Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices about Teaching of Writing:
A Pathway to Holistic Teaching
Galuh Nur Rohmah
1
and Vita Nur Santi
1
1
Department of English Letters, Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim, Malang, Indonesia
Keywords: EFL Writing, Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices
Abstract: This research investigates teachers’ beliefs and practices about EFL writing. The teachers of EFL writing
become potential asset to promote holistic teaching. Teachers of EFL writing are challenged to facilitate
meaningful writing class to provide holistic learning. Under the principal theory of writing instruction, the
data were analyzed to identify teachers’ orientations in teaching writing. The data reveal that the teachers’
beliefs about writing are writing as formal system, cognitive process, social activity, content-focused form,
creative expression, and text function orientation. The beliefs, then, influence the practices since the teachers
employ activities reflecting the diverse beliefs. The practices direct to holistic teaching since it meets the
students’ spiritual, emotional, physical, and intellectual needs. Through the empirical evidence of this
research, we argue that the exploration on teachers’ beliefs and practices can be inspiration for other EFL
practitioners in building classroom atmosphere leading to millennial holistic teaching in EFL writing.
1 INTRODUCTION
Global challenges expect people to have strong
capability on every single human aspect including
being whole person who is balance in cognitive,
affective, and psychomotor aspects. It is crucial to
build human resource having strong
interconnectedness of experience and reality, and of
the surrounding context and environment to have a
sense of meaning and give meaning to life. This
challenges any institutions to provide. The spirit of
holistic education offers the great chance for
developing human beings with a global conscience, a
vision of peace, love, and intelligence (Jafari, 2012).
The area of education contributes much on
reaching the goals. The strategic role of education
creates possibilities of making the whole individual.
In the context, EFL language teachers as one of
contributing elements are expected to facilitate the
students into stimulating classroom activities. The
teachers are responsible for bringing the students
become the actor of the learning process which is
commonly known as student-centred learning. It
directs to become holistic person who learn best when
s/he encounter whole ideas, events, and materials in
purposeful contexts, not by studying subparts isolated
from actual use. They must aware of the connection,
the relevance, and the tide between the classrooms
and outside. The EFL learning that requires both
teachers and students to have strong connection to
outer aspects is EFL writing course.
In the area of EFL writing, most teachers are
using process approach to facilitate the students to be
able to have good writing skill. The approach has
been applied for years ago. It was the beginning of the
shift toward more holistic teaching. The process
oriented writing class tries to see writing as the way
to make the students feel that writing is discovering
meaning and involving many stimulating aspects for
students’ writing skill. It encourages the students to
be independent writer, and makes them aware of the
back and forth process of writing (Rohmah, 2009).
Shifting from product and process approaches EFL
writing class indicates that EFL writing was not only
focus on micro-aspects but also macro-aspects
(Rohmah, 2008; Ling, 2012). It became a great
leading activity toward millennial holistic teaching in
writing.
It has been accepted idea that teachers’ way of
thinking and understanding are very crucial
component of their teaching practices. Language
teachers themselves may hold certain beliefs about
language learning that will have an impact on their
instructional practices and that are likely to influence
their students’ beliefs about language learning (Rula,
2009). The beliefs, then, influence the way the
teachers conceptualize the tasks and contextualize the
546
Rohmah, G. and Nur Santi, V.
Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices about Teaching of Writing: A Pathway to Holistic Teaching.
DOI: 10.5220/0009911705460552
In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Recent Innovations (ICRI 2018), pages 546-552
ISBN: 978-989-758-458-9
Copyright
c
2020 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
idea in the classroom. The teachers’ beliefs play
important role in their development because teachers
are highly influenced by their beliefs, which in turn
are closely linked to their values, to their views of the
world, to their conception of their place within it
(Khanalizadeh & Allami, 2012).
Therefore, this paper describes what the teachers’
beliefs are and how the beliefs are applied into
practices which facilitate holistic learning in the
writing courses. The results can be intellectual
resource to make better policy in teaching and
learning process, and the guideline to plan
professional development activities associated with
specifically holistic teaching in language learning and
globally holistic education at university level.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Defining the Teachers’ Beliefs
Exploring the teachers’ perception, view, and mental
process has been major concern since 30 years ago. It
is very important research interest because the
exploration provides information about what are the
teachers’ beliefs and how the beliefs affects their
teaching practices, the way they see their works, the
mental process of preparing the works. Moreover, the
beliefs also show the teachers’ instructional thought,
the actions they do in the classroom, and the decision
making for teaching problems.
Teacher's belief is a complicated phenomenon
that involves various aspects. Beliefs might be
defined as one's personal views, conceptions, and/or
theories. Belief systems represent a personal guide by
helping individuals define and understand the world
and themselves. Teachers' beliefs play a central role
in the process of teacher development because
teachers are highly influenced by their beliefs, which
in turn are closely linked to their values, to their views
of the world and to their conceptions of their place
within it (Yu & Lee, 2014).
2.2 Holistic Education and 21
st
Century
Skills
The historical background of education that education
should be understood as the art of cultivating the
moral, emotional, physical, psychological and
spiritual dimensions of the developing child (Miller,
2014) inspires the movement of holistic teaching. The
dimensions explain some important intellectual
sources that make the existence of holistic education
influence education practice today. Starting from the
idea of wholeness of all phenomena, joyful and
suffering-mind and matter-human and non-human-so
on, meaning it is to synthesis and integration rather
than separation. The second is the life is not
mechanistic but meaningful. The complexity of life
and human being should not be seen only from cause
and effect relationship and like calculating machine.
It was based on the belief that language is a whole;
therefore, it is to be taught as a whole (Çekiç, 2010).
The implementations of holistic education in
Indonesia have been done in some educational levels
with different subjects (Mardijono, J.J., 2004;
Yuniarto & Khasanah, 2014
; Rochmawati, 2015;
Sutarman, Tjahjono, & Hamami, 2017). In the area of
English Language Teaching, it has been implemented
in teaching Syntax course where the students were
assisted with not only theoretical forms but also more
practical applications. Students cooperated and
supported each other to improve and make progress
in doing various provided activities. Students’
comments and inputs in the end of the course show
that the applied model is worth continuing and
adapted to the other courses. In addition, in high
school level, this approach has also been
implemented in the assessment process for Junior
high school students in which the results show that
the assessment is applicable, practical, authentic,
effective and efficient.
2.3 EFL Writing
Writing has been one of language skills involving
many aspects of the language. It needs grammatical
accuracy and proper word choice. It involves well-
organized ideas and logical content. Moreover, the
current discussion on EFL Writing about various
orientations of writing brings another challenge for
EFL teachers and learners. Formal system of writing
commonly found in the last decade focusing on
proper grammar, correct development of ideas, and
rigid standards. It has been familiar with product
oriented. The cognitive system has been applied to
accommodate the students’ need to experience the
process of writing. This system allows the students to
discover the meaning through writing.
With the high standard competence to achieve,
writing course should facilitate the students not only
with the systematic rules of academic convention
which is called micro skills of writing but also the
macro skills. Teaching writing meaningfully is the
paramount target. The teacher as the facilitator is
expected to bring writing class out of the box. Being
in the box is still needed, but with the different
learning outcome, of course, the teacher should think
deeply about giving more than that. Thinking that
writing is also the place for students to represent or to
voice their beliefs and values should be respected.
Thinking that writing as the way to train students
Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices about Teaching of Writing: A Pathway to Holistic Teaching
547
about respecting each other, that writing is a freedom,
writing is the place to be critical and respectful, and
so on (Wigglesworth & Storch, 2012). The teaching
of writing is place where the teacher can meet the
students’ spiritual, physical, intellectual, and
emotional needs.
2.4 Holistic Teaching in EFL Writing
Contextualizing the idea of holistic approach in the
teaching process requires that holistic teachers are
expected to have these following criteria: 1) holistic
teacher is sensitive of knowing the types of the
students. Teachers must encourage students’ personal
construct, 2) holistic teacher elicits the students’
construction system through meaningful
communication on students culture, way of thinking,
3) the holistic teacher enables students to elaborate
their construction system and then relate the taught
subject knowledge to it, and 4) holistic teacher is able
to develop critical students for generating knowledge,
questioning, and learning (Patel, 2003).
3 RESEARCH METHOD
This research is qualitative research as stated by aims
at understanding human behaviour by building
complex, holistic pictures of the social and cultural
settings in which such behaviour occurs. The data are
the teachers’ viewpoints on EFL writing and holistic
teaching, and the teachers’ explanation on the way
they teach EFL writing representing holistic teaching.
The research subjects are ten EFL Writing teachers at
English Letters Department, Universitas Islam Negeri
Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang. The instruments to
get the data are questionnaire and semi-structured
interview. The questions provided focus on two main
topics; one is to see what the teachers’ beliefs and the
other one is to explore how the practices of teaching
writing. Recording done by using recorder is that the
recorded information can be played back several
times. Note taking is done by checking the alternative
answers and writing some additional information as
necessary.
The data analysis is begun with the review on the
results of the interview. The data are described from
the teachers’ belief, the teaching practices, and the
explanation on the teaching practices. Each teacher’s
answer is arranged one by one to have comprehensive
information. The beliefs are seen from the teachers
opinion, viewpoints, and logical explanation. The
application of holistic teaching is seen from the
teachers’ experiences in the classroom connected
with the holistic theory. The problems are mostly
from the instructional context. The solution is about
the way the teacher finds better activities, tasks, and
materials to facilitate the holistic learning.
4 DISCUSSION
4.1 The Belief That Writing as a Formal
System
The writing instruction focuses on students’
application on grammatical knowledge and lexical
knowledge. Almost all teachers (9 out of 10) have
this view. They give grammar as important aspect in
writing. The outstanding features are: familiarization,
controlled writing, guided writing, and free writing.
T5 explicitly teaches writing using controlled writing.
The major idea of having this orientation is that one
of criteria for assessing the students’ writing is
language involving the accuracy of grammar. By
building students’ awareness on the importance of
correct grammar in writing, it does not mean that
teachers give much attention only for that. It is mostly
because of building good habit in writing good
academic paper (Hyland, 2003). The basis for having
this orientation is structuralism and behaviourism.
Building habit in having correct grammar intensively
in writing helps the students to automatically apply
when they write. The more the teacher exposes
students with grammar exercise while writing, the
more awareness of grammar accuracy the students
have. In this learning process, the intellectual
dimension of holistic education is facilitated.
4.2 The Belief That Writing as a
Cognitive Process
There are nine teachers having this writing
orientation. The patterns are pre-writing, outlining,
drafting, editing, revising, and publishing. The major
goal of this writing process is to shape the students
become independent producer of the text. Probably
the model of writing processes most widely accepted
by L2 writing teachers is the original planning-
writing-reviewing framework. This sees writing as a
“non-linear, exploratory, and generative process
whereby writers discover and reformulate their ideas
as they attempt to approximate meaning” (Mulligan
& Garofalo, 2011). When the teacher facilitates the
class with this focus, s/he is trying to bring real
experience of the long process of writing.
The process of writing begins with selection of
topic which can be done by the teacher and/or
students. Mostly the topic is from the students as the
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way to promote liberation for them. The more
familiar the students are the better. It is commonly
happened that students are happy to write about topic
they chose. They can explore more and find the
supporting information easily. However, it is also
important to select a topic from the teacher. The
beginning session of writing class is appropriate way
to have a topic from the teacher. It is effective since
the students will understand the possible topic to
specific type of writing. The next stage is prewriting
in which students are assigned to ask questions to find
ideas, continue to collect relevant ideas for
paragraph/essay development. It is possible for them
to take notes and of course make an outline.
After the outline finished, it is the time to compose
or write the essay through systematic and logical
arrangement. The idea about coherence and
connection is essential at this stage. For ensuring
whether the composition is on the right track, the
students have chance to be given any feedbacks,
correction, responds both from teacher and audience.
This is normal stage to pass since audience and their
contribution plays very important role to shape the
composition. The teacher’s respond covers all micro
and macro aspects of the composition while the
students’ respond with their limited knowledge
usually covers the grammar and spelling.
Revising or respond to revisions is the following
important stage in the process. The students refine the
composition based on the respond. The stage is to
build students’ awareness on collaborative work in
producing a composition. After that, proofreading
and editing that is the time for the students to double
check the form, the layout, and evidence for final
drafting. The evaluation stage is the time when the
teacher evaluates the students’ improvement along
the process of writing. The next stage is publishing
that is the time for students to circulate or present the
composition. Unfortunately, this stage is not
frequently done due to limited time. The final stage is
follow-up tasks to address weaknesses of the
composition.
When a teacher of writing applies this orientation,
the major purpose is to make students experience the
recursive process of writing. Every stage is
meaningful and contributing to the students’ writing
skill. The cooperation and collaboration experienced
by the students also facilitate the holistic learning,
namely spiritual dimension. Students help and trust
each other in peer assessment process. However,
there is a problematic situation when this orientation
dominates the class; the substance of the content of
writing is not really discussed. Some teachers also
involve the discussion on the basic elements of a
paragraph or an essay, and during the first stage it is
one of the topics.
4.3 The Belief That Writing as a Social
Activity
There are three teachers hold this orientation. It is in
line with the premise that writing activity cannot be
separated from social activity in which all member of
writing community in a class work together. Writing
is seen as not only producing a text, but also an
activity to achieve some purposes. It is more than just
co-creating the ideas into writing; it needs other
external factors mediating the writing process.
Achieving the purpose needs the collaboration among
the member of the class. Therefore, teachers should
be able to create the situation contributing to
involvement from different learning resources.
Making students aware of what writing types will be
acceptable in society is the most paramount goal.
Developing factual genres such as recount,
procedure, description, report, and explanation is the
main focus. The first procedure is analyzing a model
from its elements such as the organization, the
content, and the language. After that, the students and
teacher have joint construction meaning they all work
together to construct the essay (Fung, 2010). At the
following time, the students independently write their
own essay. To shape the students’ essays meet the
expected genre, the teacher provides a session called
teacher-student conference. Based on all feedbacks
given at the conference, the essays are revised and
edited. Thus, this activity facilitates spiritual,
emotional and intellectual dimension of holistic
learning where personal assistance is provided by the
teacher to solve student’s problems.
4.4 The Belief That Writing as Focus on
Content
There are two teachers have this orientation. The
teachers who have this orientation direct the students
to the substantive content of the essay. It is close to
the belief that effective writing is linked to effective
reading thus both are interconnected (Pierre, 2014).
Teachers view that the substantive content of the
essay is the main focus. The dominant activity
associating this orientation is mind mapping and
library research. Teachers develop students’ topic
familiarity through brainstorming ideas and reading
relevant resources.
The main stages are generating ideas, developing
ideas, and organizing ideas. Being able to generate
ideas, the students need high schemata that can be
gained from the reading process. The role of reading
is very essential since the common topics for the
essay are about social issues such as pollution,
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549
smoking, crimes, etc. This needs more supporting
information to make the content is academically
accepted. The key feature of this focus is the use of
mind-map where the theme becomes the central of
essay development. Through this belief, the practice
of teaching writing facilitates the emotional
dimension and intellectual dimension in which
students can explore many ideas, feel the sense of
usefulness and experience read-before-write process.
4.5 The Belief That Writing as Focus on
Creative Expression
Only one teacher has this orientation. The focus is on
students’ self-expression since many activities are
directed to give students a place for sharing their
personal aspects; hence, the students are the centre of
the writing activity. There is no rigid practice like
when the focus is on the formal system. The students
can share personal beliefs, point of view in the form
of journal writing in very positive and cooperative
environment as it is for students’ creativity, and free-
writing model (Koupaee, Rahimi & Shams, 2010).
From this orientation, teachers try to build students’
ability in doing self-construction. This belief is
focusing on text function. It leads to the effort of
making students aware of the elements of writing
including micro and macro elements. Thus, by doing
this activity, the teacher facilitates the emotional and
intellectual dimension of holistic learning.
4.6 Holistic Learning in the Practices of
Teaching Writing
The second important point to discuss is the holistic
view gaining from the teachers’ beliefs and teaching
practices. The teaching practices are identified into
four areas of the students’ needs such as spiritual,
emotional, intellectual, and physical. It is found that
the students’ spiritual needs are met when T1
understands the natural development of the students.
T2 provides time to listen students’ ideas and
problems on writing. T3 encourages students to
explore their own value in writing. T4 engages the
students into truth relationship, and provides peer
review. T5 directs students to contemplate their
personal aspects. T6 has personal conference with
students to show whether the ideas make sense or not.
T7 asks students to be good listener to other ideas. T8
facilitates with trusting relationship.
The fulfilment of the students’ emotional needs is
represented through several features. T1 give a
freedom for students to explore ideas. T2 makes
students are aware of the idea of usefulness. T4 also
give students sense of usefulness of reading and
satisfaction. T5 develops students’ sense of freedom.
T6 gives choice for realistic hope by allowing the
students to choose the topics. T7 designs a situation
where students give a respect for other choices. For
the physical need, it is identified that only T1 who
provides relaxing atmosphere through allowing
students to listen music, eat, and drink. It is
uncommon, but it helps students much. They can
learn in nice situation which later influences their
learning. The students’ intellectual need is facilitated
by T2, T3, T4, T5, T7, T8, and T9. T2 provides
teacher-student consultation. T3 creates an effective
communication while T4 lets the students to
experience decision making. T7 promotes activities to
develop students’ habit. T9 makes students feel safe
since she guarantees the students that the teacher
herself writes many writing activities.
Related to the influence of the beliefs to the
teaching practices, the researcher finds that most
teaching practices are strongly influenced by the
beliefs of teachers. The teaching practices employed
by the teachers include implicit grammar knowledge
by placing students’ grammatical accuracy as one of
criteria. The teachers’ practices on cognitive process
can be seen from the process approach applied in the
writing stages. Teachers state that they begin the class
with selecting topic, brainstorming, planning,
drafting, editing, revising, and publishing. When it
comes to writing as social activity or genre based
approach, the practice is reflected in modelling stage
where teachers give a model of essay to be analyzed
from its organization, its content, its language, and its
rhetorical features (Qian, 2010).
The practice close to focus on content is from the
activity of doing mind mapping before writing.
Teachers’ assignment assigning students to tell
themselves in writing is the close to the view that
writing is creative expression. The practice for
showing writing focuses on text function is through
long discussion on constructing topic sentence and
thesis statement, supporting sentences, and
concluding sentence. Also, it can be seen from the
writing course outline which mentions the different
texts to develop by the students.
The relationship between the beliefs and the
practices are clearly seen from the previous part of the
conclusion, moreover, this research also finds that the
two aspects correspond to the holistic teaching. The
practices done by teachers have purposes to fill
students’ needs as a whole person. The spiritual need
is given by the teachers through understanding
students’ natural development on writing skill,
listening to students, allowing students to hold their
own value, building trusting relationship through peer
reviewing on strengths and weaknesses, facilitating
students to raise their personal aspects, asking
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students to see any usefulness in writing process and
to see whether the writing makes sense or not, asking
students to listen other ideas. While to meet the
students’ emotional needs, teachers provide situation
to acknowledge students’ sense of freedom, to bring
students into the use of reading in writing, to help
students making realistic hope, and to train students
respecting other choices.
To fill students’ physical need, one teacher
creates relaxing situation by allowing students to
enjoy their drink and snacks during writing process in
the classroom. For filling students’ intellectual need,
teachers provide teacher-student consultation,
effective communication, and decision-making.
5 CONCLUSION
The teachers’ beliefs are seen from the writing
orientation as part of the writing pedagogy. There are
five beliefs of the teachers regarding the teaching of
EFL writing. Two beliefs seeing writing as a formal
system focusing on language structure and writing as
a cognitive process focusing on the writing process
are of the most viewpoints among all teachers. The
other three beliefs see writing as social activity, as
content focus, and as creative expression. Those five
beliefs provide the practices of teaching writing that
facilitate four dimensions of holistic education,
namely spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual
dimensions.
Therefore, it is recommended to EFL practitioners
to provide various activities and consider the
dimensions of holistic education into their classrooms
for both writing course and other language courses.
The research also suggests that having clear
orientation of writing directs teachers to have
effective teaching. EFL writing classroom is potential
place to promote holistic teaching since the process
of writing requires teachers to fill not only
mental/cognitive process but also other essential
aspects. To explore more comprehensively holistic
education in English language learning, it is better to
delve into how students see and perceive the learning
process they experience in holistic learning
environment. It is also suggested that educational
researchers have further investigation on the
relationship between the beliefs and the practices, and
what factors influence the relationship and what
factors making no relationship between beliefs and
the practices.
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