Teachers' beliefs about language learning and teaching: The relationship between beliefs and practices

The study of teachers' beliefs gives teachers the opportunity to increase their awareness of and to question their beliefs about their actions. This study focuses on 3 descriptive case studies to examine two questions (1) What do Thai EFL student teachers believe about language learning and teaching, and what are the sources of these beliefs?, and (2) what is the relationship between beliefs and practices? Data were collected through in-depth interviews with three Thai EFL student teachers. There were three phases of interviewing in this study: (1) student teachers' past language learning experiences; (2) student teachers' actual teaching experiences and (3) student teachers' making sense of their language learning and teaching experiences. Additional information such as university methods course requirement is triangulated with three-phase, in-depth interviews as well as classroom observations. Kindsvatter et al.'s (1988) personal belief system is used as a conceptual framework for interpretation of the data. The results reveal that the three EFL student teachers' beliefs about English teaching and learning need to be challenged in order to promote practices that avoid maintaining status quo. The evidence reveals the preference of traditional ways of teaching on audio-lingual and synthetic approach. A by-product of the study is that these teachers' view of self-observation was changed---they admitted that the interview questions made them become more gradually reflective about the reasoning behind their instructional method rather than the context. Implications for EFL classroom instruction and teacher preparation can contribute to the field of language teacher education in Thailand and where English is taught as a foreign language.