Teachers’ Beliefs In English Language Teaching

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Teachers’ beliefs in English language teaching

2.1.1. What are teachers’ beliefs?

Although the term “beliefs” has been broadly adopted in various studies and fields, there is still little consensus on a comprehensive and integrative theory of it. A belief can vary from constitutional elements such as “metaphysical, moral, philosophical, political, scientific and religious principles” to more incidental ones like “details of everyday life” (Ohlsson, 2011, p. 293). Amstrong (1973) defends and further explains the anatomy of Ramsey (1931) about beliefs – “a map of neighbouring space by which we steer.” He concludes that beliefs are formed through interpreting reality, and, as echoed in Pajares (1992), they are driving factors for human decisions and actions (p. 4). It has been recognized that beliefs are also what humans accept to be true (Richardson, 1996; Tran, 2012). However, people also hold disbelief towards the world. Ohlsson (2011) seems to agree with Borg (2001) about beliefs that comprise a proposition and a truth value or element. The proposition refers to the assumption assigned to reality (bearing a resemblance to Amstrong’s analogy of map), while the truth value/ element is the perception of a proposition is true or false (reflecting the conceptualization of “individual's judgment of the truth or falsity of a proposition”; Pajares, 1992, p. 316). Basically, beliefs are the lens through which people interpret the external reality based on true-false judgment and are action-guiding, and therefore, teachers’ beliefs are overall “tacit, often unconsciously held assumptions about students, classrooms, and the academic material to be taught” (Kagan, 1992, p. 65)

It has been acknowledged that in the course of the teaching career, teachers have to make a large number of decisions before, during, and after each lesson (Richards & Lockhart, 1999). These decisions are heavily influenced by what teachers believe and know about the language itself, teaching and learning nature, and other educational

processes. However, teachers usually lack a standard protocol to handle their work but rather turn to their previous experience and instinct – personal understanding – which originates from beliefs (Senior, 2006, p. 247; Decker & Rimm-Kaufman, 2008, p. 46). In other words, teachers’ beliefs are served as primary elements encompassing “conceptions, world views, and mental models” (Mandasari, 2016) that tailor their actions and behaviors (Senior, 2006; Williams, Mercer, & Ryan, 2015; Nguyen, 2019) and thus, affect the teaching quality and learning potential (Nguyen, 2011, p. 128; Levin, 2015, p. 49; Cheng, 2018, p. 7). For instance, some teachers may want their learners to achieve “accuracy” in English, while others may emphasize the “fluency” factors. Despite an overt parallel between teachers’ beliefs and beliefs in general, this is only “the tip of the ice berg”.

The brief definition in the earlier part, nevertheless, appears to be incapable of capturing a comprehensive picture of teachers’ beliefs, let alone those of a larger system. Fives and Buehl (2012), on the one hand, admit the “murky” reality of research literature on the attempt to define teachers’ beliefs but vehemently oppose Pajares’ (1992) assumption of difficulty in conceptualizing – “a game of player’s choice.” What actually matters is to pinpoint the consistent definition and terms within and across the field of research (p. 473). An example of divergent terms that, of course, lead to different definitions can be found in Pajares’ (1992) lengthy and inexhaustible list of anonymous terms used in literature about teachers’ beliefs: “attitudes, values, judgments, axioms, opinions, ideology, perceptions, conceptions, conceptual systems, preconceptions, dispositions, implicit theories, explicit theories, personal theories, internal mental processes, action strategies, rules of practice, practical principles, perspectives, repertories of understanding, and social strategy” (p. 309). In the quest of settling the “messy” construct of teachers’ beliefs by coding method, Fives and Buehl (2012) manage to identify five characteristics encompassing: implicit and explicit nature (also known as conscious and unconscious nature in Borg (2001)), stability over time, situated

or generalized nature, relation to knowledge, existence as individual propositions or larger systems (p. 473). With these features, a thorough view of what is beliefs is attainable.

2.1.2. Teachers’ belief system

According to Ohlsson (2011), beliefs are often classified into topics or themes which are based on the cognitive field, regarded as domains. A set of beliefs within a domain will constitute a person’s belief system for that domain. These belief sets do not separate themselves from each other but interplay, interweave together within and cross cognitive or affective fields (Pajares, 1992, p. 316). Referring back to the analogy of “belief-map,” Amstrong (1973) contends that a man's beliefs in a moment are “a single great map of which the individual beliefs are sub-maps,” and a complete map encompasses “a complete map of the map itself” (pp. 3-4). That is why discerning an individual’s beliefs requires a holistic view of them in connection with others as a system. However, this perspective also poses a thorny dilemma: What is the boundary of examination? A teacher may have a number of beliefs at the same time, some commonly identified as beliefs about learning and teaching (pedagogical beliefs), the nature of knowledge (epistemological beliefs), learners, subject matters, and themselves (self-efficacy beliefs) (Levin, 2015, p. 48). Accordingly, the belief investigation will be time- and resource- consuming. To refrain from the sophisticated interrelationship within the belief system, another approach is to examine teachers’ beliefs from their contributors.

Richards and Lockhart (1999) summarize six sources of teachers’ beliefs, including

(1) their institutions’ policies and practices, (2) personality, (3) experiences as learners,

(4) teaching background, (5) principles derived from training and research, and (6) approach- and method-based principles, all of which can also be put in two categories of internal (personal experience, personality) and external sources (formalized knowledge, expectations from other people and organizations) (Levin, 2015; Nguyen, 2019). Apart

from the first two, the others components have been listed in Tomlinson and Masuhara (2013) as sources for developing pre-use evaluation criteria of coursebooks (p. 234) which undoubtedly can be modified to serve whilst- and post-use evaluation. The scholars also take materials developers’ and researchers’ experiences into consideration. Comparing the previous classifications, it is sensible enough to conclude that teachers’ beliefs are overall impacted by four main sources – experiences, knowledge, contexts, and personalities - in the language learning and teaching domain which embodies materials use. These sources broadly resonate with what Golombek (1998) identifies as knowledge of self, knowledge of the subject matter, knowledge of instruction, and knowledge of context as a reference to teachers’ personal practical knowledge (p. 451).

The source of experience is deemed to arise from teachers’ personal and professional life. Similar to the “knowledge of self,” teachers draw on what they have experienced as learners and teachers in order to make a decision in classrooms. Teachers’ knowledge can be described in terms of their input from training, readings, or professors. The input can also be related to the “pedagogical knowledge” that when teachers adopt a particular teaching approach, it affects their beliefs on issues such as the role of teachers and learners, characteristics of teaching/ learning process, or the nature of students-teachers interaction. For instance, in the article of Lee and Bathmaker (2007) about the use of English coursebooks, the authors observed that those teachers who adopted the functional approach preferred to employ group and pair work activities. Meanwhile, those advocating the grammar-based approach believe that the best way to learn a language is to remember linguistic rules and memorize forms and structures.

As for the context, it refers to “the institutional and sociopolitical setting along with the time, place, and actors within the setting” (Golombek, 1998, p. 452). To illustrate the relationship among the context, beliefs, and practice, Burns (1996) proposes a framework with three major contextual levels as depicted in Figure 2.1 (p. 158).

Accordingly, the broadest level refers to organizational policies or ideologies from which teachers interpret and form “institutional cultures.” The second contextual level comprises those beliefs, attitudes, or philosophies that teachers bring into classrooms. These beliefs shape their approach to teaching and materials selection. Finally, at the most specific level is the realization of thinking and reflections in the form of actual instructions, materials in use, and classroom management.

With respect to the personality, Farrell (2018), by echoing Richards and Lockhart (1999), explains that some teachers may feel comfortable when deploying more communicative activities. Meanwhile, others enjoy the traditional approach to teaching. Personality factors, therefore, can be discerned as teachers’ preference of particular teaching styles.

Figure 2. 1

Burns’ Model of intercontextuality of teacher thinking and beliefs

INSTITUTIONAL FOCUS

Institutional programming conventions Decentralized learner-centered curriculum

CLASSROOM FOCUS

Learning Learners Language

INSTRUCTIONAL FOCUS

Classroom management, tasks, resources, and texts

2.1.3. Teachers’ beliefs and practice

The investigation of the relationship between beliefs and practice has been one of the major motivations for research into teachers’ beliefs. Theoretically, as Farrell and Guz (2019) assert, teachers’ beliefs contribute “a filter through which instructional judgments and decisions are made” (p.2). That, however, is not the only function of beliefs. “Frameworks for decision making” and “guides for action” are other indispensable roles. The three listed functions interact with each other forming a bridge between beliefs and practice. Fives and Buehl (2012) construct a framework to illustrate the interplay of the beliefs’ functions (Figure 2.2)

Figure 2. 2

Beliefs act as filters, frames, or guides

Experiences

Life, Education, Professional Development



Filters Interpretation of

events and content as relevant

Potential Filters: personal epistemology, students, teachers’

role



Frames Define or frame a problem or task; conceptualize problem at hand

Potential Frames: teaching practices

or approach, context



Guides What affects immediate action

Potential Guides: self- efficacy, task value



Teacher Practices

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In Fives and Buehl’s belief diagram, the term “experiences” refers to what teachers encounter in their life and hence, is broader than the one identified in this study. It, in fact, also deals with other factors – knowledge and context. As a filter, beliefs offer a lens that helps teachers to interpret the input information of the external world. Pajares (1992), by referring to the work of Nisbett and Ross (1980), emphasizes the power of beliefs that can distort reality using necessary cognitive tricks (p. 317). That is, an individual often tries to match the surrounding world with what he believes is true or allows only information congruent with existing beliefs to be assimilated, and beliefs, in this sense, are associated with actual actions by their influence on human perceptions. After the information in the external world is filtered, beliefs continue to direct how problems and tasks at hand are framed and conceptualized. Nespor (1987) notes that the belief system is called for to deal with ill-defined and entangled problems because, with a more constrained and well-structured one, domain-specific knowledge would be employed. The last role of beliefs “emerges in their motivational abilities to move teachers to action” (Fives & Buehl, 2012, p. 480). These motivational constructs – typically identified as self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, and task value – impact such behaviors as efforts, decisions, and persistence (ibid.). To illustrate the diagram, take teachers who believe in “practice make perfect” as an example. They may pay more attention to evidence of insufficient rehearsal and laziness when a student underperforms in examination (the filter role), and of course, the problems here are regarded as lack of practice (the framing role). In the end, the value of practice leads to teachers’ practice in the classroom: offering more exercises for learners.

Although teachers’ beliefs appear to be decisive precursors to their practice, research that has investigated the correspondence between those two variables has been mixed. The contradictory findings in belief literature, according to such scholars as Kagan (1992); Fang (1996); Vartuli (2005); Basturkmen (2012); and Fives and Buehl (2012), can be attributed to several main factors: methodological issues in assessing beliefs,

contextual constraints, and the teachers’ inability to articulate their beliefs or to translate their beliefs into practice. Since beliefs are tacit in nature, it is nearly impossible to assess them directly. Measurements as an extended interview, stimulated recall, experimental tasks, and reflection forms have been suggested to elicit beliefs in Kagan (1990); Fang (1996); Erkmen (2012). Kagan (1990) also goes further when discussing the issue of ecological validity – the relationship between the performance of teachers on some tasks and their actual classroom behaviors – as evidence to justify research instruments. Moreover, the theoretical lens a researcher holds may lead to discrepancies among findings.

The second critical element lends itself to the context where teachers operate. In the study of the influence of teacher experience and qualifications on at-risk students, Brown, Molfese, and Molfese (2008) found that while teachers held strong beliefs about the importance of literacy and mathematics learning, there was weak evidence showing a change in terms of students outcomes. It is because the school district’s policies hinder teachers in their effort to act on their beliefs. Brown et al. (2008) admit “the influence of the school environment and policies, as well as teachers’ knowledge in influencing teachers’ abilities to implement their ideas about teaching” (p. 122).

2.2. The role of materials in ELT classrooms

2.2.1. What are language-learning materials?

When it comes to language-learning materials, some people may see them as the textbooks used in a majority of English classrooms around the world, while others may extend the list with various items such as dictionaries, reference books, realia, games, and other visual, aural aids. Tomlinson (2011a), one of the most-cited authors in the field, asserts a broad notion of materials which includes “anything which can be used to facilitate the learning of a language. They can be linguistic, visual, auditory or