Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices about Teaching of Writing:

A Pathway to Holistic Teaching

Galuh Nur Rohmah

and Vita Nur Santi

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

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

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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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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