Blog 17, Case Study of Teachers' Beliefs

by: Alex Pass

Answers are due on Friday, Nov. 12th, at the start of class.
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In the article “Conceptions of Grammar Teaching : A case study of Teachers’ Beliefs and Classroom Practices” author Thomas S.C. Farrell sets up and experiment between to English teachers teaching grammar to students in Singapore to find out different factors that play apart in the teacher’s practices. In the introduction, Thomas Farrell explains that “what teachers do in the classroom is said to be governed by what they believe and these beliefs often serve to act as a filter through which instructional judgments and decisions are made.” Anything that has happen in teacher past big or small has an impact on how her kids will learn from her teaching methods. Thomas decides to conduct an experiment to see what kind of beliefs the teachers have will impact on the teaching of English grammar on students in Singapore.
Thomas Farrell next point in his research paper is Teacher Beliefs. He starts out by stating “working within the field of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages), has suggested that teacher beliefs are neither easy to define nor study because they are not directly observable. You can’t study someone’s beliefs because you would have to observe a person their entire life just to find out how they came to the conclusions on some of their beliefs. Also he or she could have had different beliefs imprinted into their DNA too. What you can do is learn from their beliefs and watch them use their different beliefs and knowledge’s used in the ways they teach students.
Thomas sets up two questions and asks “What are the two teachers' beliefs about the way grammar should be taught in primary school? What are their actual classroom practices of teaching grammar? He also stated that he will also observe any other factors he feels that will also have an effect on his research. When the results came back from his table “teachers’ belief statements”, found out they both agree that grammar is very important for students to maintain correct grammar structure in their writing works. His next table his next questions focused on “teachers’ classroom practices when teaching grammar”. Thomas states that they “adopted somewhat of a traditional approach to grammar teaching. The observed lessons were mainly teacher-centred, with both teachers providing explanations and instructions, and asking questions and eliciting responses from the students on their knowledge of grammar items”. They both felt that the way to teach grammar is to explain and have interaction with the students to make sure they feel like they understand what is being taught by their teachers.
The results of this experiment Thomas says “The findings suggest that teachers do indeed have a set of complex belief systems that are sometimes not reflected in their classroom practices for various complicated reasons, some directly related to context of teaching”. My opinion on how he came to this conclusion on his experiment is that not all their beliefs will have an impact on their teaching but their past on how they were taught will have impact on the way they will teach. To find out if their beliefs have an impact on how a teacher teaches you would have to study them from the day they were born till they stop teaching because this one way you would see the impact of their beliefs has on teaching.