A key factor in research on teachers’ beliefs is their influence on their practices. In this talk, we discuss some of the factors that affect this relationship and address how language teacher educators can help beginning teachers to enact their conceptualizations of language.
A key factor in the investigation of teachers’ beliefs is whether and how they influence teachers’ practices. Beginning language teachers typically have ideal beliefs or conceptualizations of teaching, but they struggle to enact in their teaching practices. Research shows that beginning teachers need sustained participation in varied activities of teaching, in which they externalize their beliefs and emotions while being mediated by an expert other (Kanno & Stuart, 2011; Johnson & Golombek, 2016). For language teacher educators, the challenge remains to create the learning conditions to enable pre-service teachers to externalize their beliefs, identify the factors that inhibit or support teachers’ ability to enact their beliefs in instructional practices, and develop their practices in ways that align with their beliefs. In this talk, we first discuss some of these factors and the complex relationship between beliefs and practice. Then, we address how language teacher educators can create the learning conditions to support beginning teachers to enact their conceptualizations of language. This includes linking a series of intentional, structured, goal-directed activities of teaching that incorporate structured mediational spaces in which teacher educators can responsively mediate beginning teachers’ thinking and doing of teaching.
