Pre-Service Teachers Learning to Teach English to Very Young Learners in Macau: Do Beliefs Trump Practice?

The global importance of English and therefore the teaching of the English language has made the English language curriculum an integral part of all levels of teacher education, including early childhood education. The purpose of this study was to first explore the beliefs about the teaching of English to very young learners held by pre-service pre-primary teachers in Macau and then to see whether these beliefs were reflected in their microteaching. Qualitative content analysis performed on the written reflections and transcriptions of the microteaching videos of 75 pre-service pre-primary teachers found that their beliefs about classroom practices, lesson planning, and English as a foreign language (EFL) learners and learning were the most predominant beliefs exhibited in their reflections and were evidenced in their microteaching. Less predominant, but still salient, were their beliefs about the goals of language learning, assessment, teaching, pedagogical knowledge, and content. No observable practices were found regarding the pre-service teachers' beliefs about the role of teaching, learning to teach, microteaching, the self, the subject, hearsay, self-assessment, and schooling. The current study found that with only limited exposure to EFL teaching methodology from a single course, the pre-service pre-primary teachers were able to implement some of their beliefs about several important aspects of teaching English to very young learners.