This edited collection of articles illustrates recent work on beliefs about Second Language Acquisition (SLA), drawing on the thinking of educational philosophers and discursive psychologists, including Dewey, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and Potter. The data for these reports have been collected by a variety of means: narratives, diary/journal entries, interviews, completion tasks and classroom observations, and subjected to a number of novel kinds of analysis. The book puts past and present research into perspective by comparing and contrasting different approaches. The coverage extends to beliefs held by second/foreign language learners and as well as teachers. The contributions provide detailed accounts of starting points, definitions, methods of data collection and analysis, main findings and implications for further research.
Content: Front Matter....Pages i-xiv
Front Matter....Pages 5-5
Researching Beliefs About SLA: A Critical Review....Pages 7-33
Front Matter....Pages 35-35
Evidence of Emergent Beliefs of a Second Language Learner: A Case Study....Pages 37-54
A Sociocultural Approach to Young Language Learners' Belief about Language Learning....Pages 55-85
Research on Students’ Beliefs about SLA within a Discursive Approach....Pages 87-108
Metaphor and the Subjective Construction of Beliefs....Pages 109-128
Front Matter....Pages 129-129
Beliefs in Dialogue: A Bakhtinian View....Pages 131-151
A Case Study: Beliefs and Metaphors of a Japanese Teacher of English....Pages 153-170
Teachers' and Students' Beliefs within a Deweyan Framework: Conflict and Influence....Pages 171-199
The Social Construction of Beliefs in the Language Classroom....Pages 201-229
Conclusion: Exploring Possibilities for Future Research on Beliefs about SLA....Pages 231-238
