Examining beliefs, stereotypes and linguistic attitudes in teacher training: a route to critical thinking education

Abstract

This paper proposes a critical thinking activity designed for language teaching undergraduate students. It is assumed that critical thinking is a basic condition for training teachers who are able to promote a broad education grounded on scientific criteria instead of normative ones, based on common sense attitudes and beliefs. The participants (22 language undergraduate students) watched the comedy-drama “Domésticas, o filme”, answered a language attitude questionnaire related to the characters portrayed in the plot and took part on a debate about those characters. The article explores the questionnaire results, which pointed out the persistence of some common sense beliefs and stereotypes among the participants. This study concludes that working on critical thinking to confront attitudes and beliefs may be a fruitful way to lead future teachers to think about the linguistic fenomena nature and to unveil what confers prestige to certain linguistic variants to the detriment of others.