English teachers’ intention to use flipped teaching: interrelationships with needs satisfaction, motivation, self-efficacy, belief, and support

Abstract

While the role of flipped teaching in students’ language performance is well documented, English teachers’ perspective about flipped teaching remains underexplored. Informed by the self-determination theory and the motivation-opportunity-ability theory, this study examined English teachers’ intention to use flipped teaching and its interrelationships with fulfillment of needs for competence and autonomy, motivation, self-efficacy, belief, and support in a sample of 166 English teachers in the Chinese EFL context. The findings showed that the teachers had a generally favorable intention to use flipped teaching, with individual variations across gender, universities’ prestige, prior experience, and the type of English courses. The results also revealed that needs satisfaction was an antecedent of their use intention for flipped teaching. Identified regulation was related more positively to use intention when the teachers experienced higher self-efficacy and support, whereas external regulation was not associated with use intention when teachers held higher levels of beliefs towards flipped teaching. The findings also showed that introjected regulation was related positively to use intention when the teachers received less supports from their contexts or experienced lower self-efficacy. The findings shed new light on how flipped teaching can be better promoted in language education.

Keywords:

• Flipped teaching
• english teachers
• use intention
• motivation

Acknowledgement

We thank the staff of this project for their unending contributions to this work and the teachers who made this research possible.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Authors’ contributions

Lianjiang Jiang and Nan Zhou designed the study; Lianjiang Jiang drafted the introduction and discussion sections; Nan Zhou and Ning Zang analyzed the data and drafted the method and results sections; Lianjiang Jiang, Nan Zhou, and Hongjian Cao revised the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

Preparation of this article was supported by the Fujian Province Undergraduate Education and Teaching Reform Project (FBJG20190086) to Lianjiang Jiang, and the Young Teachers’ Teaching Development Grant (2019017) to Nan Zhou.

Notes on contributors

Lianjiang Jiang

Dr. Lianjiang Jiang is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English Language Education, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. He obtained his PhD degree in English language Education at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include second language writing, digital multimodal composing, and new literacy studies. His publications have appeared in journals such as TESOL Quarterly, Language Teaching Research, System, ELT Journal, Journal of Second Language Writing, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, Schools: Studies in Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Educational Studies, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, and Discourse and Communication.

Ning Zang

Miss Ning Zang is a postgraduate at Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China. Her research focuses on parental involvement, youth development, and teacher burnout. Her republications have appeared in Developmental Psychology and Journal of Research on Adolescence.

Nan Zhou

Dr. Nan Zhou (Corresponding author) is an Associate Professor at Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China. He obtained his PhD degree at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. He does research in Educational Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Developmental Psychology. His research focuses on child and youth development and particular adjustment problems (i.e., problematic internet use, behavior problems) in family and peer contexts, including marital conflict, maternal employment, and deviant peer affiliation. His research is grounded in bioecological theory and theories of family processes and development. His publications have appeared in Developmental Psychology, Journal of Research on Adolescence, Journal of Marriage and Family, The Journal of Early Adolescence, Journal of Family Psychology, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, and etc.

Hongjian Cao

Dr. Hongjian Cao is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China. He obtained his PhD degree in human development and family studies from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, USA. His research centers on: (a) the etiology of behavioral problems in early childhood and during early adolescence, with a particular focus on the roles of family relationship factors (e.g., parent-child attachment, interparental conflict), and (b) the developmental trajectory of couple relationship well-being and its key determinants of different levels (e.g., personality, couple communication, in-law relations) within diverse family systems, with a particular focus on Chinese couples and LGBT couples. His publications have appeared in a number of prestigious peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of Marriage and Family, Journal of Family Psychology, Journal of Family Theory & Review, Family Process, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Journal of Research on Adolescence, Journal of Personality, The Journal of Sex Research.