Changes in teachers’ beliefs after a professional development project for teaching writing: two Chinese cases

A plethora of research has found that teachers’ beliefs directly influence their classroom practices and teaching outcomes. While numerous studies in second/foreign language writing have examined the effectiveness of different innovative approaches on students’ learning to write, there is a paucity of research on writing teachers’ beliefs about these approaches and how their beliefs change in the process of their professional development. Such a lacuna becomes prominent in English as a Foreign Language contexts, especially in China, where there are numerous calls for changing the nature of classroom practices from product-focused to process- and student-centred instruction. In order to fill this gap, this brief article reports on a case study regarding changes in two Chinese English teachers’ beliefs after attending a professional development project for teaching writing. A key research question guides this study: What changes, if any, did the two teachers experience in their teaching beliefs during the project? Two writing teachers were voluntarily recruited for a case study. Findings show that the professional development project for teaching writing broadened the teachers’ understanding of different writing theories, provided a clear model of how to integrate these new approaches into regular writing courses, changed their instructional focus and shifted their perception of teachers’ roles in teaching practice.