ABSTRACT
It has been argued that teachers have implicit beliefs about teaching and learning which guide both their planning and their decision-making in the classroom. It has also been suggested that teachers possess a ‘rich store of knowledge’ yielding theories, beliefs and values about their role and about the dynamics of teaching and learning (Clarke and Peterson, 1986). Yet despite the likelihood that teachers’ beliefs provide a framework of reference for all interpretations and actions in the classroom, they are also likely to remain only partially articulated-if articulated at all. If belief systems are as important as suggested above, if they retain a ‘presence, persistence and power’ (Grossman, Wilson and Shulman, 1989), and if they really do have an impact on classroom behaviours, then arguably, student-teachers should be made aware of this relationship. However, research on implicit beliefs is a relatively new and undeveloped field; it is also difficult to achieve since beliefs themselves are unobservable until translated into practice, and yet practice does not, in itself, necessarily indicate the beliefs, or ‘theoretical orientations’ (Harste and Burke, 1977) which underpin it. In addition, argues Deford (1985), ‘the extent to which teachers’ behaviours are influenced by their theoretical orientations has been difficult to demonstrate’.
