Teaching ≠ Learning? : a longitudinal study into the EFL teacher trainees' cognitions

Abstract

Constructivist view of teacher education implies the relevance of trainees’ thinking processes and interaction between personal knowledge of the trainees and the factual knowledge obtained in the course. The article focuses on characterizing the trainees’ initial cognition and beliefs about the teaching/ learning process. The data are collected by means of the teacher trainees’ self-reports and verbal association tasks. The results indicate that the course had some, yet limited impact on the trainees’ perception of the teaching/ learning process, which led to reorganization, re-labelling and reversal of some of the teacher trainees’ beliefs. The trainees slightly verified and changed their perceptions about the role of the teacher and the process of language learning.