Investigating Elementary EFL Teachers’ Intercultural Competence and Self-Efficacy Beliefs

• Main Authors: HUANG, TSAI-WEI, 黃彩維
• Other Authors: LIU, MEI-HUI
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/3cvrvd

碩士 === 東海大學 === 外國語文學系 === 107 === ABSTRACT Intercultural competence plays an important role when people are interacting with others from different cultural backgrounds at the global village. Accordingly, the development of intercultural competence has gradually become essential in language education and teacher training. As noted by previous researchers, the extent to which language teachers espouse intercultural competence may determine how they conduct classroom practice and enhance student learning outcome. Additionally, teacher self-efficacy is an important essence for teacher professionalism; that is, the more teachers perceive self-efficacy, the better they equip themselves to educate students to the desired aspects. Yet, up to date limited studies have investigated these two aforementioned issues at the same time, especially in the English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. The study was hence undertaken to examine whether EFL teacher self-efficacy is related to their intercultural competence as a whole. This study used a questionnaire to collect quantitative data from elementary EFL teachers around various geographical areas in Taiwan, and 159 English teachers were invited to cooperate with the online questionnaire survey (N=159). After decoding the data collected from the survey, descriptive statistics, independent sample t test, and Pearson correlation were applied to analyze the data via SPSS 22.0. The major research findings are as follows: 1. There is a positive correlation between the intercultural competence and self-efficacy for the recruited elementary EFL teachers in Taiwan. 2. There is no significant difference between the experience of oversea studies and the intercultural competence as well as self-efficacy for the participating EFL teachers. 3. There is no significant difference between educational background and the intercultural competence as well as self-efficacy for the participating EFL teachers. 4. There is no significant difference between the experience of teaching and the intercultural competence as well as self-efficacy for the participating EFL teachers. 5. There is no significant difference between English proficiency and the intercultural competence as well as self-efficacy for the participating EFL teachers. Last, according to the findings and limitations of this study, some pedagogical implications and research suggestions are provided for elementary schools, teacher trainers, and current elementary EFL teachers.