Interplay between beliefs, practices, and contexts: Cases of pre-service and in-service EFL teachers in Turkey
Tez Türü: Doktora
Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Gazi Üniversitesi, Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Türkiye
Tez Danışmanı: Paşa Tevfik Cephe
Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2023
Tezin Dili: İngilizce
Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
Desteklendiği Program: Öğretim Üyesi Yetiştirme Programı (ÖYP)
Özet:
Teacher beliefs, the hidden dimensions of teachers’ careers, form their teaching in numerous ways. The burgeoning literature on language teacher beliefs has revealed the centrality of the construct in teacher education programs. Nevertheless, how language teacher beliefs function as a complex system is rarely studied by emphasizing its dynamic, interconnected, unpredictable, and multifarious nature. Therefore, informed by the gaps in the literature, this dissertation proposes to view language foreign/second language (L2) teachers’ beliefs through the lens of complexity theory. With this theoretical framework, it aimed to reveal pre-service and in-service EFL teachers’ beliefs about language teaching, how they reflected their beliefs in practice, and the relations among beliefs, instructional practices, and macro and micro contexts. To achieve these purposes, a multiple case study design was adopted, and three pre-service and three in-service EFL teachers participated in the study. The data consisted of semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and post-observation interviews. The tenets of complexity theory and teacher beliefs literature guided the data analysis processes. The results indicated that the teachers held interconnected beliefs of different types about language teaching, which involved curricular objectives, teaching methodology, feedback cycle, translanguaging, and instructional materials. Besides, the findings presented the dynamic, non-linear, emergent, and self-organizing nature of beliefs about language teaching by examining the triggers of the belief formation. Accordingly, previous schooling experiences, non-formal learning strategies, teacher education programs, teaching practices, and macro and micro contextual factors worked dynamically in forming teachers’ beliefs about language teaching. Of these factors, the present study provided evidence that teacher education programs were most influential in participants’ belief formation processes. This research further illuminated the interconnected, adaptive, and dynamic relations between beliefs and practices in context. Both pre-service and in-service EFL teachers took the initiative to put their beliefs into practice. For the most part, their beliefs about language teaching shaped their teaching practices and the classroom environment. On the other hand, several macro and micro contextual constraints prevented them from employing several teaching methods and strategies in their classes. These findings have yielded significant implications for second language teacher education programs, in-service teacher education courses, and educational policies on language teaching.