Paula Kalaja is Professor of English at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She specializes in aspects of second language (L2) learning, including beliefs, attitudes, attributions, and aspects of L2 writing. She has co-authored and -edited a number of books including Beliefs about SLA: New Research Approaches (2003), Narratives of Learning and Teaching EFL (2008) and a number of textbooks.

Ana Maria F. Barcelos is Associate Professor of English at the Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil. Her main interests include beliefs about language learning and teaching as related to emotions and identities. She has co-authored and -edited a number of books including Beliefs about SLA: New Research Approaches (2003) and Narratives of Learning and Teaching EFL (2008).

Mari Aro has been Senior Researcher in the Department of Languages, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her main areas of research include learner beliefs and agency. With dialogism and the work of the Bakhtin Circle as her theoretical background, she focuses particularly on the notions of voice and authority.

Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty is Postdoctoral Researcher in Language Pedagogy in the Department of Teacher Education, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her main areas of research include foreign language teachers' professional development, agency and identity as well as the development of teacher education.

Books:. Teacher Cognition and Language Education: Research and Practice by S. Borg (Continuum 2006); focus: teacher beliefs (about a variety of issues), a comprehensive review of close to 200 previous studies. The Psychology of the Language Learner: A Focus on Beliefs and Personality by E. Bernat (VDM Verlag Dr Müller 2009); focus (partly): learner beliefs; reports one study. Teacher Research in Language Teaching: A Critical Analysis by S. Borg (Cambridge University Press, 2013); focus: teacher beliefs (about one specific topic: research); reports one study (a survey conducted)Edited collections of articles/chapters:. Beliefs about SLA: New Research Approaches (by P. Kalaja and Ana M. F. Barcelos, Kluwer 2003); focus: learner and teacher beliefs. Researching Language Teacher Cognition and Practice: International Case Studies (by R. Barnard and A. Burns, Multilingual Matters 2012); focus: teacher beliefs; eight case studies reported and commented on, data collected by various meansResearch on teacher beliefs: there is a comprehensive review of a large number of studies on teacher beliefs (Borg 2006), and it is complemented with an edited collection of articles (Barnard & Burns 2012) reporting some case studies experimenting with a variety of data collection methods and a book-length account (Borg 2013) of survey findings concerning beliefs about a specific topic (i.e., doing research).Research on learner/student beliefs for the most part: there is a collection of articles (Kalaja & Barcelos 2003) representing earlier pioneering work in the field within the contextual approach (but from different starting points) and one book-length account (Bernat 2009) reporting findings from a study in which beliefs are viewed in relation to learner personality.In comparison, the proposed book would be a very much needed update of previous pioneering research on beliefs about language learning and teaching held by learners/students carried out within the contextual approach (Kalaja & Barcelos 2003, Barcelos & Kalaja 2011). It would report on more recent research conducted within this approach, and would stand out from the previous publications in two important respects: firstly, the studies to be reported on/summarized are qualitative or interpretative in their research methodology, illustrating innovation in data collection and/or analysis methods, and secondly, they are longitudinal in their research design, i.e., data has been collected at more than one point in time, and the interval ranging from four or five to over ten years in some of the studies, which is unprecedented in the field.

INTRODUCTION1. The Book in a Nutshell2. Key Issues Relevant to the Studies to Be Reported: Beliefs, Agency and IdentityPART I - LEARNING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: FROM SCHOOL CHILDREN TO YOUNG ADULTS3. Authority Versus Experience: Dialogues on Learner Beliefs; Mari Aro 4. In Action and Inaction: English Learners Authoring Their Agency; Mari AroPART II - STUDYING FOREIGN LANGUAGES: FROM FIRST-YEAR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TO GRADUATES5. Student Teachers' Beliefs and Motivation, and the Shaping of Their Professional Identities; Ana Maria F. Barcelos6. Student Teachers' Beliefs about L1 And L2 Discursively Constructed: A Longitudinal Study of Interpretative Repertoires; Paula Kalaja7. 'Dreaming Is Believing': The Teaching of Foreign Languages as Envisioned by Student Teachers; Paula Kalaja PART III - TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES: FROM NOVICE TEACHERS TO EXPERIENCED PROFESSIONALS8. Dependent or Independent: The Construction of the Beliefs of Newly Qualified Foreign Language Teachers; Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty 9. Stories of Change and Continuity: Understanding the Development of the Identities of Foreign Language Teachers; Maria Ruohotie-LyhtyConclusion10. Comparing and Contrasting the Studies Reported: Lessons Learnt

This book explores the phenomena of believing (or giving personal meanings), acting, and identifying (or identity construction), and the interconnectedness of these phenomena in the learning and teaching of English and other foreign languages.