Using interviews to study teacher cognition

Abstract

The study of teacher beliefs in the field of language teaching has attracted much interest from researchers in the last 30 years. It is important to examine teacher beliefs because they are believed to play a crucial role in motivating teachers’ actual classroom practices. However, the review of the literature seems to suggest that research methods that scholars employ to study teacher beliefs play a key role in the development of our understanding of the said construct. This methodological paper critically assesses some of those methods, discusses the value of in-depth interviews to teacher cognition research, and offers specific interview types that can be useful in the investigation of teacher beliefs specifically concerning the teaching of speaking in EFL contexts. The paper argues that teachers’ cognitive worlds be examined as embedded in their practices with the help of interviews. This is in line with a recent proposition in the field to designate situated professional practice as the entry point to investigations of teacher beliefs. The study results have implications for researchers in the field of teacher cognition.