Future Teachers’ Beliefs About Language Learning. A Study on Selected Subjective Theories

Abstract

This paper focuses on students—future teachers of English. It is believed that their motivation to learn how to teach can also be influenced by subjective theories. The survey study, which aimed at collecting quantitative data, concentrated on a group of 114 student-teachers, from two different training institutions, at different stages of their education. Most of the trainees were women, and it might be interesting to point out that they came from very different communities: villages, little towns, medium towns and cities. The participants were asked to give their opinions on specific variables of the foreign language learning process, such as the role of age and gender, intelligence, learner autonomy, and the learning context. Some questions also referred to the importance of specific skills and subsystems in language education. Many subjective beliefs and theories were revealed, some of which might strongly influence students’ professional development, regardless of their training stage. Afterwards, another group of graduate students took part in an open interview, where they were asked to state what specific personal opinions had been modified in the course of their professional training. Interesting data were collected and categorized, which constituted the qualitative part of the research. I believe that novice teachers, regardless of their training, resort to their safe subjective theories whenever a crisis occurs in the lesson and when an immediate reaction is required. My opinion is that teacher education programs should make use of students’ subjective theories as points of departure for discussion and reflection on their attitudes to the teaching and learning process.

The research described in this paper is a part of a larger study published in Polish (Michońska-Stadnik, 2013).