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A Review of Research On Teacher Beliefs and Practices
A Review of Research On Teacher Beliefs and Practices
Zhihui Fang
To cite this article: Zhihui Fang (1996) A review of research on teacher beliefs and practices,
Educational Research, 38:1, 47-65, DOI: 10.1080/0013188960380104
Summary
During the past 15 years or so, teacher education research has made significant
strides in studying the complex relationships between teacher beliefs and practices.
This new line of research has generated important findings that are of practical
implications for teacher education. This article reviews this small body of research
and, in so doing, elucidates the two competing theses (i.e. 'consistency' vs
'inconsistency') that are recurring in the literature on the relationships between
teacher beliefs and practices. It begins with an overview of traditional research on
teaching in general, followed by a discussion of teacher cognition under which
teacher beliefs/theories are subsumed. After introducing the notion of 'the Missing
Paradigm' in the mainstream teacher education research, the article examines the
theoretical frameworks underlying teacher beliefs and practices research. Next it
provides a synthesis of recent research on teacher beliefs and practices, addressing
critical issues germane to the research findings. After a brief discussion of several
critical methodological issues, the article outlines six possible directions for future
research.
Introduction
literature. I also discuss pertinent methodological issues and outline several possible
directions for future teacher education research.
Teachers' thought processes have been categorized into three fundamental types: (1)
teacher planning, (2) teachers' interactive thoughts and decisions and (3) teachers'
theories and beliefs (Clark and Peterson, 1986). These categories derived from
Jackson's (1968) conceptual distinction between the preactive, interactive and
postactive phases of teaching. They reflect more of the researchers' conceptualiz-
ation of the domain of teacher cognition than an empirically derived categorization of
the domain. The first category represents a temporal distinction between whether
the thought processes occur before (i.e. preactive thoughts) or after (i.e. postactive
thoughts) classroom interactions.
More specifically, teachers' planning includes the thought processes that teachers
engage in prior to classroom interactions, as well as the thought processes or
reflections that they engage in after classroom interactions that guide their thinking
and projections for further classroom interaction. Teachers' theories and beliefs
represent the rich store of general knowledge of objects, people, events and their
characteristic relationships that teachers have that affects their planning and their
interactive thoughts and decision, as well as their classroom behaviour (Nisbett and
Ross, 1980). According to Shulman (1986b), three dimensions of teachers' general
knowledge are importantly involved in the process of teaching: subject-matter
content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and curricular knowledge.
Subject-matter content knowledge includes both the substantive and the syntactic
structures. Substantive structures are the variety of ways in which the basic concepts
and principles of the discipline are organized to incorporate its facts. Syntactic
structures of a discipline are the grammar in which truth/falsehood and validity/
invalidity are established. Pedagogical knowledge has to do with the dimension of
teaching such as how ideas are best presented and formulated in order to make it
comprehensible to others. Curricular knowledge includes knowledge of alternative
curriculum materials for a given subject/topic within a grade level, as well as
knowledge of the curriculum materials simultaneously under study by his/her
students in other subjects. To these, Beattie (1995) added a fourth dimension,
'personal practical knowledge', which was defined as teachers' experiential know-
ledge of students' learning styles, interests, needs, strengths and difficulties and a
repertoire of instructional techniques and class management skills. Elbaz (1983)
pointed out that the practical knowledge is, however, 'informed by teachers'
theoretical knowledge of subject matter and of areas such as child development,
learning and social theory' (p. 5).
Theories and beliefs make up an important part of teachers' general knowledge
through which teachers perceive, process and act upon information in the classroom
(Clark and Peterson, 1986; Munby, 1982). They are 'a set of conceptual represen-
tations which signify to its holder a reality or given state of affairs of sufficient
validity, truth or trustworthiness to warrant reliance upon it as a guide to personal
50 Educational Research Volume 38 Number 1 Spring 1996
thought and action' (Harvey, 1986, p. 660). A teacher's beliefs are shaped by many
factors. Among them are the influence of discipline subculture, the quality of
preservice experience in the classroom and the opportunity for reflection on the
preservice experience (Bean and Zulich, 1992; Brousseau, Book and Byers, 1988;
Cherland, 1989; Richards, Gipe and Thompson, 1987). In practice, these beliefs can
take many forms. They can be embodied, among others, in the teacher's
expectations of his/her students' performance or in the teacher's theories about a
particular subject area's learning and teaching. Regardless of the forms they take, a
teacher's beliefs or philosophy can affect teaching and learning in one way or the
other. For example, studies have shown that a teacher's expectations can have
significant impacts on students' behaviour and academic performance (see Good,
1987, for review). On the other hand, a teacher's implicit theory about the nature of
knowledge acquisition can also affect his/her behaviours and, ultimately, his/her
students' learning (e.g. Anders and Evans, 1994; Hollingsworth, 1989; Schommer,
1994; Stoddert, 1994).
Theoretical frameworks
According to Sedlak (1987), many people including educators hold a simplistic
'bright-person' model of teaching. They see instruction as the delivery of
Review: teacher beliefs and practices 51
A lot of teaching is intuition and instinct, if you allow the intuition to come forth
and operate. But then a lot of other stuff which is doing it wrong and doing it a
different way until you find something that works . . . A lot of intuitive things
that you do - and questioning and answering - take a lot of experience to know
responses: a lot of verbal and non-verbal responses in the classroom and how to
handle the kids differently (p. 21).
However, there has been substantive evidence to the contrary. According to the
National Institute of Education's (1975) report, teachers' behaviour is 'directed in no
small measure by what they think' (p. 5). Similarly, Paris, Wasik and Turner (1991)
noted that different views of reading and teachers' expectations for students'
learning are apparent in the classroom. For example, teachers who regard reading as
rules for decoding and interpreting text emphasize mastery and application of
phonic rules and promote activities in which children read silently for comprehen-
sion (Richards, Gipe and Thompson, 1987), whereas others who stress creative,
aesthetic and strategic aspects of reading emphasize diverse reading experience such
as storytelling, writing, drama and sharing of ideas (Nist and Mealey, 1991;
Sturtevant and Spor, 1990; Winograd and Johnston, 1987). Along the same vein,
Eccles and Wigfield (1985) reported that teachers who believe that all children can
learn will promote literacy development, while those who believe that lack of ability
is a stable state will produce a debilitating environment. In partial summary,
classroom teachers possess theoretical orientations that in effect organize and trigger
their instructional behaviours (Duffy and Anderson, 1984; Borko, Shavelson and
Stern, 1981).
Educators are now beginning to realize that teachers (preservice, beginning or
experienced) do hold implicit theories about students, the subjects they teach and
their teaching responsibilities, and that these implicit theories influence teachers'
reactions to teacher education and to their teaching practice (Ashton, 1990). Putman
and Duffy (1984) indicated that teacher practice does not rely solely on impulse, but
is directed towards certain preplanned outcomes. Others have argued that teachers'
beliefs act as a filter through which a host of instructional judgements and decisions
are made (Nisbett and Ross, 1980; Shavelson, 1983; Shavelson and Stern, 1981). In
Deford's (1985) words, 'Knowledge . . . forms a system of beliefs and attitudes
which direct perceptions and behaviors' (pp. 352-3). As Blanton and Moorman
(1987) concluded, there is 'clear relationship between [teachers'] knowledge and
instructional behaviors'. An accurate portrayal of this relationship will, it follows,
contribute to a more complete picture of teachers' cognitive activity (Johnson, 1992)
and, ultimately, improve teaching effectiveness (Casey etal., 1988).
52 Educational Research Volume 38 Number 1 Spring 1996
Taken together, this small body of research substantiates Kamil and Pearson's
(1979) claim that every teacher operates with at least an implicit model of reading. It
also supports the notion that teachers' thinking about their roles and the beliefs and
values they hold help shape their pedagogy. Specifically, it indicates that teachers
teach in accordance with their theoretical beliefs. It further suggests that teachers'
theoretical beliefs not only shape the nature of classroom interactions, but have a
critical impact on students' perceptions of literacy processes as well.
Other studies have, however, led to mixed results. In a study that identified and
compared elementary preservice and inservice teachers' beliefs and instructional
decision-making, Kinzer (1988) showed that although both preservice teachers and
inservice teachers shared similar theoretical orientations towards how reading takes
place and develops, the inservice teachers tended to be more inconsistent in their
choice of instructional lessons. These results were reinforced by a later replication
(Readence, Konopak and Wilson, 1991) which indicated that, as far as elementary
and secondary teachers are concerned, the relationship between beliefs and
instructional practices varies from very consistent to very inconsistent. This echoes
Duffy and Anderson's (1984) report that, although there is some congruence
between teacher practices and their belief systems about reading, the relationship is
not altogether strong.
Many of these studies (e.g. Johnson, 1992; Kinzer, 1988; Readance, Konopak
and Wilson, 1991) focused on hypothetical written tasks and did not include actual
classroom observations of the teachers in action (i.e. actual teaching). It must be
noted that teachers' written responses in these studies may reflect what should be
done rather than what is actually done in class. Recently a number of studies have
attempted to overcome these limitations by using multiple measures including
classroom observation, stimulated recalls, think-aloud protocols and focused
interviews, whereby teachers' beliefs and practices were examined in actual
classroom contexts. Findings from these studies have generally supported the
inconsistency thesis. Wilson, Konopak and Readence (1991) examined in-depth,
through interviews, classroom observations and written responses, an English
teacher's beliefs about reading and her instructional decision-making as she planned
instruction and during actual teaching. These researchers reported that although the
teacher's reader-based beliefs were largely consistent with her choice of hypothetical
lesson plans, the relationship between the teacher's beliefs and her actual
instructional practices lacked consistency. Subsequent in-depth research on two
Chapter 1 teachers (Davis, Konopak and Readence, 1993) and one secondary social
studies teacher (Konopak, Wilson and Readence, 1994) revealed comparable
results.
The inconsistency between teachers' beliefs and their practices is not unexpected.
Earlier researchers have noted that the complexities of classroom life can constrain
teachers' abilities to attend to their beliefs and provide instruction which aligns with
their theoretical beliefs (Duffy, 1982; Duffy and Anderson, 1984; Duffy and Ball,
1986; Paris, Wasik and Turner, 1991; Roehler and Duffy, 1991). This suggests that
contextual factors can have powerful influences on teachers' beliefs and, in effect,
affect their classroom practice. Duffy and Anderson (1984) found that, although
reading teachers were able to articulate their beliefs about reading outside the
classroom, their actual instructional practices were governed by the nature of
instruction and classroom life. For example, it was found that many teachers base
instructional decisions on classroom realities such as mutual teacher-student
respect, classroom management and routine, the amount of assistance needed by
low- or high-ability students, the way students learn, social and emotional
54 Educational Research Volume 38 Number 1 Spring 1996
characteristics and textbooks (Ashton, 1990). Pinnegar and Carter (1990) who
compared theories in educational psychology textbooks with teachers' implicit
theories suggested that one reason prospective teachers' theories are resistant to
influencing their instruction is that they represent a moral vision of teaching that
conflicts with the technical theories presented in textbooks and teacher education
programmes. On the other hand, Kilgore, Ross and Zbikowski (1990) suggested
that administrator and collegial attitudes can support or diminish the effectiveness of
beginning teachers by influencing their beliefs about themselves and their students.
This proposition is further supported by Mealey (1992,1994), who suggested that
non-professionalization of remedial programme instructors in higher education in
general, and in research-oriented universities in particular, have affected teacher
morale and undermined undergraduate preparation. It is also confirmed by
Sapon-Shevin (1990), who found that district evaluation and grouping policies can
affect teachers' self-perceptions, expectations for students and classroom practices.
As Davis and her associates (1993) noted, individual teachers' agendas, school
climate, resources and beliefs shaped their understanding of the instructional task
that they faced each day. More specifically, these authors indicated that teachers'
instructional decision-making was influenced by the principal's and cooperating/
mentoring teacher's discretionary decision-making and their perceived need to
follow state and local district mandates. They further suggested that the differences
in the degree of inconsistency between beliefs and practices could also stem from
varying psychological, social and environmental realities of the participants'
respective schools that either created an opportunity for or constrained teachers
from implementing their beliefs in their instructional decision-making.
It is in this context that Margaret Lampert, a former elementary mathematics
teacher, aptly portrayed the teacher as a dilemma manager, a broker of contradictory
interests, who 'builds a working identity that is constructively ambiguous' (1985,
p. 190). Because classroom teachers are often faced with making choices among
dichotomous choices such as to promote equality or excellence, to build curriculum
around children's interests or around subject-matter, to foster independence and
creativity or maintain standards and expect everyone to meet them (ibid.), to help
students become 'learners' or 'knowers' (Gayle, 1992), to adopt an explicit and
skills-based approach or a process-oriented approach to instruction (Deplit, 1988;
Martin, 1989), to foster productive skills and generalized abilities or to instil subject
area content knowledge (Fang, 1994; Perfetti, 1989), and to centre the discourse of
classroom on technique or on substance in this computer-assisted instruction era
(Apple, 1988), they have to come up with coping strategies, by calling upon the
conflicted 'self as a tool of her trade and building a working identity that is
constructively ambiguous, in order to combat these pedagogical dilemmas. This
identity crisis is vividly depicted in Taubman's 'Achieving the right distance^ (1992),
in which teachers, confronted with 'a world of classroom hubbub, troubled kids,
poor pay, too much work, and too little love' (p. 233), are perplexed regarding how
to achieve 'the right distance' in teacher-student interactions. Montero-Sieburth
and Perez (1987) described a similar situation in which Puerto-Rican bilingual
teachers negotiated between the dominant culture's requirements and minority
students' predicaments and aspirations. Furthermore, many teacher education
programmes seem to have played a part in entrenching these current dilemmas.
According to Cherland (1989), teacher educators (i.e. university professors) often
create in student teachers a sentiment of dissatisfaction with the instructional
practice they see in school. Cooperating teachers, in turn, undermine the work of the
teacher educators. This leaves many student teachers bewildered as to whose theory
Review: teacher beliefs and practices 55
(the cooperating teacher's or the university professor's) they should embrace and
be committed to application.
In the light of these dilemmas, it is not difficult to imagine why Hoffman and
Kugle (1992) found no significant relationship between teachers' beliefs about
reading and their verbal feedback during reading instruction. Teachers' theoretical
beliefs are situational and are transferred into instructional practices only in re-
lation to the complexities of the classroom. Duffy (1982) has described life in the
classroom as a place where teachers are consumed with maintaining a productive
flow of activities while faced with a variety of implicit and explicit mandates that
define and limit their instructional options. In such environments, Duffy sug-
gested, it is difficult for teachers 'to remember that they are supposed to be cog-
nitive information processors who make differential instructional decisions on the
basis of rationally developed hypotheses' (p. 361).
Another source of inconsistency reported in these studies may be attributed to
the measures used in the research. Central to this is the issue of construct validity.
Most of these studies used researcher-determined statements or categories, which
may be different from those of the participants involved in the studies. For in-
stance, the distinctions among the so-called text-based, reader-based and inter-
active approaches are not clear-cut and thus are not by themselves mutually
exclusive. This may put the subjects in a position of choosing either one statement
or the other as belonging to a particular instructional approach or learning-
teaching theory, when such dichotomies do not in fact exist in their belief systems.
Further, different teachers might have different conceptions of, for example, what
the buzz-word 'whole language' means to them (Mclntyre and Freppon, 1994;
Newman, 1991) because of its somewhat fuzzy and elusive nature, at least in most
teachers' minds. It is possible that one who adopts what she considers to be a
whole-language approach to teaching may believe in the importance of readers'
schemata or prior knowledge in comprehension to the relative exclusion of readers'
linguistic skills such as phonics. On the other hand, another teacher may consider
whole-language approach to be the one that emphasizes both readers' linguistic
knowledge and culturally relevant knowledge. It is true, albeit surprising, that in a
recent graduate literacy seminar course a number of inservice teachers who re-
ceived their undergraduate degree from small state universities confessed that they
had, until recently, never heard of such terms as 'whole language' and 'portfolio
assessment'.
Furthermore, the instructional techniques utilized in the classroom are not
mutually exclusive (Diller, 1978). Asking participants to choose one lesson plan as
opposed to others is imposing the researcher's categories on them who do not nor-
mally do so. For example, a true whole-language programme does not exclude
phonics (Mclntyre and Freppon, 1994). Similarly, skill-based approaches do not
solely espouse mimicry and drill, but also advocate instruction in the culture of the
language, as well as some simulated social contexts within which language patterns
are practised (Johnson, 1992). Trying to avoid this inherent difficulty, Johnson
(ibid.) attempted to characterize teachers' classroom practice by examining when
and how often certain teacher behaviours occur. These behaviours were then cat-
egorized into corresponding instructional practices. Such an approach is remi-
niscent of behaviourism and traditional teacher education research where teaching
and learning were reduced into countable behaviours. Recently, however, these
problems have, in part, been avoided by in-depth case studies using multiple
measures and triangulation that examine more closely teachers' thought processes
in the actual classroom settings.
56 Educational Research Volume 38 Number 1 Spring 1996
Methodological issues
Policy capturing
As a method borrowed from laboratory psychology, policy capturing uses simulated
cases or vignettes of students, curriculum materials or teaching episodes to study
teachers' judgement processes. In a typical case, certain features or cues are
highlighted in segments of the material, and the teacher is asked to make judgements
about each feature. These judgements are then recorded on a Likert scale and later
transformed into linear regression equations whereby the relative weighing the
teacher assigns to the features in the segments is described. The resulting multiple
regression equation is interpreted as a model of the teacher's policy about the features
from which judgements are given. The major reliability question with this procedure
concerns the consistency with which generalizations can be made from a particular
score based on a sample judgement or decision task to a broader domain that the
sample judgement is supposed to represent (Armour-Thomas, 1989). Possible
sources of error associated with teacher judgements include: observer/experimenter
drift, error of leniency, halo-effect, personal bias, reliability decay, contamination
and error of central tendency (Borg and Gall, 1989). According to Payne (1982), these
sources of error can be classified into three types: variation of teacher judgement on the
same vignette on different occasions; inconsistencies in judgement due to slight
changes in the wording on equivalent vignettes; and variation in teacher judgement
due to changes in judgement strategy, fatigue or boredom.
In addition, there are other ecological validity problems associated with policy-
capturing procedures (Armour-Thomas, 1989). First, the data reflect a simulation of
teachers' judgements about selected variables relevant to teaching and may not be an
isomorphic representation of teachers' actual thought processes. That is, the
regression equation might be a useful technique for predicting key variables that
affect teachers' judgements, but may be limited in describing precisely teachers'
cognitive processes in a decision-making situation. Secondly, many of the policy-
capturing studies were conducted in laboratory settings and thus may not provide a
valid portrayal of teachers' judgements and decision-making in a real-life classroom
(Lave, 1989). The classroom is a highly dynamic and interactive environment where
unexpected cues can spontaneously trigger teachers' decisions and judgements, and
these decisions may be very different from those made in an artificial setting. As
Shavelson, Webb and Burstein (1986) have pointed out, 'Teachers' classroom
decisions usually are not "once and for all". Rather, they are made incrementally and
adjusted on the basis of subsequent information' (p. 77).
Review: teacher beliefs and practices 57
Process tracing
Process tracing is an umbrella term used to describe a variety of verbal report
methods in which teachers are asked to make decisions and judgements about an
instructional task. Four most commonly used procedures are think-aloud, retro-
spective interview, stimulated recall and journal keeping. In a typical think-aloud
procedure, a teacher is asked to verbalize his/her thoughts while actually doing an
instructional task. The retrospective interview elicits the teacher's thought processes
at or after the completion of an instruction task. The stimulated recall elicits
teacher's verbalizations while s/he looks at a replay of herself/himself performing a
task. In journal keeping the teacher is required to keep a written record of what s/he
thought and did in the process of teaching from planning to actual classroom
instruction. Each method produces typewritten protocols of the teacher's verbiage
which is then used to characterize his/her thought processes or to infer the mental
operations the teacher used to make judgements and solve problems (Armour-
Thomas, 1989).
Process tracing procedures pose some measurement challenges for researchers
mainly because of the introspective nature of the self-reported data. At a theoretical
level, there are different conceptions with regard to the validity of process tracing
data (Armour-Thomas, 1989). For example, Nisbett and Wilson (1977) have harshly
criticized the use of verbal reports as legitimate data. They contended that there may
be little or no introspective access to high-order cognitive processes. They further
argued that verbal reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories or
judgements about the extent to which a stimulus of interest is a plausible cause of a
given response. They identified three possible explanations of why individuals
experience difficulty when they attempt to report on their cognitive processes:
unawareness of the existence of a stimulus, unawareness of the existence of a
response and unawareness of the fact that the stimulus influences the response in a
meaningful way.
Nisbett and Wilson's positions have been challenged, however. Bloom (1953), for
instance, insisted that 'the inference that the recall of one's own private, conscious
thoughts approximates the recall of the overt, observable events has led to the
anticipation that the accuracy of the recall of conscious thought is high enough for
most studies . . . if interviews are made within a short time after the event' (p. 162).
58 Educational Research Volume 38 Number 1 Spring 1996
Ericcson and Simon (1980) claimed that the time of verbal reports, the form of the
information being processed, the demands placed on the information and the
breadth of the event reported are relevant factors in judging the legitimacy of
process-tracing data. According to their information-processing model, newly
acquired information is stored in the short-term memory and readily available for
immediate retrieval and further processing. In contrast, information stored in the
long-term memory is not directly available for processing; and the data retrieved
retrospectively may be incomplete, reconstructed, even invented. Furthermore, the
quantity and quality of information retrieved may depend on the adequacy of search.
According to Armour-Thomas (1989), in generalizing these ideas to process-
tracing methods, it may be hypothesized that think-aloud probes elicit reasonably
valid information from short-term memory since it is directly available and is
believed to be closely connected to ongoing cognitive processes. In contrast,
retrospective interviews and stimulated recall procedures place greater constraints
on the person's efforts to retrieve information from long-term memory, particularly
if the probes are unrelated to ongoing cognitive processes. Under such conditions,
the individual is forced to search for information not readily available and as such
may have to reconstruct or invent the missing information. Shavelson, Webb and
Burstein (1986) pointed out that the greater the constraints placed on an individual
by methods that probe for specific information, the greater the risk for interrupting
ongoing cognitive activities. This may, in turn, lead to distortion of the structure and
course of events, production of incomplete data and increase in processing time.
More recently, Baldwin and Vaughn (1993) reacted to a call for methodological
rigidity by arguing that adherence to one methodology and a rigidity of thought are
something that the education profession can ill-afford. They suggested that what is
more important is the issue of relevance, that is: 'How relevant are the questions
being investigated to the problems in school?' While acknowledging the theoretical
possibility of methodological perfection, they contended that such a remote
possibility cannot be pursued at the sacrifice of abandoning the notion of relevance.
As Neilson (1993) pointed out, 'The recognition that openness, plurality, diversity,
and differences are not threats to be controlled, but opportunities to make significant
differences' (p. 353).
which is consistent with their theoretical beliefs, few have explicitly addressed a
practically more important concern, that is how teachers can apply their theoretical
beliefs within the constraints imposed by the complexities of the classroom life.
Rather than simply providing teachers with more theories, educators must help
teachers understand how to cope with the complexities of classroom life and how to
apply theory within the constraints imposed by those realities. As Duffy and Ander-
son (1984) noted,
Fifthly, while most studies were concerned with the subject areas of reading per se,
few (e.g. Muth, 1993) have incorporated reading in a content area such as maths and
science (i.e. biology, chemistry or physics). O'Brien and Stewart (1990) pointed out
that content reading is not universally embraced by content teachers and that many
of them often resist the tenets and pedagogy associated with content reading instruc-
tion. The need for investigation in science education becomes more acute, given the
National Science Board's (1989) and National Science Foundation's (1987) reports
that US students are lacking behind their peers in other industrialized nations in
standardized test scores. At the national level, for example, Dini (1992) reported that
the final average grade of students ranged from a high 'D' to ' C , with nearly 40 per
cent of the students earning a final grade of'D', 'F' or 'W (withdraw). These stat-
istics suggest a sense of urgency and sombre challenge for further research on sci-
ence/maths teacher education, particularly at the college level.
Finally, and equally importantly, it is apparent from this review that in studying
teacher cognition, research has depended on various paper-pencil instruments,
stimulated recall, think-aloud protocols or focused interviews in order to capture be-
liefs about literacy and classroom instruction. While important in determining be-
liefs, such methods do not really address the personal experiences of teachers and
their influence on shaping these beliefs. Given the social constructivist view of liter-
acy as context-dependent and responsive to factors within a particular sociocultural
environment, beliefs and subsequent practices will vary according to the interpreta-
tive needs of an individual (Duchein etal., 1994). Future research may use alterna-
tive methods such as life history (Langness and Frank, 1981), narrative (Beattie,
1995) or autobiography (Pinar, 1988) to examine teachers' thought processes. These
methods focus on the participants' own narratives (i.e. the so-called 'emic' perspec-
tive) and are a good basis to reflect on and envision the intricate interrelationships
between personal experiences and intentions for preservice and inservice classroom
teachers (Duchein et al., 1994). Such studies should lead to improved understanding
of the complex and interrelated processes of personal experiences, beliefs and prac-
tices. More importantly, they have 'the potential to bring new meaning to teacher
education and to the continuous experiences of change, of growth and of professional
development in a teacher's life' (Beattie, 1995, p. 65).
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