Development of teaching beliefs and the focus of change in the process of pre-service ESL teacher education

This study sets out to investigate how pre-service ESL teachers shape their beliefs in the process of experimenting with new teaching methods introduced in the teacher education programme. A 4year longitudinal study was conducted with four randomly selected ESLpre-service teachers. Their theoretical orientations of ESL instruction were tracked at intervals through a protocol which consisted of i) descriptive accounts, ii) surveys, iii) lesson plan analysis, iv) lesson recording and v) interviews. Despite the fact that these 4 student teachers had shown different theoretical orientations in the protocols, they shared similar patterns of instructional practices in the Teaching Practicum. It was also found that the new teaching method practiced in the teacher education programme was re-conceptualised by these student teachers in the actual teaching context because of the strong influence of their personal agency beliefs Understanding Belief Systems Traditionally, teaching has been described in terms of what teachers do their actions and behaviours in the classroom, and the effects of these on learners. Pennington (1995) suggested that a teacher’s pedagogical decisions and actions are typically colored by their experience as a learner and act as a psychological barrier, frame, or selective filtering mechanism to their classroom practices. Similarly, Gehhard (2006) asserted that what teachers actually do in the classroom is determined by their subjective teachingrelated knowledge. In initial teacher preparation programmes, teaching-related knowledge is often prescribed in the courses and pre-service teachers are told what they should do to be effective in teaching. However, the thinking processes and personal beliefs which serve as the background to much of the teachers’ decision and classroom actions (Richards and Lockhart, 1994; Anders, Hoffman & Duffy, 2000) are often neglected. Teaching, as a profession, is special in that all novice and student teachers are familiar with the working environment as they have been students for more than a decade. They have usually developed well-established beliefs towards the nature of teaching and learning and the role of the teacher (Borko & Putnam, 1995; Tomlinson, 2000). According to Zeichner and Tabachnick (1981), student teachers seem to be most influenced by the thousands of hours that they spend as pupils in the classroom. Some researchers think that it is difficult to change the pre-service teachers’ well-formed beliefs as they tend to teach the way they have been taught (Pajares, 1992; Kagan, 1992; Korthagen & Kessels, 1999) Australian Journal of Teacher Education Vol 37, 5, May 2012 91 and implementing innovative approaches is a risk-taking act to them (Gywn-Paquette & Tchon, 2003). Other researchers affirm that teacher beliefs tend to be static and resistant to change because they exist in one’s personal understandings, premises or propositions about the world which are felt to be true (see Phelan & McLaughlin, 1995; Richardson, 1996). If it is assumed that the conservative beliefs of pre-service teachers remain latent during formal training at the university and later become a major force once the candidate is in his or her own classroom, any new teaching initiative introduced in the teacher education programme would find it hard to form the knowledge base for teaching. In some cases, the conflicting views between student teachers and the original teacher can pose a great obstacle to any experimentation. Koerner (1992) and Su (1992) have interviewed cooperating teachers who openly rejected the idea of change or innovation brought in by the pre-service teachers. Such a strong opposition is not likely to be resisted by the preservice teacher, whose grade is partly attributed to the cooperating teacher. Richardson (1996) argues that beliefs about teaching and learning should be surfaced and acknowledged during the teacher education program if the program is to make a difference in the deep structure of knowledge and beliefs held by the students. Considering the inherent resistance of pre-service teachers, probably the best way to know more about the development of teaching beliefs among pre-service teachers and the focus of change in teacher education programme is to explore and understand their practices in the Teaching Practicum (TP). English Language Teaching and Teacher Education in Hong Kong In English language teaching, the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach has assumed the status of orthodoxy since the 70s. CLT is believed to be conducive to students’ foreign language development and is more favorable to students’ language learning and development as compared with the traditional pedagogy and grammar-translation approach because it provides more chances for students to speak up and experiment with the language in real-life or meaningful contexts (Willis & Willis, 2001; Ellis, 2003; Skehan, 2003). CLT provides a natural and communicative context which allows learners to process language and reshape their input (Beglar and Hunt, 2002). In contrast, the traditional approach, which pays attention to a single item at one time, does not conform to the nature of natural communication. Kumaravadivelu (1994) states that the traditional language teaching approach of introducing isolated, discrete items would result in “pragmatic dissonance, depriving the learner of necessary pragmatic cues and rendering the process of meaning making harder” (p.38). In the last decade, many teachers were instructed to implement task-based learning (TBL) as a method to realize CLT (Littlewood, 2011). To most teachers, TBL and CLT are interchangeable terms. In Hong Kong, CLT has formed the backbone of the Hong Kong English curriculum since 1983. It is introduced as the contemporary teaching approach in English Language teacher education programmes. Student teachers are taught to design and implement communicative tasks in their English lessons. However, many researchers have pointed out that conditions for implementing CLT or TBL in Hong Kong English classroom are not favorable (see Carless, 2002; Littlewood, 2007; Tang, 2004). According to these researchers, the difficulties and challenges included classroom management because of large classes, incompatibility of CLT and high stake public assessment, Australian Journal of Teacher Education Vol 37, 5, May 2012 92 ideology conflicts between western teaching and learning philosophy and the endured Chinese educational traditions and culture, heavy language demands on indigenous Chinese teachers, and reluctance and incompetence of students using target language in communicative tasks. For every educational change to take place, teachers’ participation is indispensable since they are the frontline enactors of new policies or approaches in the classrooms. A number of studies on innovation adoption have shown that the level of use of innovation in school is positively correlated with teachers’ acceptance and understanding of the innovation (e.g. Gershner & Snider, 2001). Undoubtedly, there is often a disparity between the suggested new practice and its quality and frequency of use in the real classroom (Abrami, Poulsen & Chambers, 2004). So far, there has been scanty research into the uptake of innovation among preservice teachers. Although it is often assumed that beliefs are resistant to change, quite a number of studies indicate that pre-service teachers who are in field-based programs can learn new theories and methods that supplant traditional curriculum (Guskey, 1986; Hollingsworth, 1986). Research on pre-service teachers is crucial as they are experiencing the most crucial period of conceptualizing teaching. In view of the unfavourable conditions, ambiguity and stress in the Hong Kong teaching environment, the understanding of the teaching beliefs of pre-service teachers in the process of experimenting with new teaching ideas during the TP, which was described as a move from “idealized conception of teaching to hard realities” (Lo, 1996, p.41), is significant to the teacher education programme. In the current study, a 4 years longitudinal qualitative study of four randomly selected pre-service ESL teachers was conducted with a multiplemethod approach to identify factors that affected their decision to experiment with or to abandon the use of the contemporary approach of ESL instruction. The research questions of this study were: 1. What are the teaching beliefs of pre-service ESL teachers? 2. How do pre-service ESL teachers experiment with the new teaching method advocated in the teacher education programme? This descriptive study provides rich empirical data to understand how pre-service ESL teachers evolve in the early and most crucial stage of teacher education, particularly how their belief systems interact with the instructional practices in the experimentation of communicative practices during teaching practicum.