A Survey of Attitudes toward Mediation among Chinese High School EFL Teachers and Their Classroom Constraints

This paper raises concerns about Chinese high school EFL teachers’ attitudes toward mediation and their classroom constraints. From the data gathered in the survey of 152 EFL teachers, the findings indicate that most teachers fail to mediate students’ learning due to situational constraints that they encounter though they hold positive attitudes toward mediation. Statistically, teachers with higher educational qualifications have more positive attitudes toward the mediator role than those with lower qualifications. Most of them view the lack of advice from relevant experts and of training on the implementation of mediation as the most influential of all the constraints. It is thus proposed that EFL teachers re-orient their roles from traditional instructor to mediator with the help of re-education programs.