Novice Teachers' Beliefs About Problem-Based Learning Approach, And Teaching Practices

This article presents the results of the pilot study conducted with the aim to examine novice teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and challenges regarding the implementation of a problem-based learning (PBL) approach in the EFL classroom. The relationship and discrepancies between novice teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and actual classroom practices were also investigated. In total 25 novice teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) with up to 3 years of teaching experience participated in the study. The data for the present study were collected from face-to-face semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. In total, 25 novice EFL teachers working in Latvian basic and secondary schools agreed to participate in the survey.The finding of the survey suggest that novice teachers’ beliefs are not always reflected in their actual classroom practices for a number of external and internal constraints, such as students’ expectations and perceptions, school administrators’ demands and lack of commitment, context of teaching, lack of professional skills and methodological support, and examination pressure.These findings of the present study might have implications for school administrators, EFL teacher educators, teacher training institutions and the institution that provide teacher professional development courses, as well as for education policy makers and for EFL teachers themselves.