Disrupting Preconceptions: Challenges to Pre-service Teachers' Beliefs About ESL Children

Abstract

Students enter pre-service teacher education programmes with certain preconceptions about what the world is like, what classrooms are like and how students acquire literacy. In our increasingly multicultural society, teachers in pre-service teacher education courses are often not representative of the wider population. The present paper reports on a study in which reflective writing by first-year students was used to illustrate the sorts of questions teacher trainees are asking about classrooms, and the extent to which their preconceptions as to their learners' needs have been disrupted by their readings about diversity. Themes to be explored are dialects and varieties, importance of pupils' talk, cultural diversity and creative thinking. A critical discourse analysis also revealed students' beliefs and developing understandings about second language learners. It will be argued in this paper that a small amount of information, though provided with the best of intentions, may inadvertently reinforce previously held negative opinions about second language learners, and that care needs to be exercised in how information about ESL pupils is presented.