L2 Teachers’ Cognitive and Behavioral Manifestations of Pedagogical Beliefs: Variations across Teachers as a Function of Obsessive and Harmonious Passion

Extensive research has been done to investigate the correlation between L2 teachers’ beliefs and their actual practices. The evidence shows that there is not necessarily a relationship between teachers’ actual classroom practices and their beliefs. Given this background, the current study examined the correspondence and non-correspondence between EFL teachers’ cognitive and behavioral manifestations of pedagogical beliefs and effects of teacher passion on the relationship between these two manifestations. The initial participants of the study were 72 male and female EFL teachers teaching at a language institution. From this initial pool of participants, four groups of thirteen teachers were selected to examine the alignment and non-alignment of their pedagogical beliefs and practices. Two groups included teachers who possessed high levels of teacher harmonious and obsessive passion, whereas the other two groups included teachers with low levels of teacher harmonious and obsessive passion. Two instructional sessions per teacher were observed. Comparisons between the four groups of teachers showed that although participants in each group valued pedagogical beliefs relatively equally, only the teachers with high levels of harmonious and obsessive passion showed strong evidence of correspondence in their actual classroom practices. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that teacher passion can play an important role in the correlation between EFL teachers’ self-reported pedagogical beliefs and their actual practices.