Tertiary Ecuadorian Students' Beliefs About Learning a Foreign Language: A Descriptive Study

This descriptive study aimed at identifying tertiary Ecuadorian students' beliefs about learning a foreign language. The sample was composed of 200 (n=200) students enrolled in the first semester of Agriculture, Nursing, Pedagogy, and Psychopedagogy in a public university in the Los Rios province, Ecuador. Among the participants, 168 were female (84%), and 32 were male (16%). The mean age was 21.49, varying from 18 to 44 years old. The data was collected using the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory questionnaire (BALLI), and it was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results demonstrated that participants reported strong beliefs in the categories of aptitude for learning the language, motivation and expectations, and learning and communication strategies. The results of this research will unblock a new field of studies to be conducted in the country. The authors recommend doing qualitative studies to deeply understand the reason for each one of the most salient beliefs.

Pre-service Physics Teachers’ Beliefs about Learning Physics and Their Learning Achievement in Physics

This study investigates pre-service teachers’ beliefs about learning physics and explores how beliefs correlate with learning achievement as evidenced by conceptual understanding and grades in a year-long physics course. To investigate beliefs about learning physics, 14 second-year pre-service teachers in a teacher training program in South Korea completed a Likert-style questionnaire called the Beliefs About Learning Physics Survey (BAPS). To measure learning achievement, final grades for the physic course were obtained and the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) was used to assess conceptual understanding. Analysis revealed that pre-service physics teachers’ beliefs about learning physics had a positive correlation with conceptual understanding but not with motivational beliefs. Students’ grades in physics had a positive correlation with cognitive beliefs, regardless of changes in pre- and post-test responses. Implications about how to utilize pre-service physics teachers’ beliefs about learning physics as an epistemological resource for teaching and learning physics are discussed.

The Influence of Previous Biology Lessons on Prospective Teachers’ Beliefs About Learning Biology

Professional teaching competence is significantly influenced by beliefs about learning. Prospective teachers start their teacher training at university with quite persistent beliefs about learning processes. Beliefs about learning can be differentiated into two perspectives: beliefs about student learning and beliefs about one’s own learning. Theoretical considerations suggest that the latter influence beliefs about student learning and both perspectives are influenced by the way in which prospective teachers experienced their own lessons as pupils at school. We investigated how prospective biology teachers remembered their own biology lessons and how these experiences influenced their beliefs about learning regarding both perspectives. The sample consisted of 164 prospective biology teachers (Mage = 21.58 years, SDage = 2.5, 66.02% female) in Germany. Results of a simple mediation model indicate that previous experiences in biology lessons had an impact on both perspectives. Moreover, we found that the influence that previous lessons had on the beliefs about student learning was fully mediated by one’s beliefs about own learning processes. This suggests that experiences from one’s own schooling have an impact on how teachers view learning of their students. As implications for teacher training and future research, our findings suggest that both perspectives of beliefs need to be further taken into account and that an explicit focus on beliefs about teachers’ own learning is needed.

How Finnish and Portuguese Parents’ Implicit Beliefs About Learning Actualize at Home

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore parental engagement in the home learning environment, and parents’ implicit beliefs about learning underlying such engagement. Nineteen parents of school children between 7 and 12 years old were interviewed in two different cultural contexts, Finland (N = 10) and Portugal (N = 9). The interviews were subjected to inductive and deductive content analysis. Forms of parental engagement at home were similar in both countries, divided between two main categories: engagement with their child’s holistic development and engagement with the child’s schooling process. Parental narratives about engagement were, for the most part, embedded in a growth mindset (or an incremental meaning system). The most common actualizations of engagement included considering the child’s learning contexts and emotions; encouraging effort, persistence and practice; approaching difficulties as a natural part of learning and suggesting strategies for overcoming them. Parental practices of engagement were combined with the actualization of their implicit beliefs to create parental engagement–mindset profiles. Twelve parents were classified as having a growth mindset to support the child’s holistic development profile, and the other seven were distributed amongst the three remaining profiles. The study contributes to the growing interest on the association between parental engagement and their learning-related implicit beliefs, giving clear first-person illustrations of how both occur and interact in the home learning environment. Implications for practice are discussed.

Changing Students’ Beliefs About Learning Can Unveil Their Potential

Too often, students fall short of their potential. Although structural and cognitive factors can contribute to this underperformance, how students subjectively construe themselves and their educational contexts can also play significant roles. Social-psychological interventions can increase student motivation, resilience, and achievement by altering these construals. To provide general recommendations for their implementation, we focus on interventions that address common student concerns, which stem from maladaptive beliefs that (a) intelligence cannot be improved; (b) some academic topics are uninteresting and personally irrelevant; (c) learning is an unplanned, passive activity; and (d) others think that “people like me” do not have the potential for success. These interventions tend to be relatively brief, easily implemented, highly scalable, and low in cost, time, and labor. Through a partnership of psychological scientists and practitioners, these carefully contextualized, theory-driven interventions can help students achieve their potential.

Pan, Sana, Samani, Cooke, and Kim (2020) Students' and instructors' beliefs about learning from errors

In some educational contexts, such as during assessments, it is essential to avoid errors. In other contexts, however, generating an error can foster valuable learning opportunities. For instance, generating errors can improve memory for correct answers. In two surveys conducted at three large public universities in North America, we investigated undergraduate students’ and instructors’ awareness of the pedagogical benefits of generating errors, as well as related practices, attitudes, and beliefs. Surveyed topics included the incorporation of errors into learning activities, opinions about the consequences of studying errors, and approaches to feedback. Many students had an aversion towards making errors during learning and did not use opportunities to engage in errorful generation, yet studied or analysed errors when they occurred. Many instructors had a welcoming attitude towards errors that occur during learning, yet varied in providing students with resources that facilitate errorful generation. Overall, these findings reveal the prevalence of an ambivalent approach to errors: Students and instructors avoid generating errors but prioritise learning from them when they occur. These results have important implications for the implementation of pretesting, productive failure, and other error-focused learning techniques in educational contexts.

Uncovering Saudi English Language Majors' Cognitive Beliefs about Learning English Literature

Evidence shows that learners' performance is largely influenced by their cognitive beliefs about learning. The main purpose of the present study is to identifying the cognitive beliefs of Saudi English Language major students in order to get a deeper insight into their inner thoughts about studying literature and to find out the effect of gender on deciding their preferences. A total of 71 male and female English language major Saudi students of the English Language and Translation Department in the Main Campus at Qassim University participated in the study. Data were collected quantitatively and qualitatively by means of students’ questionnaires and interviews. Findings show that participants hold both motivating and demotivating/unrealistic cognitive beliefs about literature learning. The results provide valid evidence on the participants' informed awareness of the social and academic benefits of learning English literature and uncovered their supportive cognitive beliefs that might enhance willingness to study foreign literature. Likewise, it is revealed that issues related to difficulty of literature learning, classroom practices, curriculum and career opportunities have created the established demotivating cognitive beliefs underlying participants' disinclination to literature study. Results also show that analysis of learners' cognitive beliefs would help modify unrealistic beliefs about literature learning and help create a motivating learning environment suitable for the growth of students’ knowledge. The study concluded that cognitive beliefs are the key word for the success of any educational development endeavors and should always be at the center of any learning process being the inner self human power that drives learners’ major behaviors toward their learning preferences and choice of courses. The study recommends identification of learners' cognitive beliefs so as to provide guidelines to English literature instructors to tailor their teaching methods to learners' realistic cognitive beliefs to avoid mismatches with classroom practices. The study also recommends investigating the global structure of the students’ cognitive beliefs to guide educationists in developing curricula that would help students acquire knowledge in an organized manner, and to improve it.