Reflective Dialogue in Teams: a vehicle to support belief change in student teachers

Summary This paper presents an approach to belief change in teacher education programmes. Although belief change may constitute a more relevant goal for initial teacher education than knowledge transmission and competence attainment per se, relatively few models or methods have been put forward that can help student teachers to become aware of, knowledgeable about, and actively involved in changing and (re) constructing their own teaching beliefs. The model of study teams is presented as a relevant approach to teaching in teacher education, together with some preliminary evaluations regarding its implementation. It shows that utilising study teams can have a strong impact on teacher education programmes as well as on student teachers’ thinking.