Ana Maria Ferreira Barcelos

Clashing metaphors about classroom teachers: toward a systematic typology for the language teaching field

Abstract This article explores the uses of metaphor to express various perspectives about the concept of “teacher”. The metaphors came from student-written and teacher-composed narratives, interviews, articles and texts by education theorists and methodologists. A variety of metaphors emerged to describe teachers, especially language teachers, such as Teacher as Conduit, Teacher as Nurturer and Teacher as Competitor. This article exhibits different, often contradictory metaphors held about teachers, organizes them according to four major philosophical viewpoints, and shows how language teaching methods relate to these metaphors. Identifying and fully understanding these contrasting views can heighten “perspective-consciousness”, increase tolerance and understanding, and make the language classroom a more welcoming environment for students and teachers alike. Metaphor is the omnipresent principle of language. We cannot get through three sentences of ordinary discourse without it. ( Richards, 1936 )

Key Issues Relevant to the Studies to Be Reported: Beliefs, Agency and Identity

As pointed out in Chapter 1, this volume is a response to the recent calls for research on learner and teacher beliefs that would be not only contextual and longitudinal, but also interconnected. In other words, beliefs should be viewed in relation to other issues that play a role in learning and teaching foreign languages. These include aspects of those involved in the processes of learning and teaching foreign languages, that is, learners and teachers — their agency and identity, for example. This chapter provides background to the seven studies that will be reported later in Chapters 3–9 by reviewing the key issues addressed: beliefs, agency and identity. In the following, an attempt will be made to define the three key constructs and review developments in doing research on each in applied linguistics, or language learning and teaching, and viewing these either from the point of view of L2 learners or teachers. The chapter concludes with an overview of the chapters, making it possible to compare and contrast the studies to be reported.

Teachers’ Emotions and Beliefs in Second Language Teaching: Implications for Teacher Education

Studies on language teacher beliefs have long indicated that in order to better understand teacher beliefs, we need to look at their connections with emotions (Borg 2006). Researchers in fields such as social psychology (Frijda et al. 2000) and education (Rosiek 2003; Gill and Hardin 2014) have pointed out how emotions shape and are shaped by beliefs. These suggest also that emotions and beliefs are fundamentally interconnected in individuals’ decision-making processes, with emotions providing the necessary impetus for change and beliefs deciding the course of actions. In order to have a complete view of second language teachers’ beliefs, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of these fundamental connections. However, in applied linguistics, there have been only a few studies that have explored this interrelationship. In this chapter, we review studies about emotions and beliefs in second language teaching highlighting their main points, theoretical framework and main results. Our aim is to provide an overview of the ways in which emotions and beliefs are interconnected and how this understanding can be used to support language teacher development. We suggest implications for research on teachers’ beliefs and emotions. We conclude with guidelines for how teacher educators can work with student teachers’ beliefs and emotions.

Comparing and Contrasting the Studies Reported: Lessons Learnt

This volume, with its title Beliefs, Agency and Identity in Foreign Language Learning and Teaching and the seven empirical studies reported in Chapters 3–9, has explored the phenomena of believing, acting, and identifying (or identity construction), and the interconnectedness of these phenomena in the learning and teaching of English or other foreign languages.

The Book in a Nutshell

In second language (L2) learning and teaching, an emic (or insider) perspective has gained ground in the past few years. This perspective highlights the subjective nature of L2 learning: it throws light on the learner’s beliefs about the language to be learned (when compared, for example, with his or her first language (L1) or other languages he or she may know), being a learner, the learning process, and the learning contexts, all of which are charged with positive and negative experiences and loaded with personal meanings. We would argue that this is also true of aspects of teaching.