The role of attitudes in knowledge acquisition through informal problem-solving: the case of Bulgarian second and foreign language teachers

Purpose: To date very few studies have explored how second and foreign language (SL/FL) teachers’ attitudes affect their grammar teaching expertise acquisition. To shed light on this question, this study looked at what teachers’ grammar teaching attitudes are and how these attitudes impact the frequency of explicit goals which are an integral component of expertise development through informal problem-solving. The effect of experience on explicit goal-setting was also investigated. Design/methodology/approach: Teachers’ attitudes were explored through behavioral aggregation in a sample of 15 Bulgarian public school and university SL/FL teachers, who were divided into three experience groups. The behavioral aggregation was conducted on the basis of grammar teaching activities which the teachers performed, and then post-actively reported and elaborated upon. Explicit goals were uncovered through a planning task. Both descriptive and statistical analyses were conducted for an exhaustive picture. Findings and originality/value: Two attitudes dubbed wholesale grammar teaching referring to a holistic approach to grammar teaching and high complexity task attitude involving student assignments of higher difficulty tasks significantly predicted the teachers’ explicit goal frequencies. The others did not. In contrast to previous findings, experience was not a significant factor which determined explicit goal frequencies, underscoring the fact that the grammar teaching attitude orientation played a key role in the effectiveness of grammar teaching knowledge acquisition. Although further studies with larger samples need to be conducted, these results provide direct evidence of the relationships between some groups of SL/FL teachers’ beliefs and expertise development.