Abstract

The goal of pre-service teacher (PST) programs is to provide students with pragmatic working experience and pedagogy that they need for becoming eligible teachers. In a bilingual classroom, however, some perspectives about second language learning (SLL) held by PSTs are too arbitrary. To assist PSTs in developing concepts of second language acquisition as related to educational settings and to cultivate PSTs’ burgeoning educational beliefs, this study was conducted using the Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI). Seventeen PSTs who were enrolled in a university located along the southern U.S. border provided data for the present study. Three of the 27 belief statements included in the BALLI survey were critically analyzed. This critical analysis explored why certain PSTs’ beliefs about second language learning diverged from social reality at schools. Based on the analysis and results from our findings, suggestions about how to improve the bilingual education for PSTs are provided.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.