An investigation of Jordanian teachers beliefs about literacy and their practices in literacy instruction in light of the type of school and teaching experience

Abstract EN

This study aims at investigating Jordanian teachers' beliefs about literacy and their practices in literacy instruction, and testing the effects of the type of school and the teaching experience on their beliefs and practices.

The sample of the study consists of (N = 525) teachers for the first three basic grades in 'both public and private schools of the first and second directorates of Irbid.

To achieve the purpose of the study, the Literacy Orientation Survey (LOS) that was designed by (Lenski, Wham, &Griffey, 1998) was adopted by the researchers.

The total scores of the teachers on the (LOS) were used to classify them into : traditionalists, constructivists, or eclectics, and the two way ANOV A was utilized to test the effects of the type of school and the teaching experience on the beliefs and practices for both traditionalists and constructivists.

The results of the study revealed that most of the teachers (N-352) were traditionalists, some of them (N = 127) were constructivists, and few of them (N = 46) were eclectics.

Moreover, there were (N = 215) teachers whose belief scores were not consistent with their practice scores.

The results also indicated that teachers in public schools with more than 5 years of experience were more traditional than their counterparts in private schools with less than 5 years of experience ; whereas teachers in private schools with less than 5 years of experience were more constructivist than their counterparts in public schools with more than 5 years of experience.

Finally, implications for teacher education and recommendations for further research were suggested.