186 ELT Journal Volume 55/2 April 2001 © Oxford University Press

Teachers’ beliefsMichaela Borg

The concept of belief, which has been a common feature of researchpapers in education for the past decade, has recently come into favour inELT. Despite its popularity, there is as yet no consensus on meaning, andthe concept has acquired a rather fuzzy usage. So, what are beliefs? Theconcept becomes clearer if we consider some common features of itsdefinition:

1 The truth element—drawing on research in the philosophy ofknowledge, a belief is a mental state which has as its content aproposition that is accepted as true by the individual holding it,although the individual may recognize that alternative beliefs may beheld by others. This is one of the key di¤erences between belief andknowledge, in that knowledge must actually be true in some externalsense¡.

2 The relationship between beliefs and behaviour—most definitions ofbelief propose that beliefs dispose or guide people’s thinking andaction.

3 Conscious versus unconscious beliefs—on this point there isdisagreement, with some maintaining that consciousness is inherentin the definition of belief, and others allowing for an individual to beconscious of some beliefs and unconscious of others.

4 Beliefs as value commitments—many definitions of belief recognizean evaluative aspect to the concept, and this is not surprising as theword itself originates from the Aryan word lubh, meaning ‘to like or tohold dear’, from which the word love also originates (OED 1989).

To sum up, a belief is a proposition which may be consciously orunconsciously held, is evaluative in that it is accepted as true by theindividual, and is therefore imbued with emotive commitment; further,it serves as a guide to thought and behaviour.

Beliefs play an important role in many aspects of teaching, as well as inlife. They are involved in helping individuals make sense of the world,influencing how new information is perceived, and whether it is accepted

key concepts in elt

or rejected. Beliefs colour memories with their evaluation andjudgement, and serve to frame our understanding of events. They can beproblematic to research, however, so caution needs to be exercised whenreading articles on beliefs. Considering the features raised earlier, we canread articles with the following questions in mind. Is the writerdistinguishing clearly between belief and knowledge with regard to thetruth of the proposition, and to its evaluative aspect? Is the writer lookingboth at what is said (espoused beliefs) as well as what is done (beliefs-in-action)—and if not, are they overlooking di¤erences between the two?Are unconscious beliefs included—and if so, how are they uncovered,and how does the researcher check their interpretation?

Teachers’ beliefs From beliefs in general we now turn to consider teachers’ beliefs, a termusually used to refer to teachers’ pedagogic beliefs, or those beliefs ofrelevance to an individual’s teaching™. The areas most commonlyexplored are teachers’ beliefs about teaching, learning, and learners;subject matter (i.e. EFL or language); self as a teacher, or the role of ateacher (Calderhead 1995).

The role and importance of beliefs have been studied in several key areasof interest to ELT professionals: the influence of teachers’ pedagogicbeliefs on their classroom behaviours, for example, Woods’ (1996) studyof ESL teachers in North America, and Borg’s (1998) case study of apractising EFL teacher’s beliefs about, and knowledge of, grammarteaching. The influence of teachers’ beliefs on both pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes has also been a focus of research,for example, that carried out by Richards and Pennington (in Richards1998) writing on the impact of a BA degree on Hong Kong teachers’ firstyear of teaching, and by Lamb (1995) on the impact of an in-serviceteacher training programme in Indonesia.

Further reading There is a wealth of literature in both the more theoretical and the morepractical realms. In addition to those studies mentioned above, see alsoPajares (1992) for a more detailed discussion of defining belief. On amore practical front, a recent book by Gebhard and Oprandy (1999)o¤ers teachers practical awareness-raising activities that aim to helpthem explore their pedagogic beliefs.

Key concepts in ELT 187

ReferencesBerliner, D. C. and R. C. Calfee (eds.). 1995.

Handbook of Educational Psychology. New York:

Simon & Schuster, Macmillan.

Borg, S. 1998. ‘Teachers’ pedagogical systems and

grammar teaching: A qualitative study’. TESOL

Quarterly 32/1: 9–38.

Calderhead, J. 1995. ‘Teachers: Beliefs and

Knowledge’, in D. C. Berliner and R. C. Calfee

(eds.).

Fenstermacher, G. D. (1994). ‘The knower and the

known: the nature of knowledge in research on

teaching’. Review of Research in Education 20: 3–56.

Gebhard, J. G. and R. Oprandy. 1999. Language

Teaching Awareness. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Lamb, M. 1995. ‘The consequences of INSET’. ELT

Journal 49/1: 72–80.

Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edn.). 1989.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pajares, M. F. 1992. ‘Teachers’ beliefs and educa-

tional research: cleaning up a messy construct’.

Review of Educational Research 62/3: 307–32.

Richards, J. C. 1998. Beyond Training. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Wenden, A. L. (ed.). 1999. ‘Metacognitive

knowledge and beliefs in language learning’.

System 27/4 (Special Issue).

188 Key concepts in ELT

Woods, D. 1996. Teacher Cognition in LanguageTeaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Notes1 Knowledge is commonly defined as ‘justified

true belief’ (Fenstermacher 1994)

2 Research into beliefs may also be of interest to

ELT practitioners: ‘learners’ beliefs’ usually

refers to beliefs about language and language

learning—the topic is dealt with in some depth in

a recent special issue of System (Wenden 1999)

The authorMichaela Borg is a PhD student at the School of

Education, University of Leeds.

Email: mborg3@yahoo.com