Teachers’ Beliefs of Behaviors, Learning, and Teaching Related to Minority Students: A Comparison of Han and Mongolian Chinese Teachers

Source: Teaching Education, Volume 27, Issue 4, 2016, Pages 371-395

This study surveyed the beliefs of behavior, learning, and teaching that the mainstream Han and minority Mongolian Chinese teachers in the same school contexts hold about their Mongolian Chinese students.

It found that the two groups agreed that teachers’ inadequate planning and management were the major sources of their students’ behavior problems while students’ home backgrounds, abilities, and efforts explained their learning failure or success.
Both believed that students’ emotional and social problems were more important than their learning problems for them to attend to, and their expertise in helping students develop self-worth was more important than their expertise in curriculum and pedagogy.
Both preferred to vary teaching standards, content, and methods to accommodate students’ differences and offer opportunities for students to discover things themselves.