Beliefs about teaching, teachers and schools among pre-service teachers: The case of israeli-bedouin students

The purpose of the study was to examine beliefs about teaching and teachers of Israeli-Bedouin students before and during their training period. The study is based on Kagan's (1992) theoretical model, which views teachers' professional development as taking place through reciprocity between students' personal school memories and the training process. The Israeli-Bedouin community has been going through a transition from a tribal and traditional society to a modern one. The data is part of a longitudinal study which followed a group of 67 Israeli Bedouin pre-service teachers. Each student was asked three questions about his/her beliefs regarding teaching, school and teachers, at three times during the training period. Data indicated that Israeli Bedouin pre-service teachers began their training with general and non-specific beliefs about teachers and teaching, such as: a teacher must be a leader; his/her main duty is to help children integrate into modern society; teaching means handing over information and school has been designed to improve students by means of information received in class. During the training period several changes were detected in the respondents' beliefs: (1) they gave up the belief that school gives pupils information and knowledge that can promote them socially; (2) they linked new professional concepts to former concepts; (3) they changed their beliefs about the teacher's character, from a leading and socially contributing figure to a self-focused one.