What Learning Can Do to Teaching: Assessing the Impact of Apprenticeship of Observation on Pre-service Teachers’ Beliefs

Abstract

Past school experiences have been found to influence English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pre-service teachers’ beliefs and their teaching choices. Although a great deal of research has addressed the idea that EFL/ESL teaching behaviour may be influenced by teachers’ proficiency level, their personal ideals and beliefs, and their social and economic environment, few studies have attempted to understand and explore the role that ‘apprenticeship of observation’—i.e. the thousands of hours that EFL pre-service teachers have spent as students in classrooms before entering teacher education programmes—plays in the shaping of teacher beliefs with EFL pre-service teachers. To this end, a qualitative multiple case study that included narrative frames and semi-structured interviews was conducted with eight students in a teaching training programme at a Chilean private university. Findings suggest that these pre-service teachers were strongly influenced by several aspects of apprenticeship of observation, as it led them to replicate or avoid their school teachers’ practices depending on their context. It is argued that pre-service teachers should become aware of how their prior learning experiences influence their current teaching practices in order to improve the reasoning behind their teaching choices.