Teachers’ Beliefs and Classroom Behaviours: Some Teacher Responses to Inconsistency

This paper utilizes data from a study of two beginning teachers in the United States and analyzes the strategies employed by the teachers to reduce contradictions between their expressed beliefs about teaching (in four specific areas) and their classroom behaviour. The individual and contextual factors related to the choice of a particular strategy and to its eventual successes or failures are discussed. One of the teachers sought to change her behaviour to create a closer correspondence between belief and action, while the other teacher changed her beliefs to justify behaviours that were inconsistent with her expressed beliefs.