Implication of Research on Teacher Belief

Abstract

Abstract The implications of research on teacher belief for the nature of teaching and teacher education are discussed. In addition, ignored or minimally addressed issues that could provide avenues for future research are raised. Teacher belief is defined broadly as tacit, often unconsciously held assumptions about students, classrooms, and the academic material to be taught. After summarizing the heterogeneous research on teacher belief, I point out that we lack direct evidence concerning the processes that effect change in teacher belief. However, we can assume that they are similar to those needed to effect conceptual change in other kinds of personal belief. This leads to a discussion of research on conceptual change and its relevance to teacher education. I next suggest that the need for an elaborate personal belief system among teachers arises out of the many uncertainties endemic to classroom teaching: In a landscape without bearings, teachers create and internalize their own maps. The need for a personal belief system also suggests that teachers engage in problem finding, an activity characteristic of all forms of creativity. Teaching, like any form of creative invention, is situated in person, and professional growth is an intensely private affair. Finally, I raise several relatively ignored issues, including transfer mechanisms that may explain how teachers' beliefs become less contextualized, the possibility that key instructional activities are the vehicles that translate teacher belief into classroom instruction, and the value of a curriculum script as a Rosetta stone—a concrete historical record of how one teacher's belief evolved.

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