Abstract
This Language Teacher Cognition (LTC) study primarily explores language teachers’ beliefs and practices about a common Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA) construct: Grammar Teaching (GT). This study also aims to investigate to what extent teacher beliefs and practices compromise with each other and cognitive and contextual factors behind their cognition. The data were collected through interviews, observations, and stimulated recall with the teachers. The findings after a cross-case analysis revealed that coursebook-based beliefs, experience-based beliefs, lack of theoretical knowledge and inclination for communicative activities influence what teachers believe about GT. There are both congruent and incongruent relationships between beliefs and practices varying from one teacher to another due to the effect of experiential knowledge, unconscious decisions, and some contextual factors. The findings can contribute to the integration of LTC into ISLA studies, and to LTC framework by exploring the effects of many variables on teachers’ decision making processes. Key words: Language Teacher Cognition (LTC), Grammar Teaching (GT), teacher beliefs, teacher practices
Highlights
Language teacher cognition studies drew substantial attention especially in the last 25 years, and the number of studies conducted in this research domain has dramatically increased
What the teachers believe about L2 grammar teaching can be investigated based on four main themes emerged from the data: (1) course book-based beliefs; (2) lack of theoretical knowledge; (3) experience-based beliefs; and (4) inclination for communicative activities
This study aimed to provide a particular perspective towards what language teachers believe concerning L2 grammar teaching, how they perform considering their stated beliefs and cognitive and contextual factors influencing their instructional decisions in order to contribute to the growing body of research conducted both in SLA and in Language Teacher Cognition (LTC)
Summary
Language teacher cognition studies drew substantial attention especially in the last 25 years, and the number of studies conducted in this research domain has dramatically increased. On the basis of this complexity, the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and their instructional practices has been the interest of many studies in the field of Language Teacher Cognition (LTC). LTC studies can provide an opportunity to explore teaching contexts for the situation in which language teachers deviate from their epistemological beliefs, which are related to teachers’ teaching and learning philosophies, by adopting practices that are not in line with these beliefs (Basturkmen et al 2004). Institutional curricula, time limitations, high-stakes examinations are among these contextual factors (Phipps & Borg, 2009). In this sense, both convergences between epistemological beliefs and instructional practices and divergences from stated beliefs have the potential to reveal the core cognition, which refers to more permanent beliefs compared to peripheral ones, beyond the teaching of language teachers
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