The aim of this paper is to make an argumentation on why researchers should start from seeking teacher beliefs and teacher perceptions related to the teaching career. It is organized around three main points: (1) the re-examination of terms related to all perspectives of beliefs and perceptions of teachers in general and teachers of English in particular; (2) the current state of English language teaching in Vietnamese secondary schools; and (3) the importance of studying teacher belief and teacher perceptions of teachers of English about curriculum, textbooks and teaching methodology. | VNU Journal of Science, Foreign Languages 27 (2011) 124-131 Why should we investigate secondary school teacher beliefs and teacher perceptions of English language teaching? Nguyen Viet Hung* Faculty of Foreign Languages, Taybac University, Sonla,Vietnam Received 10 May 2011 Abstract. The aim of this paper is to make an argumentation on why researchers should start from seeking teacher beliefs and teacher perceptions related to the teaching career. It is organized around three main points: (1) the re-examination of terms related to all perspectives of beliefs and perceptions of teachers in general and teachers of English in particular; (2) the current state of English language teaching in Vietnamese secondary schools; and (3) the importance of studying teacher belief and teacher perceptions of teachers of English about curriculum, textbooks and teaching methodology. Keywords: Teacher beliefs, teacher perceptions, ELT, TBLT. 1. Introduction* [3], Borg ([4], [5]), Verloop, N., J. Van Driel & P. C. Meijer [6], etc. The importance of studying teacher belief and teacher perception is confirmed in studies by Cuban [ 7] , Allwright [8], and Canh [9]. It is, however, not easy to provide an overview of the literature in this field as different researchers tend to conceptualize the notions of teacher belief and teacher perception in a different way. This explains why the section that follows will attempt to look at how these terms have been defined. The series of the new English textbooks for Vietnamese upper secondary schools, which has officially been put into use since 2006, is the result of the innovation by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). However, since that time, few researches have been conducted, particularly those that are concerned with teachers’ beliefs and teachers’ perceptions of the textbooks and the teaching quality. Therefore, in this paper, an attempt is made to examine this issue. Over the past two decades, teacher belief and teacher .
