Abstract:
This study seeks to examine how teachers’ educational background (those who have educated in TEFL in comparison to those who have educated in Literature) may influence their beliefs and attitudes on language learning, teaching and the teaching methods they apply in their classes. On a general basis, depending on teachers’ opinion, learning process might be seen as behavioristic, inductive, interactive or cooperative; teaching might be seen as structural, functional, interactional, or task-based; finally, reading comprehension might be seen as practice, product, process, or social process. Though it is not within the scope of the present study to find how each one of these teaching and learning processes might correspond to the teachers’ beliefs, the main argument of the study is that the teacher’s own educational background has a strong influence on the application of different approaches to teaching reading comprehension courses. The results indicated that the relationship between the teacher’s educational background and his or her opinion about the processes of learning and teaching in the classroom was neither correlated nor significant. Anyhow, the teacher’s educational background was found to have a strong effect on the method s/he applies in his Reading Comprehension classes.
Machine summary:
An Exploration Of The Teacher’s Personal Constructs ABSTRACT This study seeks to examine how teachers’ educational background (those who have educated in TEFL in comparison to those who have educated in Literature) may influence their beliefs and attitudes on language learning, teaching and the teaching methods they apply in their classes.
Though it is not within the scope of the present study to find how each one of these teaching and learning processes might correspond to the teachers’ beliefs, the main argument of the study is that the teacher’s own educational background has a strong influence on the application of different approaches to teaching reading comprehension courses.
com Journal of Language and Translation Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2010 Introduction The EFL and ESL researchers have recently begun to recognize the significance of how language teachers’ beliefs influence the process of language teaching (Freeman, 1989; Richards & Nunan, 1990; Johnson, 1992).
The present study aims to explore the influence of teachers’ beliefs as well as their educational background on the approaches and methods they apply in teaching reading comprehension as practice, product or process.
For this reason, knowledge of the L2 grammar may only become pedagogically beliefs are formed on the basis of teachers’ own schooling as young students while observing teachers who taught them, (b) professional development which engages teachers in direct exploration of their beliefs and principles may provide the opportunity for greater self-awareness through reflection and critical questioning as starting points for later adaptation, (c) the teacher’s conceptualization of, for example, language, learning, and teaching are situated within that person’s wider belief system concerning such issues as human nature, culture, society, education and the like.