Pre-Service Teachers’ Beliefs, Practices, Emerging Ideologies about Multilingualism and Self-Efficacy Relative to Teaching Multilingual Learners

Abstract

Teacher beliefs have a powerful impact on the development of classroom instructional practices. This article reports the results of research that investigated the beliefs, practices, self-efficacy, and emerging ideologies of 268 pre-service teachers (PSTs) who were preparing for primary and secondary school contexts (Grades Kindergarten through 12; K-12), had just taken a course on teacher language awareness (TLA), and were midway through their teacher education program. Three different sources of numerical and non-numerical data were analyzed: (a) open-ended questions, (b) a language identification task, and (c) teacher-generated instructional materials. Four research questions focused on PSTs’ beliefs, perceptions, self-efficacy, and emerging ideologies about the challenges of teaching in a K-12 context in which structured English immersion (SEI) was the dominant model, working with English and multilingual learners (MLs), and developing TLA.

Keywords

• English learners
• multilingualism
• multilingual learners
• pre-service teachers
• structured English immersion
• teacher beliefs