elicitation of experienced and novice esl teachers’ beliefs about their roles through metaphor

In view of the fact that what teachers bring to the classroom context, such as their attitudes, experiences, and expectations, are closely related to their beliefs toward language teaching, this study was an attempt to explore the role of experience in efl novice and experienced teachers’ beliefs about what the metaphoric roles of a language teacher are. to this end, fourteen novice and experienced efl teachers from sheikhbahaee university and the university of isfahan were selected to fill in the questionnaire containing a prompt of “an english teacher is like…because…”. besides, to see how the teachers’ beliefs were realized in their practice, the researcher observed each teacher’s class for three sessions with the help of field notes to triangulate the data. in the next phase, the oxford et al.’s (1998) classification, including four perspectives of teaching (social order, cultural transmission, learner-centered growth, and social reform), was employed to analyze the collected data. then the beliefs of the two groups of teachers were compared to see whether and at what specific category their beliefs were significantly convergent/divergent. the findings promise implications for teachers and teacher education programs. the comparison of novice and experienced teachers’ beliefs indicated that novice teachers possessed different beliefs compared to those of experienced ones and the experienced teachers possessed some beliefs about their roles that were more congruent with whatever was done in the classroom settings.

Elicitation of Experienced and Novice ESL Teachers’ Beliefs about Their Roles Through Metaphor

In view of the fact that what teachers bring to the classroom context, such as their attitudes, experiences, and expectations, are closely related to their beliefs toward language teaching, this study was an attempt to explore the role of experience in EFL novice and experienced teachers’ beliefs about what the metaphoric roles of a language teacher are. To this end, fourteen novice and experienced EFL teachers from Sheikhbahaee University and the University of Isfahan were selected to fill in the questionnaire containing a prompt of “An English teacher is like…because…”. Besides, to see how the teachers’ beliefs were realized in their practice, the researcher observed each teacher’s class for three sessions with the help of field notes to triangulate the data. In the next phase, the Oxford et al.’s (1998) classification, including four perspectives of teaching (Social Order, Cultural Transmission, Learner-Centered Growth, and Social Reform), was employed to analyze the collected data. Then the beliefs of the two groups of teachers were compared to see whether and at what specific category their beliefs were significantly convergent/divergent. The findings promise implications for teachers and teacher education programs. The comparison of novice and experienced teachers’ beliefs indicated that novice teachers possessed different beliefs compared to those of experienced ones and the experienced teachers possessed some beliefs about their roles that were more congruent with whatever was done in the classroom settings.