A Philosophical Consideration of Recent Research on Teacher Effectiveness

The Mismatch between Non-native English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Teachers’ Grammar Beliefs and Classroom Practices

“…The composition of teachers" beliefs is neither uniform nor simple, and beliefs appear to be interwoven and have many facets (Mohamed, 2006). Teachers" beliefs about what learning is will affect everything they do in the classroom, whether these beliefs are implicit or explicit (Williams & Burden, 1997 Fenstermacher (1979) also predicted that teachers" beliefs would be a prominent research field nearly three decades ago. However, given the available research studies about teachers" beliefs and their classroom practices in Turkey, it is of utmost importance to conduct such a study with a view to understand the possible mismatches between beliefs and practices.…”

Initiating Change in Prospective Elementary School Teachers' Orientations to Mathematics Teaching by Building on Beliefs

“…Fenstermacher (1979) pointed out that the role of teacher education programs should be to support teachers in bringing tacit beliefs into the open so that these beliefs can be transformed into objectively reasonable beliefs. This process helps prospective teachers to make more principled decisions on the basis of beliefs they believe are important, instead of acting on the basis of the habits of unexamined beliefs and undifferentiated attitudes.…”

Why Educators Should Bring an End to Pedagogy

“…This appears to be so attractive that Slavin (2007) reports that in the No Child Left Behind Policy references are made to 'scientifically based evidence' 110 times. However the evidence referenced for supporting best pedagogical practices are not scientific but are only empirical and Fenstermacher (1978; warns against the tempting but fatal leap often made from correlations obtained from empirical data to claims for causal relations. While such claims lend themselves to formulating recommendations for teaching practice he observes that what is dominant in the literature is a focus upon successful teaching rather than good teaching (i.e.…”