Beyond exclusive perspectives: re-envisioning language learning beliefs through five lenses

Several decades of research on language learning beliefs have reached a point where a macro perspective could enhance the positioning of our research and educational practices. Instead of reviewing everything written about the topic extensively, this study reviews five perspectives that can be utilized in a complementary and integrative approach informing our research and educational tasks. Derived from well-established lines of research on the human learning process, the behaviorist, constructivist/social constructivist, humanistic, experientialist, and cognitivist/neuronalist perspectives offer insights that are not mutually exclusive but supportive. The review shows that language learning beliefs, like any other beliefs, can be assigned arbitrary stimulus or consequence roles employing associative reasoning, reconstructed by encoded knowledge influenced by third-party mediation, affected by experience that can lead to biased forms, stored and assembled per request with available cognitive resources influenced by emotion dynamics, and can be embraced, promoted or challenged for the sake of cultural and individual growth. The study presents the arguments for not viewing every held belief equally valid, encourages educators to collect and act on their learners’ language beliefs if necessary, and puts forward that it is not the learning belief as a construct that is complex; the human information processing system is complex and susceptible to various factors ranging from the automatic neurotransmitters’ dynamics to already stored amount and type of knowledge. As beliefs are operated by the cognitive systems, they are conditioned by their operating nature. Therefore, diagnosing an embraced learner’s belief is not enough; what drives it is what equally matters. As key contributors to belief formation, educators and schooling systems are responsible for reinforcing, challenging, and developing learning beliefs. Keywords: language learning beliefs, educational practices, behaviorist theory, constructivist theory, humanistic education, experiential learning, cognitive processes, neuronal networks