Exploring Beliefs in Teacher Education

Beliefs that teachers hold about teaching and learning are powerful factors in their practice. Often, however, professional development for teachers focuses on good, or “best ” practice without exploring the underlying belief frameworks that condition the way in which these practices are engaged with and implemented. Without such exploration, substantive and significant change in teacher behaviour is unlikely unless it coincides with what is already believed and, most likely, practised. For teacher educators in particular, charged with the responsibility of preparing teachers for new worlds and new kinds of learners, finding pedagogies which provide their pre-service teachers the opportunity and support to explore, critique and re-think their beliefs is a key task. Starting with personal practice, in a community of learners, is one way of uncovering beliefs about teaching and learning and this paper describes a number of approaches which attempt to do that, focusing on pedagogies which start with the individual teacher and their practice rather than theory or “best practice”