Current thinking on teacher development recognizes that our individual belief systems - the 'mental constructs' that each of us develops through a lifetime of experience - play a fundamental role in determining the way we teach, and in acting as a 'filter' as we learn. To develop professional practice and to learn to become a more expert teacher, implies first developing our personal beliefs about teaching and learning. This module aims to encourage teachers to become aware of how to review and develop their individual belief systems in a principled way, as the first step towards professional development.

It also aims to raise awareness of individual differences in beliefs, between colleagues and between teachers and learners, and of ways that beliefs about social and contextual factors can also affect professional practice. Learners too have their own beliefs about what is 'good' teaching and what is a 'good teacher', and their own role as a learner, since they also come with experiences, which may or may not coincide with those of their classmates and teacher. There are no simple answers to dealing with the implications of these differences. Rather, the aim of this module is to get you thinking about your own solutions to such issues.

The module consists of six activity cycles designed to take about 60 minutes each, with two hours of follow-up work for each cycle. The final activity will allow you to review and collate the outcomes from the preceding five activities, and open out into independent reflective practice and action research. The activity cycles comprise tasks, readings, and observations (video clips) of a teacher completing and commenting on the activities. The activity cycles lead to the following learning outcomes.