TEACHERS’ BELIEFS ABOUT STUDENT LEARNING AND MOTIVATION Julianne C. Turner, Andrea Christensen, and Debra K. Meyer
Introduction: Why Focus on Teacher Beliefs? In this chapter we focus on teachers’ beliefs about student learning and motivation and their manifestation in classroom instruction. Teachers’ beliefs appear to reflect longstanding attitudes, “common sense,” and their experiences in education rather than research-based knowledge about learning and motivation. Because teachers’ beliefs play a significant role in shaping their instructional behaviors, and thus what students learn, it is important to examine their characteristics, their content, and their expression. Specifically, we address three questions about teachers’ beliefs and student learning and motivation: (a) What are beliefs and how do they develop? (b) What beliefs do teachers appear to hold about student learning and motivation? and (c) How do teachers’ beliefs and instruction change? We illustrate some of these relationships with examples from our research on motivation and learning in mathematics classrooms. Therefore, we have chosen to focus mostly on practicing, as opposed to preservice, teachers. We conclude the chapter by emphasizing the importance of investigating the contexts of teacher beliefs, which are essential for understanding how beliefs develop, the congruencies between beliefs and practice, and the arduous process of belief change.
Teacher Beliefs: Definitions and Development The difference between teacher beliefs and knowledge has fuelled much investigation. Furinghetti and Pehkonen (2002) describe two kinds of knowledge: objective knowledge accepted by a community (e.g., official subject matter knowledge) and subjective knowledge. Beliefs represent individuals’ subjective knowledge and are distinguished from objective knowledge on several criteria. First, knowledge refers to factual propositions and is subject to the standards of truth, whereas beliefs are suppositions, not subject to outside evaluation (Calderhead, 1996). Second, knowledge is consensual, in contrast to beliefs, which can represent individual ideologies and commitments. Believers know that others may disagree. Third, knowledge does not have a valence, whereas beliefs are held with varying degrees of conviction from strong to weak. For 361 L.J. Saha, A.G. Dworkin (eds.), International Handbook of Research on Teachers and Teaching, 361–371. © Springer Science + Business Media LLC 2009
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example, belief systems contain strongly held central beliefs and less strongly held peripheral beliefs (Green, 1971), a possible cause of inconsistency between stated beliefs and observed practice. Finally, beliefs are affective, episodic, and evaluative in that they frequently assert the existence or non existence of certain entities, such as the stability or malleability of intelligence or motivation (Calderhead, 1996).
Teachers’ Beliefs About Student Learning Nuthall (2004) contends that teachers need “insight into the learning processes occurring in their students’ minds and how their teaching interacts with those processes” (p. 276). Yet Kennedy notes that “teachers often feel that learning outcomes are unpredictable, mysterious and uncontrollable” (p. 528). Lacking insights into the learning process, teachers may rely on several ways to evaluate student learning and instructional effectiveness. These include “commonsense notions,” beliefs developed over many years of schooling, or in other ways, such as monitoring student behavior, activity level, or lesson flow and completion. Teachers appear to be concerned, perhaps understandably, with observable behavior patterns that support the flow of a lesson, such as whether students are paying attention and staying on task, and with students’ “ability,” personality, and social competence. Anning (1988), in a study of teachers of young children, noted that teachers held commonsense theories about children’s learning that focused on the importance of active involvement, on the need for an emotionally secure environment or on the value of exploring open-ended activities, through trial and error. Thus, teachers’ beliefs about what is a positive learning environment may not necessarily involve beliefs about what is effective learning. Prawat (1992) contended that some strong beliefs about teaching and learning hindered teachers’ adoption of constructivist, or learning-focused pedagogy. At least two different types of teacher beliefs support this argument. First, many teachers tend to consider both learners and content as fixed, rather than interactive and malleable. These teachers appear to believe that both development and individual differences, such as intelligence, limit their ability to teach the curriculum, so it must be adapted, by style or pace to “fit” students. A corresponding belief is that teachers may assume that if something is taught (i.e., explained or demonstrated), it should be learned (Nuthall, 2004). If students do not learn, the problem is attributed to the inadequacy of the students’ (stable) motivation, ability or persistence, but not to the instruction (Floden, 1996). Such beliefs are in stark contrast to beliefs that guide an interactive approach, described by Gallimore and Tharp (1990) as instructional conversations, in which teachers closely observe students’ learning. They suggest that teachers may not know how to converse with students because “[o]pportunities for such careful observation of the child’s in-flight performance are rarely available in typical American classrooms” (p. 198). In addition, teachers may believe that instructional conversations are not viable among a diverse group of students or are not the appropriate means to the student outcomes that are being targeted. Content is also seen as fixed, “a course to be run,” given by “experts,” and its relevance or importance for students not questioned. As mentioned previously, teachers’ beliefs about what is successful teaching and learning may guide practices
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that focus primarily on implementing lessons. As research on teacher beliefs has noted, teachers are often not focused explicitly on learning, but rather on managing [Au1] classroom activity and on completing it. Fischler’s (1994) analysis of a beginning physics teacher’s lessons illustrates the primacy of a lesson’s completion over students’ understanding. When his inquiry lesson plans did not succeed, the teacher focused narrowly on the few students who could provide correct answers. The teacher explained his instructional decisions by saying that he wanted to “make progress,” and that it was important to continue the lesson and “achieve a certain conclusion,” despite the fact that students’ behavior indicated they did not understand. The students’ behavior was seen not as an indication of problems with the learning process, but with their failure to promote the teaching process. Similarly, Putnam (1987) found that during tutoring, teachers appeared to move through a curriculum script, using activities and strategies for teaching, rather than use a diagnostic model through which teachers could form a model of students’ understanding. This research indicates that teachers may see curriculum as fixed, adapt it to students through lessons and instructional strategies, and equate successfully navigating the lesson with student learning. Teachers are more likely to adapt to students and content, rather than change them, through meaning-making. Second, Prawat (1992) asserted that teachers adopt a “naïve constructivism,” the tendency to equate activity and “motivation” with learning. Students’ apparent interest and involvement, rather than comprehension or explanation, are often considered both necessary and sufficient for learning. For example, “hands-on,” rather than “minds on,” activities are often credited with fostering learning. Such teacher beliefs were illustrated in Levitt’s (2001) interviews of science teachers during a professional development project. Teachers commented that “The students actually get to touch instead of saying, ‘look at the picture.’ They’re actually doing it. They’re noisy; it’s busy noise” (p. 13) and “… they’re discovering on their own … they get more out of doing it themselves” (p. 11). Teachers’ goals were for students to “enjoy science” and “have fun” rather than to demonstrate understanding (p. 17). Coupled with the notion of engagement, many teachers regard activities, as opposed to ideas, as the essence of planning, and little thought is given to the intellectual implications of an activity (Yinger, 1980). Eisenhart, Shrum, Harding, and Cuthbert (1988) also concluded, “Teaching activities directed toward developing students’ enthusiasm and ability to continue learning are more important to teachers than solely transmitting a particular subject matter” (p. 57). In summary, teachers’ beliefs about learning appear to rely on a great deal of visible, behavioral evidence rather than on assessment of student meaning-making. Nuthall (2004) argues that for teachers to understand the relation between teaching and learning, they must understand (a) how instruction, management and assessment influence student experience and behavior; (b) how the sociocultural context (classroom instruction, interpersonal relationships, and intrapersonal factors) influence teaching and learning; and (c) how individual students make sense of their classroom experiences. In the next section, we review research on teacher expectations, which offers insight into Nuthall’s three criteria for understanding the relation between teaching and learning. The lens of teacher expectations and
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differential treatment offers one perspective on how instruction, management, assessment and sociocultural contexts influence student learning and how students make sense of their classroom experiences.
The Role of Teacher Expectations in Teachers’ Beliefs About Learning and Motivation For almost 40 years, research has demonstrated that teachers have different expectations for and provide differential treatment to students based on visible, behavioral evidence such as race, gender, achievement level, and social class. Teacher expectations are inferences that teachers make about the future behavior or academic achievement of their students based on what they know about these students at the time (Brophy, 1998; Good, 1987). This research literature illustrates that people believe what they “see.” Once formed, beliefs are difficult to change (Pajares, 1992). Sociologist Robert Merton named this phenomenon the “self fulfilling prophecy.” He warned, “The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning” (Merton, 1948, p. 195). Nevertheless, many researchers have concluded that the majority of teachers base expectations on “objective” evidence such as achievement test scores, rather than stereotype or bias, and are able to adjust their expectations and instructional practices as students’ performance changes. In a review of teacher expectations research, Brophy (1983) estimated that only 5–10% of the variance in student performance is attributable to teachers’ differential treatment and expectations of students. Furthermore, some argue that differential treatment can provide benefits (such as adjusting to individual differences), and that teacher expectancy is not automatically self-fulfilling, because, for example, some students resist (Brophy & Good, 1970; Gregory, 2004). Weinstein (2002) argued, however, that “expectancy effects in schooling have been largely misunderstood and underestimated,” masking their great potential for harm (p. 7). Sadly, our system of education is largely built upon beliefs and practices on the negative side – about differences in and limits to ability. Our expectations of ability are too low, too narrowly construed, too bound to time and speed, and too differentiated (high for some, low for others) by social status factors that are irrelevant to the potential to learn. So too are our educational methods narrowly conceived. Guided largely by repetition rather than compensatory and enriched methods, our teaching strategies minimize effort, fail to overcome blocks in learning, and limit what can be learned (p. 1). Taking an ecological perspective, she noted that expectancy effects have been minimized because they have been based on brief teacher-student interactions or momentary measures of beliefs rather than on the cumulative consequences of “entrenched beliefs about ability” over the course of a school career, beliefs that are reinforced many times over by “institutional arrangements in the classroom, school,
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family, and society (p. 7). She further claimed that expectancy research has ignored the insights of children, the recipients of expectations. For example, Weinstein and Middlestadt (1979) reported that students were aware that some teachers denied help to low achievers and collected work before students could finish it. Children reported that high achievers are given more opportunities for leadership and choice whereas the work of low achievers is more controlled, structured, and criticized. Kuklinski and Weinstein (2001) found that in the early grades, teacher expectations directly influenced achievement (through different opportunities to learn), but by fifth grade, teacher expectancies were mediated by children’s expectations, indicating that older students had internalized the expectations communicated. Teachers’ beliefs in the stability or malleability of intelligence appears to be one predictor of their instructional practices (Weinstein, 2002). Those who view ability as innate and normally distributed tend to use practices that foster differential achievement, such as ability based curricula and grouping, competition, and public rewards and punishments. Those who believe that ability is malleable are more likely to use fluid and cooperative groups, divergent tasks (with many “correct” approaches) and challenging curriculum for all. Such practices tend to accord “ability” to all, rather than to a select few. Expectancy also influences peer relations and conduct in school. Donohue, Perry, and Weinstein (2003) found that first grade classrooms with fewer learner-centered practices had greater rates of peer rejection in spring (controlling for differences at entry). In high school, Gregory (2004) reported that students were more defiant and uncooperative when they perceived teachers as unfair and uncaring. Finally, studies of stereotype threat – a perception that one’s group is assumed to perform poorly on academic tests – show that minorities do underperform on tests when their race is made salient. Such perceptions can emerge as early as third grade. When students’ perceptions of stereotype and teacher expectations co-occur, as they often do, minority students are at increased risk (Weinstein, Gregory, & Strambler, 2004). In such cases, students may become disaffected and devalue academics, leading to decreased achievement and possible school dropout. In summary, teacher expectations and differential treatment are one example of how teacher beliefs about learning and motivation influence student outcomes. Research has demonstrated that even young children can detect and report differential treatment and that by late elementary school, such beliefs have been internalized by children, possibly becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. Beliefs about the stability or malleability of ability as well as stereotypes based on race, SES and gender may be the most damaging for student outcomes. Given the research on teacher expectations, it is also important to consider how teacher beliefs change, because high expectations foster achievement, effort, persistence and resilience in students.
Teachers’ Beliefs and Instructional Change As research on teacher beliefs shows, many teachers adopt a “transmission” approach to teaching and an “absorptionist,” passive view of learning (Prawat, 1992, p. 356), which are less likely to promote student understanding and intrinsic motivation.
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Moreover, the contexts within which instructional decisions are made often advance transmission over learning, even when teachers advocate constructivist principles. Windshitl (2002) analyzed “dilemmas,” or “aspects of teachers’ intellectual and lived experiences that prevent theoretical ideas of constructivism from being realized in practice in school settings” (p. 132). He identified four types of dilemmas for teachers that influence their beliefs and practices: (a) conceptual dilemmas – attempts to understand the psychological, epistemological and philosophical basis of the ideas and accommodating these with current beliefs; (b) pedagogical dilemmas – the complexities of designing curricula and teaching this way; (c) cultural dilemmas – the reorientation of roles and expectations among students and teachers; and (d) political dilemmas – resistance from community stakeholders when privileges and norms are changed. These dilemmas also take into consideration the notion that teacher beliefs are strongly held and hard to change. Those acquired earlier may be most resistant to revision. As Pajares (1992) noted, teachers have been forming beliefs about teaching and learning for years, based on their experiences as students, and their beliefs are well established by college. As “insiders” teachers frequently defend the status quo, even in cases of inequity, using their images of “teaching” to filter new information and maintain beliefs. For example, Thompson (1992) asserted that teachers’ beliefs about good mathematics teaching are so well-formed that they are unlikely to be changed by external conditions such as curriculum reform or new teaching materials. If teachers are required to change, they may adapt to the new curriculum by re-interpreting their traditional teaching or incorporating some of the new ideas into the old style of teaching (Cohen, 1990). Researchers have examined conditions of teacher conceptual change, although there is no clear agreement on the process. Guskey (1986) suggested that change in practice, fostered in staff development, precedes change in beliefs. Richardson (1990) proposed that changes in beliefs and practice are reciprocal, and that either can initiate change. Other research has suggested that beliefs can change only when an individual is dissatisfied with existing beliefs and is presented with a plausible alternative (Pajares, 1992) or when options for change represent challenges, rather than threats, to teachers (Gregoire, 2003).
An Illustration of Teacher Belief Change The results of a collaborative project with middle school mathematics teachers provide examples of these change trajectories (Turner & Christensen, 2007; Turner [Au2] & Christensen, 2007). Six teachers from a low SES, ethnically diverse school in the Midwestern United States met monthly over the school year with a university researcher to learn and implement principles of motivation in their instruction. During the meetings teachers discussed their integration of motivational strategies and instruction and supported each others’ efforts by offering suggestions. In the process, most teachers deepened understanding of the principles and why they worked.
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One teacher in particular exemplified the process of change in beliefs and practice. She altered her views of mathematics curriculum and instruction, and their connection to student learning. Initially, she expressed beliefs that accuracy and speed were markers of student competence, that students could not originate mathematical ideas and thus needed didactic instruction to learn, that students were not interested in math, and that ability was stable. At the same time, she expressed dissatisfaction with the results of her current, procedural teaching practices, but was unsure how to implement interactive and idea-based instruction in mathematics. She believed that mathematics was “not an enjoyable subject necessarily” and was skeptical that group activities and student-led discussions could lead to meaningful learning. She also believed that these types of “creative activities” posed a potential “risk” in that the time and effort involved in their implementation did not guarantee success on standardized tests. Teacher: And that’s what’s hard, as a control freak like I am to handle because at some point you’re sitting in the back and you’re realizing, man they’re getting a big kick out of whoever is up there [student leading class discussion] … sometimes I feel like maybe the math is lost in that and so I don’t know if it’s worth the time spent [on student-led discussion] … Because I think I have done that in the past and I always get to the point where I’m like, ‘Ok, I’ve got to take control again because we’re not learning anything.’ And that’s a fault of mine. I realize that that’s my problem, not their problem; but I think that maybe I need to be able to see more clearly that there is learning going on, that it’s not just kind of a down [off task] time. Despite her characterization of herself as a “control freak,” as she learned and understood the principles of motivation, she began to implement competence- and autonomy-fostering strategies that emphasized student control. Eventually she said that the students were “doing as much teaching, if not more, than [she was] most of the time.” She encouraged her students to “act like a teacher” and to “justify and defend” their thinking when discussing and presenting their work. As a result, participation, effort, and conceptual understanding increased in her classroom. As she continued to experience success with the new strategies, her instruction focused on conceptual understanding instead of just executing procedures, and provided opportunities for students to work together to construct meaning. She expressed that the time and effort involved in designing this type of instruction was “worth the risk” because it resulted in greater learning, understanding, and enjoyment for the students. Teacher: … considering the amount of time we spent laying the [conceptual] framework, I think we’re getting through things more quickly now—so we’ll sort of make up maybe for some lost time. And I’m trying to not think about lost time anymore because it’s not lost time. By spring she was able to understand that the principles of motivation worked together to foster learning and engagement in the classroom. She demonstrated this
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understanding not only in her classroom, but also in the teacher meetings by offering other teachers helpful suggestions and challenging their misconceptions. Thus, by changing her beliefs and practices, she began contributing to the change process of the other participants as well. Although this teacher demonstrated a clear pattern of belief change, it was not smooth. During this process, recurring dilemmas, including the strong emphasis on test scores in the school district and lack of support from administrators, discouraged teachers and prompted them to navigate an inconsistent course between old and new practices. For example, as quarterly assessments approached, teachers tended to abandon attempts to foster understanding and to fall back on earlier beliefs that “covering” material would enable students to answer a few more items correctly on the test. Thus contextual features challenged changes in beliefs and practices, and consistently introduced impediments to such changes, despite teachers’ recognition that changes in instructional practices fostered student motivation and learning. We believe that the most powerful incentive to change beliefs and practices came from the students’ responses to the new instructional practices fostered in the collaboration. Teachers were motivated by their students’ deeper content learning and engagement. In order to set these events in motion, however, teachers had to be willing to take the challenge of changing instructional practices and had to have sufficient self-efficacy to endure setbacks and to solve problems (e.g., Gregoire, 2003). In addition, the research-based principles of motivation and instructional strategies provided a strong explanatory mechanism for teachers. These principles countered teachers’ naïve theories of learning and instruction and took the “mystery” out of successful instruction. The principles also linked motivation and instruction (both “hands on” and “minds on”) rather than separating them.
Future Directions: Examining Teacher Beliefs in Context As the previous research example illustrates, teachers’ beliefs about student learning and motivation are multifaceted – focused on curriculum, pedagogy, and student understanding and engagement. The complexity of teachers’ beliefs, however, is forged not only in the social contexts of classrooms, but also in the school and community. For example, Western notions of ability are that it is stable and innate (Plaut & Markus, 2005). Therefore, because teacher beliefs are socially constructed and sustained, we suggest that researchers should consider multiple contexts if we are to understand how teacher beliefs evolve, are communicated through practice, and change (Turner & Meyer, 2000). In an attempt to look forward, we re-examine some of the basic premises regarding teachers’ beliefs about student learning and motivation. One of the primary ways in which teacher beliefs must be understood is with respect to the immediate classroom environment, what we have called the “instructional context” (Turner & Meyer, 2000). To adapt to the complexity of classrooms, it appears that teachers tend to monitor “class understanding” rather than that of individuals, and to focus on implementing the activity or adjusting it to the students
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(Calderhead, 1996). As we discussed previously, Prawat (1992) stated that teachers tend to see both students and curriculum as fixed or stable, and thus focus on delivery (e.g., pace, style) rather than on appropriate content or meaning-making. If the researcher’s focus is on individual students, this seems to be an apt conclusion, but if the focus is shifted to the level of the whole class, then the argument seems inap[Au3] propriate. For example, Bromme (1987) asked teachers immediately after a lesson to recall student progress or problems. Student contributions were remembered when they had “strategic value,” when the class was “stuck” or when a transition from old to new knowledge was occurring. They served to alert the teacher to problems of the “collective student,” or class as a whole. In essence, teacher beliefs appear to guide classroom-level scaffolding as indicators of student learning and motivation (Turner et al., 2002). Second, conflicting research findings on teacher beliefs have been revealed regarding the congruence between teachers’ stated beliefs and their classroom practices. Thompson (1992) hypothesized that such discrepancies could originate from internal or external sources and argued that the inconsistencies in the findings reveal that there is not a cause and effect relationship between beliefs and practice. A social contextual perspective suggests that, as Richardson (1990) argued, the relationship between teacher beliefs and practice are interdependent – one does not change without the other. Moreover, these beliefs and practices are embedded in different layers of context. Most researchers are investigating the most immediate classroom context. However, to inquire about a teacher’s belief change or to relate a belief to a particular classroom practice, or the lack of one, is more meaningful when multiple contexts are involved as part of the analysis. For example, the teachers in the research study described previously on belief change often altered practice, regardless of beliefs, as high stakes testing approached. In this case a broader contextual influence explained the apparent discrepancy, which was only short-term. In summary, teacher beliefs about student learning and motivation are most meaningful when examined as a system of beliefs across various contexts. If teacher beliefs are social constructs, we should not be surprised when they appear incongruent across contexts. When teachers are working in conditions that support their beliefs, they may appear consistent. However, teachers may appear to adopt other, seemingly contradictory beliefs, in response to institutional and political pressures. By contextualizing teacher beliefs and practices, we can better understand the salient features of the various contexts and how demands at different levels are negotiated successfully. Furthermore, the ability to describe how teacher beliefs develop, the congruencies between beliefs and practice, and the difficulties in changing beliefs may make these processes more predictable, making this research more applicable for supporting teacher development at more than one level and in more than one way (Ingram, Louis, & Schroeder, 2004). By considering the teacher beliefs as socially constructed across contexts, researchers and educators can begin to re-conceptualize these things called “beliefs.” For just as teachers have been beleaguered for delivering the curriculum and expecting students to do the learning, researchers have held teachers as
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solely responsible for their beliefs and practices. Prawat (1992) exhorts teachers to be willing to rethink their views on issues of teaching and learning, but notes that this is unlikely without a complete restructuring of the workplace. As Windshitl (2002) has noted, teacher beliefs are developed and maintained through participation in the conceptual, pedagogical, cultural and political affordances and constraints of their situations. Thus, a contextualized view may offer more promise for both the study of teacher beliefs about learning and motivation, and their conceptual change.
Biographical Notes Julianne Turner is in the Psychology Dept. at the University of Notre Dame. She does research on classroom contexts for motivation and learning, especially in mathematics. She is interested in methodological approaches that capture the situated, dynamic nature of motivation and learning. Debra Meyer is a Professor of Education at Elmhurst College. Her interests include classroom motivation and teacher emotions. Andrea Christensen is a doctoral student in her third year of the Developmental Psychology program at the University of Notre Dame. She is interested in low achieving students, particularly which aspects of the classroom context (i.e. teacher practices, classroom norms, social climate) contribute to improvements in the motivation and achievement of these students.
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Author Queries: [Au1]: The cited reference “Fischler’s (1999)” has been changed to “Fischler’s (1994)” according to the reference list. OK? [Au2]: The cited reference “Turner, Warzon, & Christensen, 2007” has been changed to “Turner & Christensen, 2007” according to the reference list. Please check. [Au3]: The cited reference “Bromme (1987)” is not in the reference list. Please provide. [Au4]: The reference “Kennedy, M. (1999)” is not cited in the text. Please provide. [Au5]: For more than six authors “et al.” has ben inserted according to the APA reference style.
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