3.1 Introduction

The study of teachers' beliefs has the potential to provide significant and profound insight into many aspects of the teacher’s professional world. Pajares (1992) notes that attention to teachers’ beliefs can inform educational practice in ways that prevailing research has not and is essential to improving their professional preparation and teaching practices. Kagan (1992) affirms that the study of beliefs is critical to educational practice. She argues that beliefs may be "the clearest measure of a teacher's professional growth" and that understanding them is "instrumental in determining the quality of interaction one finds among teachers in a given school" (p.85). Rokeach (1968) concludes that beliefs are the best indicators of the decisions made by individuals in the course of their lifetime. In 1990, Pintrich posited that beliefs will eventually prove themselves to be the most valuable psychological construct for teacher education.

Ironically, in spite of the fact that beliefs play such an important role, they have not received much attention from researchers. Nespor (1987) has remarked that we know very little about how beliefs come into being, how they are supported or weakened, how people are converted to them. He notes:

However, in spite of arguments that people's beliefs are important influences on the ways they conceptualize tasks and learn from experience, relatively little attention has been accorded to the structures and functions of teachers' beliefs about their roles, their students, the subject matter areas they teach, and the schools they work in. (p. 317)

The lack of attention to the study of this important area may be due, as Pajares (1992) explains, to the fact that the construct does not lend itself easily to empirical investigation and is difficult to define. More specifically, Pajares argues that "the difficulty on studying teachers’ beliefs has been caused by definitional problems, poor conceptualizations, and differing understandings of beliefs and belief structures" (p.307). Current literature on teachers' beliefs is heterogenous and widely focused with separate research agendas (Kagan, 1992). The research on the topic tends to be categorized into domain areas such as teachers’ beliefs about teaching math or teachers’ beliefs about teaching reading.

The purpose of this study is to profile the beliefs of teachers of FSFL about teaching and learning in online learning environments. No studies were found by this review on this topic specifically. However, Chapter 2 provided a review of some of the literature on the evolution of the use of technology in second- language teaching. Included in that review was a discussion of teaching and learning FSFL in online learning environments. The review of the literature in this chapter will focus on the following areas:

1. beliefs about teaching and learning;
2. beliefs about use of technology in teaching and learning;
3. beliefs about teaching and learning FSFL.

In order to appreciate the place and role of teacher beliefs in the teaching of FSFL, it will be necessary to consider the nature of beliefs themselves, their definition and relation to other constructs such as that of knowledge. This review will begin therefore by describing the nature of beliefs and building a definition which will be used in the context of this study. Related to the nature of beliefs is their openness or resistance to change. Following the review of the literature on the nature of beliefs, will be a section related to beliefs and change. Prior to the review of teachers’ beliefs about use of technology in teaching and learning and about teaching and learning FSFL, we will explore teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning in general.

While there is no section in this review specifically devoted to teacher’s beliefs and learning theories, an important aim of this review and of the entire study is to understand the relationship between teachers beliefs and personal theories and the "official" theories of constructivism and behaviorism. As the review will show, teachers' beliefs relate to such fundamental issues as what constitutes knowledge, what learning is, and what the role of the teacher is. The emphasis in Chapter 2 of this study was on tracing the evolution of approaches and the use of technology in the teaching of FSFL. The chapter provided insight into how theories of learning have impacted on practices throughout the past one hundred years. No doubt, these theories have had an impact on teachers' beliefs as well. This review provides an opportunity to better understand the tacit, invisible beliefs and implicit theories that drive teachers’ practices and how these compare and contrast to the "official" theories of constructivism and behaviourism.