The impact of contextual factors on English language teachers' beliefs

The purpose of this research is threefold. First, the relationship between teachers? beliefs and contextual factors is explored. Second, the factor which is most significant as perceived by the teachers themselves will be presented and finally, the existence of a meaningful difference between public and private school English teachers in terms of perceived impact of contextual factors will be examined. A scale was developed by the researchers having pre-interviews with English teachers and reviewing relevant literature. The scale developed was piloted with 82 public and private school English teachers working in different parts of Turkey and the collected data were subjected to reliability analysis with SPSS. 210 public and private school English teachers participated in the study. For further data, 14 participants were interviewed. The collected data revealed a significant relationship between contextual factors and English language teachers? beliefs and practices. It was also found out that student oriented contextual factors have the greatest impact on English language teachers. Except teacher and management oriented contextual factors, meaningful difference was observed between public school and private school English teachers in terms of policy, classroom, inspection, and student oriented contextual factors.