Exploring Trainee
and Trainer Beliefs and Practices
This Pre-Conference was held by Prof.
Simon Borg for a whole day
When trainee teachers
do a course or go to a workshop, they expect to get new ideas that would help
them develop their skills. They don’t expect their trainers to question their
teaching beliefs or so they think. What happens is that trainers usually impose
their beliefs even without feeling it.
In the Pre-Conference
(PC), Simon Borg opened this discussion saying “Do Trainee and Trainer Beliefs
really matter?” He started by roughly giving a definition for “Belief” saying:
‘a belief is any idea about language teaching and learning that a trainee
considers to be true.’ He then questioned “Why are Beliefs an important issue
to address in teacher training?”
Discussions showed that we have to respect teachers’ beliefs
because they sometimes stop as obstacles along the way of taking training
seriously and applying it. On the other hand, some teachers don’t realize that
the habitual behaviour they follow in class and at work is a belief in itself!!
If teachers stick too much to their beliefs i.e. ways of dealing with their
lessons in class, this would ‘affect the way they interpret and respond to
educational innovation’. He even set the following diagrams to reflect his idea
1. What kind of
trainees do you typically work with and what is the purpose of the ‘training’?
2. What kinds of
pre-existing beliefs about language teaching and learning do your trainees
typically have?
3. Is belief
change an explicit goal of your work as a teacher trainer?
4. In your work,
do you create opportunities for trainees to articulate, share, examine and
review their beliefs? If you do, what strategies do you use?
5. Do you seek
to ‘measure’ belief change in your trainees? If so, how?
6. Talk about
any challenges you have experienced in making a focus on beliefs part of your
training.
Concerning question number (3), Trainers
said: sometimes a teacher trainer can modify his/her way of tackling a training
not the goal itself. Trainees can lack certain aspects about their teaching
which can affect grasping the new ideas being proposed. Many trainers said that
they give their trainees a chance to express their ideas through discussions.
From my point of view, we shouldn’t be focusing on the idea of making beliefs
as part of our training, but rather on practically applying different ideas
which can, on the long run, help trainees change their behaviour which can in
turn affect their beliefs or vice versa.
Teachers according to Simon Borg can be
helped to express their beliefs through:
a. Belief
questionnaires
b. Autobiographical
accounts
c. Reflective
writing
d. Classroom
research
e. Reading
f. Interpretive
commentaries
g. Reciprocal
interviews
h. Observation
i. Self-evaluation
j. Concept maps
Surprisingly, Borg showed us a visual method applied by a number of
linguists (Kalaja, Dufva & Alanen (2013) Narrative Research in Applied
Linguistics (pp. 105 – 131)) on a number of teachers in Finland where they were
asked “to draw a picture of themselves giving a foreign language class in the
near future”. It was a way to examine teachers’ beliefs or perspectives of a
classroom teaching process.
By the end of the day, Borg gave the attendees (most of whom were
trainers) the chance to reflect on their training and behaviour towards trainee
teachers: He asked them to reflect on different training tasks, compare them
together and point out their advantages and drawbacks. He also asked them to
think of their typical training practices and their aims. After that, he posed
a number of reasons mentioned by other trainers and asked how far do these
beliefs “reflect your own”?
a. To justify
interactive group tasks
b. To justify
practical illustrations
c. To justify
trainee practices
d. To justify
the avoidance of lecturing
He also provided a video link http://instep.net.nz/ that “illustrates teacher education
development through the collaborative analysis of their practices and beliefs”.
Finally, he ended stressing the importance of self-study for teacher
educators in the following points:
1. Self-study is
intentional and systematic
2. The broad
purpose of self-study is to develop a clearer understanding of themselves,
their practices, beliefs and experiences
3. It is
concerned with promoting change in educational practice
4. It is most
effective when it has a collaborative dimension
5. Self-study is
a powerful strategy teacher educators can use to become aware
of
and examine the beliefs that underpin their work
He also set the following diagram to
reflect the importance of paying attention to teachers’ beliefs
Summing
up the day, he asked each trainer to ask himself
a. What do I do?
b. How do I do
it?
c. What is the
goal behind that?
d. Is it
effective?
e. If not, what
are the alternatives?
Here are Simon Borg's contacts:
email: s.borg@education.leeds.ac.uk
website: http://siimon-borg.co.uk/
Twitter: @Simon_Borg
Blog: http://simon-borg.co.uk/blog/
