On Teacher Beliefs

This article, by Danuta Gabryś-Barker, describes teachers as a professional group, focusing on preservice teachers and refining their profiles on the basis of the studies carried out in  educational research. Personality as a major contributor to beliefs and teacher presence in the classroom in a more general sense help to building teacher identity over the period of first becoming and then being a fully-functioning classroom

practitioner.

Teacher self-concept and identity are developmental in nature and undergo constant fluctuations. They make for the success and/or failure, enthusiasm or burnout of  every individual teacher, irrespective of his/her teaching contexts. New teachers who enter classrooms for the first time do not enter them empty-handed. They hold beliefs which have various origins and enjoy varying degrees of sustainability over time and the  experiences they encounter. These are discussed here, both theoretically and by means of illustrative studies.

When considering teachers over their whole careers, clear developmental stages can be distinguished. These

are shown in the form of different models presented in the literature on teacher training and develop.

You can read the full document in the first number of Lingvarum Arena - the digital magazine of Language Didactics, edited by Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto.