Teacher Beliefs
Teacher beliefs are the personal theories, assumptions, and values that teachers hold about language, learning, teaching, and their students. They act as a filter through which teachers interpret training, make classroom decisions, and respond to new ideas. Often implicit and unarticulated, beliefs are among the most powerful influences on what actually happens in the classroom — frequently more powerful than the methodology a teacher has been trained in.
Where Beliefs Come From
Lortie (1975) introduced the concept of the apprenticeship of observation: by the time someone enters teacher education, they have spent 12,000+ hours watching teachers as a student. These years of observation create deeply held beliefs about what teaching looks like, what "good" teachers do, and how learning happens.
Sources of teacher beliefs include:
| Source | Example belief formed |
|---|---|
| Own learning experience | "Grammar should be taught explicitly because that's how I learned English" |
| Cultural context | "The teacher should be the authority in the classroom" |
| Pre-service training | "Communicative activities are more effective than drills" |
| Classroom experience | "Group work doesn't work with this age group" |
| Colleagues | "You can't teach writing to low-level students" |
| Personal values | "Every student deserves individual attention" |
Beliefs vs Practice
A persistent finding in research (Borg, 2006; Phipps & Borg, 2009) is the gap between stated beliefs and actual practice:
- A teacher who believes in communicative teaching may still spend most of class time on grammar explanations
- A teacher who believes in learner autonomy may still control every aspect of the lesson
- A teacher who completed training in formative assessment may still rely solely on tests
This gap has multiple causes:
- Contextual constraints — Large classes, exam pressure, institutional expectations, and limited resources can override beliefs
- Core vs peripheral beliefs — Deeply held beliefs (from the apprenticeship of observation) may override more recently acquired beliefs (from training)
- Competing beliefs — "I should use communicative activities" may coexist with "Students need to pass the grammar exam"
- Lack of awareness — Teachers may not be conscious of the beliefs driving their moment-to-moment decisions
Beliefs and Teacher Education
Understanding teacher beliefs has direct implications for training and development:
Training that ignores beliefs often fails
If a workshop promotes task-based teaching to teachers who believe grammar must be taught explicitly before any practice, the new methodology will be filtered through existing beliefs, adapted beyond recognition, or quietly abandoned.
Beliefs must be surfaced before they can be changed
Activities that help teachers articulate their beliefs — critical incident analysis, belief inventories, classroom observation with post-lesson discussion — create the conditions for genuine reflective practice.
Belief change is slow
Changing deep-seated beliefs requires sustained engagement, not one-off training. This is the territory of teacher development rather than training.
Investigating Beliefs
Researchers and teacher educators use:
- Beliefs inventories / questionnaires (e.g., BALLI — Horwitz, 1988)
- Interviews — Semi-structured conversations about teaching decisions
- Stimulated recall — Watching video of their own teaching and explaining decisions
- Reflective journals — Regular writing about classroom experiences
- Critical incident analysis — Examining specific moments for underlying assumptions
- Classroom observation — Comparing what teachers say they believe with what they do
Key Beliefs That Shape ELT Practice
| Belief area | Range of positions |
|---|---|
| Role of grammar | Explicit teaching essential ←→ Acquired through input |
| Error correction | All errors must be corrected ←→ Errors are a natural part of learning |
| L1 use | L1 should never be used ←→ L1 is a useful resource |
| Teacher role | Knowledge transmitter ←→ Facilitator of learning |
| Learner autonomy | Teacher decides everything ←→ Learners manage their own learning |
| Native speaker model | Native speakers set the standard ←→ Intelligibility is the goal |
Key References
- Borg, S. (2006). Teacher Cognition and Language Education: Research and Practice. Continuum.
- Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study. University of Chicago Press.
- Phipps, S. & Borg, S. (2009). Exploring tensions between teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and practices. System, 37(3), 380–390.
- Pajares, M. F. (1992). Teachers' beliefs and educational research: Cleaning up a messy construct. Review of Educational Research, 62(3), 307–332.
See Also
- Teacher Cognition — the broader construct that includes beliefs, knowledge, and attitudes
- Reflective Practice — the primary mechanism for surfacing and examining beliefs
- Critical Incident — a tool for uncovering beliefs in action
- Teacher Training vs Teacher Development — development, not training, is what changes deep beliefs