What’s the Use of Linguistics? Pre-Service English Teachers’ Beliefs towards Language Use and Variation
LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH
What is striking is that student beliefs change based on a rather passive approach on our parts. As Richardson (1996, p. 104) notes, “Beliefs are thought to drive actions; however, experience and reflection on action may lead to changes in and/or additions to beliefs.” In fact, Richards and Lockhart (1994), among others, would put reflection at the center of teacher education and change.. Our results seem to imply on the contrary that mere exposure to factual data, without any particular critical reflection focused by the teachers, leads to belief and/or attitude change, in measurable quantities.
In this study we chose to work on cohorts of students. It certainly would be possible to match individuals rather than look at cohorts of students, that is, follow individuals rather than look at Pre- and Post-linguistics groups of students. We felt that looking at things in aggregate served our purposes.
It would be interesting to replicate our study using different, multiple measures including qualitative techniques, as called for in Richardson (1996) and Pajares (1992). Other measures of beliefs might include pre- and post-class interviews, journals kept by students during the class that react to the lectures and discussions, and case studies of teachers as they move out of the role of student and into their own classrooms. Such qualitative data would certainly offer a richer, more nuanced picture than our quantitative data allow. Questionnaire data do, however, have the advantage that they can be kept anonymous, thus allowing more “honest” responses. They also have the advantage of being easy to communicate to administrators. Indeed, an unexpected benefit to our pilot study was the realization that our findings were usable in our departmental Outcomes Assessment Report, a yearly-required accounting of how departments have met their announced goals. Data such as we have gathered here are perceived as useful indices that we are “doing our job.”
Any study is only as good as its data. Because we have chosen to use a questionnaire-based, quantitative analysis, we almost necessarily see only the product of change. It would probably take qualitative data to begin to show the process of change, how people experience it, when and so on. Having the product and not the process limits the application of our findings to the classrooms. We don’t know how to change our teaching because we don’t know how what seems to have worked in fact worked or therefore why the method was successful. That frankly doesn’t trouble us too much now. We think we’ve taken the necessary first step but recognize it is indeed only that.
