The field of Second Language Teacher Cognition (SLTC) has promisingly gained more attention in the past decades. Different studies have enquired into what teachers think, know and believe in order to understand how their mental lives shape their daily practices (Borg, 2015). This interest has also emerged as it can inform English Language Teaching (ELT) educators and researchers about the needs and challenges teachers experience throughout their professional lives. Despite this growing interest, research on teachers’ cognitions about pronunciation instruction has mainly focused on experienced practitioners (e.g., Baker, 2011; Henderson et al., 2012) or on teachers after taking short courses about pronunciation pedagogy (e.g., Burri, 2016; Buss, 2017). There is need, therefore, for investigating comprehensively the developmental processes that teachers of English undergo throughout their training and careers (Burri & Baker, 2020, 2021).
This doctoral thesis is a response to this need by investigating how the pronunciation-related cognitions and practices of Chilean teachers of English develop during and after their ELT training, and the factors that contribute to them. This was carried in a cross-sectional study in which 293 pre-service and in-service teachers from three Chilean universities were studied and their cognitions compared at different stages of their training and career development. This includes student teachers from first, third and fifth years of ELT training programmes, and novice teachers.
The exploration of participants’ cognitions was carried out by means of an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, involving two phases. In phase one, online surveys were employed to provide a concrete representation of these Chilean prospective and novice teachers’ beliefs about pronunciation instruction. In phase two, 27 surveyed participants took part in semi-structured interviews which aimed at developing the initial research stage. Findings evidence there are noticeable differences in their perceptions regarding the importance of pronunciation teaching, learning goals, models, and the judgements about their own pronunciation and knowledge to teach the content. These contrasts also suggest there is a progressive detachment from traditional perspectives to a flexible pronunciation instruction approach that considers the current role of English as a global language when participants reach later stages of their professional development. However, irrespective of their training and career stage, these cohorts of prospective and novice teachers show similar cognitions about the importance of teaching segmentals and suprasegmentals and their overall confidence for pronunciation teaching. Cohorts at later stages of their development also report similar classroom practices.
Additionally, results suggest the different interpretations of the role of pronunciation for communication and as an ELT content very much depend on the level of their professional and career progression. Their prior learning experiences, professional coursework and contextual factors are ratified as shaping their cognitions (Borg, 2015), showing different levels of influence. Within these dimensions, teacher candidates’ study-abroad experiences, classroom practice and interaction with the media have helped break some paradigms with respect to traditional approaches for pronunciation instruction and speakers’ representation. Teacher education, nonetheless, constitutes the most extensively present element in these pre- and in-service teachers’ mental lives and actions. Tensions in participants' cognitions are identified as a result of the lack of a coherent narrative in these training programmes, which do not offer pronunciation pedagogy training and focus predominantly on their trainees’ linguistic accuracy development. Overall, the study highlights the complex and multifactorial nature of prospective and novice teachers’ cognitions, and the needs to continue developing professional coursework that addresses their challenges in light of these results.