Novice english teachers´ beliefs about the teaching-learning process of English as a foreing in public elementary schools.

Abstract

Teaching English as a foreign language to children is a common worldwide phenomena. The circumstances under which the teaching of a language may take place vary from place to place but also from one person to another. The literature (Pajares, 1992; Williams &Burden, 1999, quoted in Gómez, 2010; Inceçay, 2011) on this topic explains that teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning determine the use of strategies and their teaching performance In our country, recently, there has been an increasing need for hiring teachers in order to work in the program called ‘Programa Nacional de Inglés en Educación Básica’ (PNIEB) or National Program of English in Elementary Schools, (hereafter NPEES), which was officially constituted in 2009 even though the program had started in 2007 under the name of ‘Programa de Inglés en Educación Básica’ (PIEB) or Program of English in Elementary Schools, (hereafter PEES). The NPEES is a rather newborn program that has an increasing need of English teachers. The conditions of each of the Mexican states where this program has been conducted are quite different from each other. Thus, different outcomes may be expected. We have anecdotic evidence that in the Capital City of the state of Quintana Roo, most of the teachers that work or have worked in this program are usually hired right after being recently graduated of an English language major at the Universidad de Quintana Roo. In this sense, most teachers who are hired are novice teachers, some of which are hired while still in the last year of their formal studies. Nevertheless and as far as we know, the NPEES has undergone an important exodus of teachers who leave the program before three years.