English language teachers’ evaluation of a belief elicitation technique

Abstract

In this small-scale study an adapted version of a repertory grid as proposed by Donaghue (2003) was used as a tool to elicit the teacher beliefs of six English teachers working at a Turkish private middle school. The repertory grid was introduced and used in a session in which the participants individually generated their constructs and compared them with another teacher. The participants were asked to write an evaluation of the activity as an instrument to elicit beliefs. Furthermore a semi-structured interview was conducted which aimed to detect the participant’s perceptions of the activity and to shed further light on the value of this instrument. Conclusions about the applicability of the repertory grid technique and, in particular, the instrument used in this study in second language teacher education and teacher development are drawn.

 

Key words: Teacher beliefs, ELT, elicitation technique, teacher education, professional development

Keywords

• Teacher beliefs, ELT, elicitation technique, teacher education, professional development

References

1. Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
2. Borg, S. (2003). Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe and do. Language Teaching 36(2), 81-109.
3. Borg, S. (2006). Teacher cognition and language education. Research and practice. London: Continuum.
4. Day, R. (1993). Models and the knowledge base of second language teacher education. University of Hawaii’s Working Papers in ESL, 11(2), 1–13.
5. Donaghue, H. (2003). An instrument to elicit teachers’ beliefs and assumptions. ELT Journal 57(4), 344-351.
6. Fransella, F. Bell, R., & Bannister, D. (2004). A manual for repertory grid technique. (2 nd ed.), West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
7. Freeman, D. (2002). The hidden side of the work: Teacher knowledge and learning to teach. Language Teacher 35(1), 1-13.
8. Gabillon, Z. (2012). Revisiting foreign language teacher beliefs. Frontiers of Language and Teaching 3, 190-203.

9. Karaaslan, A. D. (2003). Teachers’ perceptions of self-initiated professional development: a case study on Başkent University English language teachers (Unpublished MA dissertation.) Başkent University, Ankara. Retrieved 21 January, 2014 from: http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/1217736/index.pdf.
10. Kelly, G. A. (1991). The psychology of personal constructs (Vol. 1: A theory of personality). London: Routledge.
11. Lawes, S. (2003). What, when, how and why? Theory and foreign language teaching. Language Learning Journal 28, 22-28.
12. Pajares, M. F. (1992). Teachers’ beliefs and educational research: cleaning up a messy construct. Review of Educational Research 62(3), 307-332.
13. Roberts, J. (1998). Language teacher education. New York: Arnold.
14. Saldana, J. (2009). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
15. Taggart, G.L., & Wilson A.P. (2005). Promoting reflective thinking in teachers. 50 action strategies. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.
16. Thompson, N. & Pascal, J. (2012). Developing critically reflective practice. Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives 13(2), 311-325.
17. Vélez-Rendón, G. (2002). Second language teacher education: A review of the literature. Foreign Language Annals 35(4), 457-467.
18. Wallace, M. J. (1991). Training foreign language teachers. A reflective approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
19. William, M., & Burden, R.L. (1997). Psychology for language teachers: a social constructivist approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
20. Appendix A: Repertory Grid Cons A con A con A w A learn Your teac Your teac