Pre-service English teachers’ epistemological beliefs and their conceptions of teaching

Abstract

The study reported in this paper seeks to examine the relationship between pre-service EFL teachers’ epistemological beliefs and their conceptions of teaching and learning. A questionnaire survey was conducted. To this end, two scales (i.e. the Teaching and Learning Conceptions Questionnaire and the Epistemological Beliefs Scale) developed by Chan and Elliott (2004) were administered to 92 Iranian pre-service EFL teachers to examine their epistemological beliefs as well as conceptions of teaching and learning. The findings of this study revealed that pre-service English teachers in Iran tended to endorse, from among the four categories of epistemological beliefs, the innate/fixed ability and certainty knowledge. Also, most of the participants tended to endorse traditional conceptions about language teaching and learning which was considered to be reminiscent of the modern era of English language teaching. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated significant positive relationships between traditional teaching/learning conceptions and some categories of epistemological beliefs such as ‘innate/fixed ability’ and ‘certainty knowledge’. Moreover, the results indicated significant correlations between constructivist conceptions and pre-service teachers’ ‘learning effort/process’ beliefs. Finally, certain implications for the English education of Iran were discussed in the context of postmodernism in English language teaching