, and the results are summarized in Table 2. It should be mentioned that as the study intended to make a comparison between the teachers' beliefs against those of the others, the same questionnaire was also used as a checklist to infer the course objectives, which in turn reflected the course designers' beliefs hidden therein.
As displayed in Table 2, the results of the general comparison in all sections of approach, design and procedures indicate that the difference between teachers' beliefs about learning English as a foreign language and the underlying objectives decided by the syllabus is statistically significant. Therefore, the null hypothesis is rejected. However, to be more specific, the figures for approach, design and procedures were examined more closely. Reiterating that, based on Richards [20], the terms approach, design and procedures are defined by this study to include theoretical perspective, perception of language learning, pedagogical practice (approach), pedagogical emphasis, students' roles and program goals (design), and cognitive/ learning oriented, and interaction-based activities(procedures), the results are presented separately, and respectively for each dimension below.

Approach
Theoretical perspective: The significance of this difference is smaller than 0.01, so we can conclude that the null hypothesis of no difference between the theoretical perspectives of the teachers and the course objective is rejected. While most teachers favored the environmentalist approach towards learning and looked at language as a system to be mastered by the students, the course was in favor of the interactionist approach and viewed language as a means for communication. Although in few cases it was observed that there was a concordance between teachers and the course objectives, the number was not large enough to moderate the results.
Language learning: According to the results displayed, the null hypothesis of no difference between teachers and course objectives regarding language learning was rejected. More specifically, whereas the course was designed to cover all 4 skills in the preferred order of 'Listening', ' Speaking', 'Reading', and 'Writing', teachers viewed the written rather than the spoken language as more important in the process of language development. This was verified by the observation and interview data as well.
Pedagogical practice: The 2-tailed Asymptotic Significance of 0.014, is smaller than 0.05 which suggests that there was a difference between the two. However, there was not a conclusive evidence that they sharply differed in this attribute. This conclusion is reinforced by the responses obtained through the interview.

Design
Pedagogical emphasis: The 2-tailed Asymptotic Significance of 0.003 rejects the null hypothesis. More specifically, based on the data, 'reading' followed by 'pronunciation' and 'student participation' received the greatest pedagogical emphasis whereas 'survival skills', 'spelling' and 'communicative skills' were the least focused.
Students' roles: No significant difference was observed for this attribute. The data shows the roles most expected from the students were: 'consulting with others before answering', and 'volunteering answers'.
Program goals: The 2-tailed Asymptotic Significance of 0.61 shows no significant difference between the two sets of beliefs, so the null hypothesis cannot be rejected. Descriptive statistics indicated that although the target objective for both teachers and the course designers was the same, the route was not necessarily so. Whereas the most important goal cited was: 'learn more English', the least were: 'learn about Target culture' and 'learn about native speakers'. Table 2 indicates a significant difference for this attribute (Asymp. Sig. = .000), so the null hypothesis can be rejected. Whereas, the activities suggested by the course were interactionbased: 'by speaking with native speakers', teachers preferred cognitive-oriented activities such as: 'learning by reading'. According to the data in table 2 the asymptotic significance of 0 .00 confirms a significant difference between the two sets under investigation.

Procedures
In general, the 2-tailed Asymptotic Significance of .000, obtained through Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon tests, on all components of the questionnaires, rejects the null hypothesis and gives a verifies that there was a gap between teachers' instructional beliefs against those of the others (course designers), as reflected in the course objectives, self-reports and the classroom teaching/ learning behavior.

Interview
To assess the perceived beliefs regarding the guiding principles in teachers' managerial decisions, a smaller sample, composed of 8 teachers and 20 students, was selected to be interviewed. The interview was semi-structured to allow for more flexibility and at the same time comparability. To be more exact, the participants were asked for their views on 'the most important influences on language learning', 'teachers' role', 'learners' characteristics', 'error correction', and 'the role of English classrooms in facilitating learning English'. The questions for the interview were based on the commonly expressed concerns of both English language students and teachers in this research context. The results obtained from the teacher and student sample are presented below. It should be noted that the original responses, which were in Persian, are translated back into English for this research report.

Teachers
The most important influences on language learning: In response to this question, three of the interviewees (15.7%) mentioned 'students' practice', two of them (10.26%) pointed to 'listening and speaking' and the others expressed 'educational system', 'materials' and 'security of different types' as the influential factors on language learning. It should be noted that no reference was made by the teacher to their own influence on language learning. Teachers' role: For this item, most of the teachers interviewed (75.5%) claimed that activities needed to be controlled by the teacher rather than by the students, even where the students' role, by nature, is more active, for example in negotiation and collaboration. They admitted that they know best what should be done for their students.

Learners' characteristics:
Almost all the teachers interviewed agreed that a good learner is one who attends the classes regularly, listens to the teacher, does his/ her assignments fully and on time and is polite. They also believed that a successful learner is one who is born with the aptitude for success and no matter who the teacher is they will find the necessary motivation to push themselves forward.
Error correction: In reacting to this item, 87.7% of the interviewees claimed that students learn through the errors they make. So, if the errors are left undetected teachers do a disservice to their students. Errors, specially the grammar errors, must be corrected. Besides, they gave error correction such a great credit that asked, "what's the role of the teacher after all if they are not to correct?" Role of teaching facilities in English classrooms: Whereas most (89%) admitted that "It is right that the schools and classrooms are not the best they should", they also believed that, "We should bear in mind that under the same condition lots of successful students have been trained and are now serving the society. So, although better facilities and environment might help more learners, good learners are always good under any conditions and the bad are bad under any"; However, the other few (11%) admitted they should update themselves and their students. They believed this could not be done without using the new facilities offered by technology.

The most important part of learning a new language:
The most important part of language according to all the teachers interviewed were what they called the 'backbone' of language learning: 'reading and grammar'. They further argued that through reading and grammar one can develop all the abilities he/she requires in learning a foreign language.

Role of L2 in teaching:
Majority of the interviewees (96.5%) confessed that since the time of the classes is limited and the students are many, it is not wise to spend time on explaining something in English when it can easily be conveyed through using L1. To be realistic L1 is needed for all students at any levels. Of course, for beginners, they claimed, they needed it more.
Individual differences: Almost all the interviewees stated: "This is such a luxury topic in Iranian schools that we cannot afford. Schools, parents and administrators want us to produce good results, so we cannot get concerned with issues for which we cannot do anything and let them prevent us from doing our job--that is more teaching. Of course, this does not mean we close our eyes to the student who has a special need, but this is what, in very special occasions of course, the students themselves should ask us because we do not have time to go for discovering special needs and differences." Homework: All the interviewees reiterated that practice makes perfect. The more, the better. However, they admitted that the only thing they can afford in this regard is to just assign the homework for the sake of further practice without any feedback and confessed that they could not afford any more correction at home. So, although homework was assigned, there was hardly any feedback.

Students
The most important influences on language learning: Unlike the teachers' response which did not refer to the teachers in this regard, the most frequent responses by the students mentioned 'teachers' (30.5%,), 'Listening and Speaking' (27.5%) and 'practice' (21.7%).

Teachers' role:
Students' responses were more varied than the teachers' here. 10% of the interviewees believed that teachers can make English a pleasant or disgusting subject. They complained that the strict teachers they have had so far made English a frightening subject for them. Others (88%), however, emphasized that young, active teachers with the necessary knowledge and fluency as well as good books can play a very important role in helping them learn English. Still a small percentage (2%) believed learning English at public schools is a waste of time, and the only way to learn is attending classes in private language institutes.

Learners' characteristics:
In response to this item, 92% of the interviewees believed that a good learner is one who can get good scores. However, they were concerned that students' family background, their economic status, and their politeness are what the teachers care for. This was directly mentioned by some students: "We have learned from our teachers to hide our true selves and show them what they like to see because otherwise we have to experience hard penalties." Error correction: Interestingly, 100% of the interviewees wanted their errors to be corrected, not in front of the others though, and not at the cost of losing their respect and scores.

Role of teaching facilities in English classrooms:
Most of them (89%)believed that teaching facilities could help them learn, however, they feared that the addition of more facilities meant charging them with more money that they cannot afford. Still others said with or without facilities, you must do private classes to succeed: "With these schools, teachers and programs we do not get anywhere. " The most important part of learning a new language: In response to this question, 76% of the interviewees wanted to learn English to be able to communicate with the native speakers on the net and they believed the activities which can take them there are: "more practice on listening, speaking", "classroom discussion", and "seeing movies". Of course, they preferred more speaking than listening. So, they were upset to see that their teachers just favored reading and grammar.

Role of L2 in teaching:
For this item,98.3% of the respondents wanted their teachers to use English in class. Moreover, they wanted their teachers to have native-like accent and proficiency.
Individual differences: Unanimously, 100% of the interviewees wanted their teachers to be kind, caring and considerate. They expected them to see their students as naturally imperfect humans not accurate computers which can send back the information, they had already fed them with, at the press of a button! Homework: A great percentage of students (92.6%) wanted to have homework with teachers' constructive comments. However, they did not like to lose any points on this.
As the results of the interview indicate, the gap between teachers' and students' instructional beliefs, like the case between teachers and course objectives, continues to persist. It was also noticed that the principle which guided teachers in their decisions about classroom teaching was the practicality concerns-overcoming time shortage, meeting the wants of the stakeholders, covering the whole curriculum, and responding to personal and professional pressures.

Observation
Finally, to observe teachers' classroom management in relation to the guiding principles and their effects on students' involvement, three classrooms which agreed to participate in the observation section of the study were overtly observed. The results, which are presented below covers observation of the participants' activities, behaviors, actions, and interpersonal interactions based on the premeditated definitions of the terms. For the analyses of the results, twenty (20%) of the random sample from the data which had been recorded was drawn, carefully read, and several possible coding schemes or categories were considered. Initial categories were formed, and the coding scheme was formalized so that another coder could use it and arrive at the corresponding conclusions. A trial coding was developed, and all the data were coded according to the scheme developed. Another coder, independent of the experiment, but knowledgeable about coding procedures, was selected to validate the Information was then compared and a percentage agreement 89% was met. Once this reliability had been established, all the data were coded with the assistance of the independent rater.
The results indicated that the teachers' actions were guided neither by the teachers' theoretical beliefs nor by the students' values and individual preferences, but by practicality concerns. Even, for those very few cases were the students' wants were taken into consideration, the teachers attributed this behavior to their own personal characteristic rather than any other theoretical considerations [23].

Conclusion & Discussion
This study raised two research questions: 1) Is there any gap between teachers' instructional beliefs against those of the others (course designers and students), as reflected in the course objectives, self-reports and the classroom teaching/ learning behavior? And 2) What is the guiding principle in the English language classrooms in the adaptation process between diverse belief systems in three areas of the instructional approach, design and procedures? In response to the first research question, the results, in line with Corriveau, Ronfard & Cui [8]confirmed that there was a gap between the ways teachers and the others see teaching/ learning in English language classrooms in this research context, which in fact influenced the way teachers chose to act in the classroom. This verifies that diverse beliefs may influence whatever teachers do in their career, from the roles and activities they adopt to the objectives and assessment methods chosen to define the expected outcomes.
It was also observed that teachers' dynamic synchronization of diverse instructional beliefs may act as a predictive framework to forecast instructional practices or learning outcome. The observation revealed that where teachers made the due adaptation, they appeared to be doing a more convincing and more effective job. In contrast, where there was a gap and the gap persisted, there was a lack of engagement from the students' side, and hence an instructional breakdown. This was also reported in earlier research [5][6][7].
In response to the second research questions, it was concluded that teachers' adaptation process is evidently aligned with the practicality concerns. To be more exact, if we admit that dynamic synchronization requires immediate decisions, then this process like any other decision-making process needs to be valid (theoretically sound), reliable (practically predictable) and practical (cost-effective). The data collected for this study indicated that in teachers' attempt for adaptation, although in most cases teachers' instructional beliefs were theoretically sound, and valid, and their individual values consistent, due to the practicality concerns-dictated by diverse environmental constrains--teachers chose to go with what works better in coping with the contextual demands; though sometimes miscalculated.
To sum up, this study confirms that teaching/ learning is dynamic and that the difference between teachers' instructional beliefs and those of the others is critical. Therefore, to prepare pre-service teachers for the demands of real life classrooms, it is suggested that special education in environmental analysis and context-tailored practice be provided. Similarly, to narrow the gap between teachers and course designers, syllabus designers need to allow for more freedom to the teachers to make the right decision in the right time.
All of these in one form or another suggest that teacher education programs need certain modification. That is, preservice teachers first need to gain consciousness, awareness or feedback regarding their classroom teaching behavior, and then learn about the techniques of synchronization or adaptation before they address the issue of the clash of the instructional beliefs in real life classrooms. In other words, teachers need to reconsider their classroom roles to come to grips with their deep-seated preferences.