Nooreiny Maarof

Trainee Teachers’ Teaching Metaphors and Their Pedagogical Association

There has been increasing interest in exploring what language teachers believe about teaching (Borg 2006). Often these beliefs are expressed in terms of metaphors (Richards 1998; Woodward 1991). Richards (1996) asserts that teachers’ personal principles would reflect their teaching approach in which these principles guide the teachers’ instructional decisions. Teaching principles are commonly built upon teachers’ beliefs, educational input, training, and experience, which reflect the teachers’ roles and influence the instructional decisions and pedagogical practice. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in research about teaching and its association with teachers’ beliefs or vice versa. Nevertheless, there has been little recent research connecting the choice of metaphors and the teachers’ beliefs in relation to classroom practice. Hence, this chapter presents the findings of a study on teachers’ teaching metaphors and their pedagogical representations. The central focus of this chapter is on the teachers’ peripheral beliefs about teaching and the extent to which educational trends of teaching English language in the ESL classroom are established through such beliefs.