Pre-service teachers' beliefs about initial literacy

Abstract

As part of a four-year research project aimed at tracing pre-service teachers’ beliefs, the study reported in this paper investigated the beliefs about initial literacy, displayed by prospective teachers studying to work at the kindergarten and primary school level. In particular, it tapped into the beliefs that emerged from interviews conducted among first-year students of teacher education in the years 2012-2013. With a relatively small number of participants (16), each student was interviewed and those interviews were analyzed, taking into account models of discourse-in-interaction. The results show differences as well as similarities between the two groups. At the same time, they indicate the recurring nature of some beliefs, such as the widespread assumption that the sooner children begin learning to read and write, the better they will be, or that by the time students arrive at primary school, they should have already mastered these skills in order to fully benefit from formal schooling.