On The Development Of English Pre-service Teachers’ Teaching Beliefs Before And After The Teaching Practicum

As an internal and complicating concept, the study of teaching beliefs has beenpopular in recent twenty or thirty years with researchers from different fields. Whilepeople still haven’t reached agreement on the definition and the calling of it.Pajare’s (1992) explanation of teaching beliefs has been accepted by a lot whichconsiders that it includes teachers’ confidence of influencing their students, theircognition of the nature of knowledge and themselves, their understandings ofteachers and students’ behavior and some other special disciplines. Guo(2008)thinks that teaching beliefs refers to teachers’ values of the nature of teaching, theirchoice of teaching content, their opinions of students development andteacher-student relationship, the setting of teaching goals, the choice of patterns ofassessment, the cognition of teachers’ roles and mastery of students’ identities, etc.Based on the dynamic theory of beliefs, this study mainly discusses thedevelopment of English pre-service teachers’ teaching beliefs before and after theteaching practicum from six aspects including the beliefs of English learning,grammar, teachers, students, English teaching and methodology. The study takessenior students of English majors in a college of Yining, Xinjiang as subjects andemploys tools of questionnaires and interviews to compare their teaching beliefsbefore and after the teaching practicum. The result shows that there do exist differenttypes of development.The findings of the study show that teaching practicum has influence onreshaping the English pre-service teachers’ teaching beliefs and the influence isdifferent among different individuals. The data of interviews shows that thedevelopment is affected by the teaching condition, tutors, requirements of schoolsand parents and different backgrounds of students, etc.Based on the findings of the study, it can be concluded that teaching belief is aprocess of dynamic development and as the first chance to put the pre-serviceteachers’ theoretical knowledge into practice, teaching practicum has influence onthe development of their teaching beliefs.Both the pre-service teachers and the educators may get some implications fromthis study. They should recognize the flexibility of teaching beliefs and focus on thearrangement of courses and its possible influence on the development of teachingbeliefs. The pre-service teachers themselves should realize the possibility of reshaping their teaching beliefs and adjust themselves in time. Pre-service teachersshould also be given opportunities to practice in real classes in case of seriousconflict between their existing beliefs and the real situation considering its influenceon reshaping their teaching beliefs.