The present essay aims to understand how beliefs towards foreign language teaching and learning are constructed by both teacher and young students in a particular context. Engaged in a critical and reflective undertaking, the teacher-researcher develops the study from a socio-historical theory of language and human psychological development. Based on this theory, beliefs, as subjective constructs, are analysed and discussed. The corpus was collected in classroom, through textual genres that are specific of teacher's and student's roles. The analysis reveals that beliefs are mutually constructed, in and through discourse, and are influenced by the different elements that are part of the classroom context. The results, besides their contributions to the comprehension of what a belief is and the role it plays in the process of teaching-learning a foreign language to young learners, suggest the use of reflective approaches as an alternative to teacher's professional development.
foreign languages; children; beliefs; reflective approach
