Research on the Enhancement Mechanism of Business English Teachers' Digital Literacy from the Perspective of Self-Determination Theory

An Empirical Investigation Based in Hunan Province,China

Abstract

Against the backdrop of educational digital transformation, the Business English discipline must trigger its teaching digital transformation to meet the talent development demands of industrial  transformation and globalization achieve the goal of cultivating applied talents. This study, guided by the Self-Determination Theory, surveyed Business English teachers in Hunan Province to investigate their overall level of three needs covered in the theory. The author employed a questionnaire survey, utilizing a self-developed scale based on the Teacher Digital Literacy Standards designed by Chinese Education Ministry, to sample 125 Business English teachers in Hunan Province. All 125 distributed questionnaires were returned valid. Data were analyzed using SPSS software. The findings reveal that: (1) Teacher have no motivation to persist in continuous digital teaching practice and proactive creative power despite their own high-level recognition of digital transformation; (2) Teachers show their competence deficiency in higher-level application including the analysis and transformation of students’ feedback and exploration of teaching resources with enterprises; and (3) Teachers show their dilemma in the high individual endeavor but low community interactivity, reflecting the loss of satisfaction of relatedness need. From the perspective of SDT, this study suggests that Business English teachers’ intrinsic motivation could be accelerated with the realization of basic psychological needs, which are realized with the combination of external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation and integrated regulation for which teachers themselves, administrators and enterprises are responsible together. This study provides valuable implementations to accelerate the development of Business English teachers self-determination level, which are valuable reference for the formulation of training policies.