The development of student teachers' beliefs through their initial teacher education

This paper aims to describe and analyze the development of the beliefs of two groups of student teachers from the courses of Postgraduate Diploma of Education and Teacher’s Certificate of Education. Semi-structured interviews were carried out at three important developmental stages in their first year of teacher education, namely the beginning of the program, before the teaching practice, and after the teaching practice. It was found that student teachers’ beliefs could be classified into five main dimensions, namely beliefs about the learners, teaching strategies, classroom management, teachers’ roles and confidence in subject knowledge. The beliefs of the two groups of teachers were analyzed and compared; implications for teacher education were drawn. Copyright © 2003 Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization.