A Conflict between Experience and Professional Learning: Subject Teachers' Beliefs about Teaching English Language Learners

This article explores the attitudes, knowledge and skills of Australian secondary teachers from schools with high numbers of ELL students. Six cases were drawn from a multiple case study investigating how teachers described their understandings about teaching ELLs, and how these understandings developed. Qualitative data were gathered using interviews and a questionnaire that prompted participants to reflect on their theories and practices relating to ELLs. These data were coded thematically, and then analysed according to Davison's (2001) conception that professional learning occurs only when dissonance disrupts a teacher's existing beliefs.