Exploring Preservice Teachers' Beliefs

Ideal teacher learning, which should be realized in any teacher education program, necessitates a social constructivist approach. In a nutshell, awareness raising, exploratory activities situated in sociocultural and educational contexts should be provided for preservice teachers to explore, interpret, and negotiate various sources of their beliefs. Nevertheless, such activities have not been fully incorporated into EFL teacher education programs in Japan. The prime purpose of this research was to not only attempt to describe and document preservice teachers'' beliefs about language learning and teaching, but also ascertain to what extent their beliefs would be maintained or transformed as a result of an awareness raising activity: collaborative journaling. Based on the major research findings, this book offers implications for researchers conducting further studies on the same or similar research agenda, as well as for teacher educators. This book is especially significant because no other case studies in which collaborative journaling was used to explore preservice teachers'' beliefs are currently available in Asian EFL contexts.... Mehr