Teacher Beliefs and Student Learning

Abstract

Bringing together research from several lines of inquiry in psychology and education, this paper proposes a conceptual model for understanding how entrenched inequalities embedded within ecological macrosystems play out in the classroom to affect student learning. We consider how implicit teacher beliefs and belief expression affect teacher-student interactions and relationships, student learning-related processes, and student learning outcomes. First, we review the literature on how teacher beliefs relate to student learning outcomes. Second, we discuss how teacher beliefs may shape critical classroom-level and individual-level teacher-student interactions, and how these interactions can affect student factors critical to learning. The Teacher Beliefs and Interactions Model, a conceptual model that brings together related bodies of work that have traditionally been separate, proposes teacher beliefs as an important area of inquiry for future empirical research in education and human development.