Acuity: Journal of English Language Pedagogy, Literature, and Culture. Vol.8 No. 1. 2023 https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity 1 English Language Teacher Candidates’ Pedagogical Beliefs during Covid19 Pandemic Zeynep Çetin Köroğlu zeynepcetin86@gmail.com Aksaray University, Turkey DOI: 10.35974/acuity.v8i1.2798 Abstract The pandemic has been affecting every side of our lives in a negative way unfortunately. Teacher training has also been affected from the pandemic and student teachers have been taken their courses through digital environments. Unlike traditional courses they have to study the entire courses online. As it is known that teachers’ beliefs have a profound impact on their classroom practices, decisions on their teaching strategies, their styles and even how they implement curriculum. For this reason, the current study aims to investigate whether Covid19 pandemic has an effect on student teachers’ beliefs positively or negatively. The research was carried out in 2020 spring term of academic year when the pandemic first started. The research was designed as a qualitative study and to collect data a case and an interview administered to participants. Totally, 74 student teachers participated in the study that participants were third and fourth graders of ELT department at a state university, Turkey. The results indicate that participants have negative perspectives towards taking all courses through digital environments and tools. However, their beliefs have not been affected negatively from Covid19 pandemic. Keywords: Student teachers, pedagogical beliefs, English language teaching, teaching practice. INTRODUCTION Teacher beliefs are shaped by various factors that teacher candidates take teachers as models throughout their education life, the content of the courses and experiences of educational activities. It is thought that positive teacher models shape beliefs positively. Like positive teacher models, negative teacher models also affect teacher’s beliefs negatively. Another factor affecting teacher beliefs is the content of educational activities. If the teacher training programs provide the necessary content to the teacher candidates and the results are at the expected level, the teacher candidates develop positive beliefs. In this context, the content, application, and achievement of teacher training programs are of great importance. Finally, teacher candidates' teaching experiences shape their beliefs positively or negatively. Teaching practice 1 and teaching practice 2 courses, which are usually in the last year of teacher training programs, offer pre-service teachers the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills they have learned at a micro level before starting the teaching profession. Another important contribution of these courses is that they provide teacher candidates with the opportunity to observe and evaluate teachers who have worked in the teaching profession for many years and analyze the teaching process. These three factors that shape teachers' beliefs were affected by the Covid19 pandemic, which affected the whole world in the first months of 2020, as in all other fields. During the pandemic, education and training activities were necessarily moved from traditional classroom environments to virtual classroom environments because of sudden decisions. Course contents and durations were adapted in accordance with the tools used, and course durations varied based on educational institutions. For example, one university's virtual lesson time was 50 minutes, while another took 15 minutes. In this context, there have been changes in the course content. It is thought that updating the course contents and duration due to the pandemic influences the shaping of teacher beliefs. On the other https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity mailto:zeynepcetin86@gmail.com Acuity: Journal of English Language Pedagogy, Literature, and Culture. Vol.8 No. 1. 2023 https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity 2 hand, the attitudes and behaviors of teacher educators who moved from the traditional classroom environment to the virtual classroom environment play an important role in shaping the beliefs of teacher candidates. For example, a teacher who can provide classroom management and active participation of students in a traditional classroom environment has difficulties in using these skills in a virtual classroom environment. It is thought that the change in the attitudes and behaviors of teacher educators in virtual classroom environments is effective in the belief formation process of teacher candidates during the pandemic. Another issue is that teaching practice one and teaching practice 2 courses are given with distance education during the pandemic period. Education and training activities in primary, secondary and high schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) were given by compulsory distance education. Therefore, the senior students of the faculty of education who took teaching practice 1 and teaching practice 2 courses could not gain face-to-face teaching experience in these courses. In this case, like other factors, it has important effects on the formation of pre-service teachers' beliefs. To fill the research gap in terms of student teachers’ beliefs during covid19 pandemic, the current study investigates the beliefs of the 3rd and 4th year students of the department of foreign languages education at a state university in Turkey towards the teaching profession during the pandemic. Since there are not enough studies in the related literature about the beliefs of teacher candidates during the pandemic, the current study aims to fill this gap. The present study is guided by the following research questions. 1. How were the beliefs of prospective English teachers shaped during the covid 19 pandemic? 2. What is the novice teacher’s belief of being a good teacher? 3. How does online teaching interrelate with the novice English language teacher’s beliefs? Before the Covid19 pandemic, distance education, blended learning, flipped learning and computer assisted language learning were used as a supplementary education form to traditional face to face education in standard classrooms. However, with the outbreak of pandemic rapid and mandatory emergency remote teaching (ERT) or emergency distance education (EDT) has been utilized to carry out education (Van Lancker & Parolin, 2020). In many countries, most of the schools and universities had to switch on fully online education due to the harsh conditions of covid19 pandemic in February 2020. Similar to these countries, in Turkey schools and universities switched on online teaching for a period of time and faced with closure in March 2020 (Yükselir & Yuvayapan, 2021). Still, some courses at universities have been carried out in digital classrooms at digital environments. The swift and mandatory switch on online education brings debate on the quality of education in online environments, students’ and teachers’ satisfaction, students’, and teachers’ motivation on online learning. Covid19 pandemic has continue to affect English language teaching practices like all other fields. The unplanned and unforeseen pandemic conditions changed teachers’ work and possibly changed their teaching perceptions. Since, they had to change their instruction, with sudden decisions from face-to-face teaching to online teaching. (Fagell, 2020; Pirtle, 2020). The point is that most of the teachers tried to find solutions to carry out effective teaching during the pandemic. Moreover, no matter how it is called as distance education, online education or emergency remote education, teachers have had really hard time to present meaningful content and experience to their students in this process (De Witt, 2020; Merrill, 2020). Computer assisted language learning (CALL) or blended learning are not new terms for many teachers as stated by Katemba (2020) but implementations of them is new. As Baired (2020) states that being forced to work from home, not meeting with colleagues and students on regular teaching settings, being forced to change current lesson plans and learning necessary new technologies quickly many teachers have experienced the most complicating and renewal experience of their professional life. One of the bright sides of this severe conditions is that during this process, online teaching experience gives language teachers a chance to think, analyze and adjust their teaching beliefs. In this perspective, understanding teachers’ perceptions https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity Acuity: Journal of English Language Pedagogy, Literature, and Culture. Vol.8 No. 1. 2023 https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity 3 and beliefs about teaching online is highly crucial to make changes and adjust teaching process effectively. In this context, student teachers’ and teachers’ perceptions should be carefully integrated into the process of designing an online curriculum. Grasping their perceptions enables educational experts to design better curriculum and the curriculum can meet students’ needs (Nambiar, 2020). Belief is defined as the collection of ideas, and in this respect, it can be said that it is somehow accurate and plays an important role to filter everyone’s experiences (Tondeur et al. 2017; Lo & Hew, 2020). On a similar basis, a pedagogical belief means teacher’s confidence on his/her teaching and knowledge through educational theory. Scholar states that teacher’s beliefs and perspectives are shaped by their past teaching experiences, and these have a crucial role in planning teaching activities and classroom behavior (Magulod Jr, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). Similarly, pedagogical beliefs can be described as EFL teachers’ assumptions on teaching (Chen & Kent, 2020). Teacher beliefs research focus on teachers’ psychological understanding, suppositions, and perspectives in terms of classroom domains such as students, teaching materials and even themselves (Zheng,2009). Moreover, Teacher beliefs are regarded as the ‘heart of the teaching’ that shape teachers’ behaviors in the classroom, their teaching practices, understanding of the teaching and instruction (Harendita, 2017). During the pandemic most of the researchers focus their attention on how in-service teachers should carry out their online learning (Eko et al., 2020; Gunawan et al., 2020; Moorhouse, 2020; Pace et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2020), very little attention has been paid how future teachers see the online learning they are experiencing now and what they believe about it. If the field of pre-service teachers' perspectives is studied more, it can be highly fruitful. It allows them to gain a better awareness of their preconceptions about the use of technology, which will most likely manifest when they begin their careers as English instructors. Furthermore, because advanced learners' views are thought to be more stable than rookie learners', preservice teachers' beliefs, as novice instructors, may still be changing during their teacher education programs (Incecay, 2011). As a result, the findings may help to improve English language education programs by identifying what worked well and what may be improved during and after the pandemic. Taş et. al. (2021) carried out research with 758 teachers from Turkey to investigate teachers’ self- efficacy beliefs and perceptions towards distance education that they switched to distance education during the pandemic. In their study the researchers utilized both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods. The results showed that participants are not satisfied with their capabilities of organizing effective online learning environments and preparing various evaluation activities. Additionally, they thought that instructional materials which were used on digital platforms were not sufficient to enable students successful. Another research was carried out by Subekti (2020) to investigate pre-service English language teachers’ beliefs on implementation of online learning during pandemic. The participants were students of English language education department. In the study the researcher collected qualitative data. The results of the study revealed that three factors affect online learning negatively. These are inadequate supporting resources, teachers’ limited skills t to manage online education and lack of interaction between teacher to student and student to teacher (Subekti, 2020). Another study was carried out to search English teacher candidates’ perspectives towards their future career during Covid19 pandemic (Tunaboylu & Inal, 2021). They investigated 127 prospective English language teachers of English language teaching department at a state university, Turkey. Qualitative data of the study revealed that teacher candidates became more sensible about pandemic related issues, and they are eager to integrate such issues in their future profession. Another study was carried out by Souza at. Al. (2021) to investigate English language teachers’ and teacher candidates’ beliefs and https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity Acuity: Journal of English Language Pedagogy, Literature, and Culture. Vol.8 No. 1. 2023 https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity 4 motivation during Covid19 pandemic. The researchers found out that the more involvement in learning process in language learning process made them more engaged. Related research indicate that online teacher training courses are not as efficient as the traditional face to face courses in terms of developing language teachers’ beliefs and identity. In this respect to reduce negative effects of online learning five principles can be followed Bao (2020). Firs of all is providing relevance between instruction and learning. Clear and understandable instruction is needed to be given to learners in an online classroom. The second is again related with the instruction delivery which should be effective. The third principle is about teachers’ support to learners during online education (Fu, 2013). If students have some difficulty in learning process, teacher should help students in an appropriate way. Messer states that learners should be autonomous at a certain level to achieve social and academic growth. The last principle is that alternative plans should be prepared in case of unexpected situations. METHODOLOGY The present study was conducted as qualitative research in the spring term of 2020. As it is known, qualitative research provides the opportunity to make in-depth examinations in understanding the perspectives of the participants and are important studies for forming theory. For this reason, qualitative data collection method was used to investigate the beliefs of English teacher candidates that they developed and changed during the pandemic. Data Collection Tools A case containing a teacher's personal notes was used to collect the data for this study. In addition, an open-ended interview form consisting of three questions was used. In the current research open- ended question type was utilized to make participants answer freely. As it is known that there are three types of questions: interpretation, listing, and space filling. The interpretation questions enable participants more objective and give more detailed responses on a particular issue (Büyüköztürk, Kılıç Çakmak, Akgün, Karadeniz & Demirel, 2016). The responses of the participants to the given situation were collected. In addition, the answers to the interview questions were analyzed by thematic coding and content analysis method. Research participants and Sampling Procedures Convenience sampling method was used to select participants of the study. As McIntyre (2004) states “convenience sampling is the technique of selecting sampling units on the basis of availability rather than representativeness” (p. 105). The participants of the currents research are 3rd and 4th grade students of foreign languages education department at a state university Turkey. The ages of the participants vary between 19 and 21. The participants are 51 girls and 23 boys. Participants have similar educational background. It needs to be said that all the students who contributed to this study were volunteer to participate in the study and they shared their opinions and beliefs about online classrooms during the pandemic and the given case. Procedure A case containing a teacher's personal notes were given to the participants. Questions such as ‘what advice they would give to a teacher in this situation’ and ‘what they would do if they were in that teacher's place’ were asked. Since the given situation includes the negative attitudes and thoughts of the teacher towards the teaching profession, the beliefs of the teacher candidates in the teaching profession were revealed. After using the data collection tool, a semi-structured written interview form consisting of three open-ended questions was administered. It was asked whether the https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity Acuity: Journal of English Language Pedagogy, Literature, and Culture. Vol.8 No. 1. 2023 https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity 5 education they received in virtual classrooms during the pandemic affected their attitudes and beliefs towards the teaching profession, how the teacher's attitudes and behaviors in virtual classrooms affected their perspectives on the teaching profession, and how the teaching practice 1 and teaching practice 2 courses through distance education affected their beliefs through the interview questions. RESULTS Students’ responses were analyzed due to content analysis and themes were created suitably. Three different themes were utilized to categorize students’ beliefs about being an ideal teacher and teaching profession. The first theme was set as ‘‘Attitudes towards teaching’. The second theme is ‘Ideal teacher image’ and the third theme is ‘perceptions towards teacher profession’. Sub- themes were created for each theme. Table 1. ‘Attitudes towards teaching’ theme and repetition rates in participants’ responses Attitudes towards teaching Theme Repetition Being enthusiastic / Enthusiasm about teaching 14 Love your job 18 Table 1 consists of the sub-themes as ‘being enthusiastic / enthusiasm about teaching’ and ‘love your job’. Nearly all the participants think that a teacher should love his/her job because the sub- theme ‘love your job’ has been written 18 times in students’ interview responses. The sub-theme has the highest rate among all sub-themes. Additionally, most of the students believe that a language teacher should be enthusiastic about teaching profession. Thus, the ‘being enthusiastic / enthusiasm about teaching’ sub- theme has 14 repetitions. The findings can be interpreted that student teachers believe that being a teacher requires passion and enthusiasm. Moreover, the result is an indicator of their conscious selection of the teaching profession. Some first theme-related responses of students were presented below. S. R.: ‘I can clearly see the real problem at the first sentence. “I never wanted to be a teacher.” Then don’t be. I know life can be tough and cannot give any chances, but you must chase the other opportunities that you love. A good teacher should be enthusiastic about their job and lifestyle. I can understand your situation because you had no “Plan A” but in the end you become an office worker after few years. A good decision that I support because you were not into teaching and basically you were poisoning those students you were teaching. Most of the teachers are bad teacher because they don’t have any kind of enthusiasm just like you. And in the end, they become impatient individuals which also don’t respect their students. Respect and patience are the most important skills that every teacher should have because it determines our persona and our lifestyles. Without these being a teacher would be meaningless. Other problem is that people see teaching as a “Plan B”, teachers are the bright future of a country and should not be treated like that. Because of this viewpoint bad teachers are overruling the good teachers both in career and education sector and because of that tons of generations have lost their faith and enthusiasm to education and science. In a nutshell you did a mistake, everyone does! But you learnt from your mistake, and you quit from teaching that is a good decision. But you are a good teacher to yourself because you taught yourself a great lesson that you will never forget’. S. R.: ‘It is best that he dropped out. I never want my kid to study under those kinds of teachers. A teacher must love his/her job. If you don't like what you're doing, especially if https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity Acuity: Journal of English Language Pedagogy, Literature, and Culture. Vol.8 No. 1. 2023 https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity 6 it is with younger age, do not ruin their life. If they don't get a good education at any stage of their learning, it will simply destroy them. I want to ask him that why didn't you drop out while you were studying it? Why did you torture yourself among with the kids in that "few years"? Such an irresponsible behavior this is... He doesn't have respect to those children. He doesn't have respect to himself either.’ The second theme was created as ‘ideal teacher image’ and two sub-themes were created for the second theme. These sub-themes were set as ‘skills & characteristic features’ and ‘professional features’. The first sub-theme includes ‘technology usage’, ‘creative’, ‘motivating’, ‘caring about students’, and ‘communication skills’. The second sub-theme includes ‘up to date information and knowledge’, ‘classroom management skills’, ‘no discrimination in class’, ‘being a role model for students’, ‘being prepared for lessons’ and ‘testing skills. The sub-themes and their repetition rates were presented below. Table 2. ‘Ideal teacher image’ theme and repetition rates in participants’ responses Ideal Teacher Image Skills & Characteristic features Professional features Technology usage 3 Respect 11 Up to date information and knowledge (10) 10 Creative 4 Patience 14 Classroom management skills 2 Motivating 4 Confident 1 No discrimination in class 3 Caring about students 3 Cheerful 2 Being a role model for students 2 Communication skills 3 Life experience 1 Being prepared for lessons 3 Being a guide 1 Testing skills 3 Table 2 indicates that participants’ ideal teacher perception quite detailed in terms of different domains such as skills, characteristic, and professional features. The skills and characteristic features theme consists of eleven sub-theme which are presented above in Table 2. ‘Patience’ has been repeated 14 times in participants’ responses that indicate student teachers think that teachers https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity Acuity: Journal of English Language Pedagogy, Literature, and Culture. Vol.8 No. 1. 2023 https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity 7 should be patient towards their students and even to their profession. The second highest repetition rate is at ‘respect’ sub-theme that is 11 times. Nearly all the participants think that teacher should respect to their students in the classroom. Additionally, student teachers generally think that teachers should be creative, motivating, caring about their students, and confident. Moreover, the results show that an ideal teacher should be confident and has good communication skills. The second theme of the ideal teacher image is professional features. The sub-theme consists of six sub-themes that ‘up to date information’ has the highest repetition rate among all sub-themes with 10 repetitions. Student teachers think that an ideal teacher should be knowledgeable person and have up to date information on his/her expertise. Additionally, participants think that an ideal teacher should not do discrimination among students. Teacher should be prepared for the lessons and have good testing skills. Another finding is that an ideal teacher should have good classroom management skills and should be role model to his/ her students. Some related responses of participants are presented below. S. T. : ‘Here, she/he didn’t want to be teacher and had to be a teacher because she/he had no other choice. I am glad that this person later returns from teaching mistake because not everyone good teacher. He/she doesn’t like the job so, he/she cannot love teaching and students. On the other side, as everyone knows, teaching is a very sacred job and being a good teacher takes effort. There are some features required to be a good and quality teacher such as she/he be patient and not treat his/her students’ very strict way. Teachers must respect for the students and treat everyone with the equal respect. Except for these, being prepared for class, motivating the students, building student’s self-esteem and being creative in daily lessons are very important for being a quality and effective teacher. But that person cannot have these qualities so, if he/she didn’t give up this job he/she wouldn’t have been a good teacher.’ S. T. : ‘First of all, everybody should do the job which they loved and qualified. You were unqualified for being a teacher. You had lack of education. If you want to be a teacher, you should have up to date knowledge and information. You also should have good testing skills. But you don’t like your job (teaching). A good teacher should be excited about teaching to her/his students. You were zero enthusiasm. For lots of people, teaching is a fallback career. So, you didn’t have a career plan and you have to be a teacher. Teaching to students is important job. Thus, students are our future. If a teacher has bad communication skills, students can move away from education. You also talked about that you had taken nothing particularly useful. Finally, you can’t teach well. Because a good teacher should be patient, respect to students, have enough knowledge, good testing skill. Teacher should know teaching methods. Bad teachers have only rules, dictate something to students. They are unqualified. They have bad communication skills, talking about religious. They discriminate students. You see teaching as torturous. Thank God, you dropped out to become Office worker. To be happy, you shouldn’t be a teacher for our future. If you are unhappy, you can’t be helpful to others.’ S.T. : ‘Because the teachers who don’t love to teach have a bad attitude toward their students. Moreover, patient is important. You must up to date yourself to pieces of knowledge and Info and you should respect to students’ thoughts. You must role model for them and if you don’t think you have these features, I would suggest you quit this job.’ The third theme was created as ‘Perceptions towards teaching profession’ and totally three sub- themes were determined for this theme. The sub-themes are ‘creates & shapes future’, ‘sacred & important job’, and ‘teaching is not a fallback plan’. Results for the third theme are presented in table 3 below. Table 3. ‘Perceptions towards teaching profession’ and its repetition rates in participants’ responses https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity Acuity: Journal of English Language Pedagogy, Literature, and Culture. Vol.8 No. 1. 2023 https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity 8 Perceptions towards teaching profession Creates & shapes future 5 Sacred & important job 7 Teaching is not a fallback plan 6 Table 3 indicates that most of the participants think teaching profession is highly important to shape and create our future. Thus, sub-themes ‘sacred & important job’ sub- theme has 7 repetitions in participants’ responses. Moreover, they also think that teaching should not be chosen as a fallback job. Some related responses are presented below. S. T.: ‘First of all, at the beginning, they shouldn’t have even decided to be a teacher. They or someone should stop them first. If they keep going doing a job that they never wanted, it can hurt them. They didn’t want to be a teacher. Teachers should be willing to teach. It is the main idea of being a good teacher. But they didn’t take anything useful to themselves. They started to this job because faculty advisor told them teaching is a fallback career. But to be a good teacher, they should have a good knowledge about teaching, they should be patient, they should respect their job and students, they should have good communication, they should have good testing skills and just like these but apparently, they don’t have any of them so they shouldn’t have thought to be a teacher at the first place. If this person continued to be a teacher, they would be so unhappy about his life. Obviously, they have an interest about something else but they kind of started to teach. But at the end, they finally became an Office worker which is good for them.’ S. T.: ‘Anyone who doesn’t like teaching or pupils or anything about education ever should do this job. Even if s/he does no one would love him and S/he never teach anything. I’m sorry to students of this man who trying to teach something before being an Office worker. I’m sure that he didn’t teach anything well. So, this job is both hard and easy. Everyone cannot do it and this man is one of them. If I met him before being Office worker I would talk to him about children, difficulties, and positive sides of being teacher. We could talk some deeper topics. Maybe he affected by a teacher from his school times. So, after all I would say not being teacher you did the best. Because you don’t love it, and no one could achieve a work which doesn’t love. And because of not love s/he could be impatient, and patient is one of key factor in this job.’ DISCUSSION Three questions were asked to the participants in the open-ended interview form. The aim of the first question was to find out how the course content taught in the online classroom environments of the participants affects the teachers' beliefs. The first interview question was ‘what do you think about course contents which were used in online classrooms during covid19 pandemic? How course contents affected your beliefs about being a teacher?’ The participants thought that the course content was less sufficient than the content of the courses they took in face-to-face classes. Another important finding is that the contents do not change teacher beliefs. Because the participants see the teaching profession as an important career. The purpose of the second question was to find out how teacher attitudes and behaviors in virtual classrooms affect pre-service teachers' beliefs about the teaching profession. The second interview question was ‘How teachers’ attitudes and behaviors in an online classroom affected your beliefs about being a teacher? Please explain with an example’. The answers given to the second question revealed that the pre-service teachers could not observe the teacher's attitudes and behaviors sufficiently in virtual classroom https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity Acuity: Journal of English Language Pedagogy, Literature, and Culture. Vol.8 No. 1. 2023 https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity 9 environments. For this reason, it was concluded that there was no positive contribution to their beliefs. The purpose of the third question was asked to investigate the effects of conducting teaching practice one and two courses in virtual classroom environments on the beliefs of the participants. The third interview question was ‘Does taking teaching practice 1 and teaching practice 2 courses online affected your beliefs towards being a teacher?’ The answers given by the participants to the third question revealed that the pre-service teachers did not get enough efficiency from these lessons. Student teachers’ self-belief towards teaching profession is an important area of research to investigate, as they are the future teachers who will shape the future generations by their applications and instructions. Especially, teacher training programs and courses had to be shifted to online education during Covid19 pandemic that the change can alter student teachers’ self- belief. As scholar states teachers’ self- belief may have many effects on their teaching style, teaching performance, work ethic and decreasing stress level (Lohman, 2006). Additionally, teachers who have high self- belief and self- efficacy manage their classroom better than the teachers who have lower levels of self- efficacy and self- belief. Moreover, the teachers implement innovative teaching methods if they have high self- efficacy and self-belief (Caprara et al., 2006). In this perspective, it can be said that self- efficacy and self- belief play an important role for carrying out effective teaching in language classrooms. In the similar vein, teachers’ beliefs are interconnected with teaching and learning elements that they represent their belief while they are teaching. Teachers’ belief also influences teachers’ method, attitudes, and classroom practices (Supriadi, et. al 2020). In this perspective, the current research investigated student teachers’ belief towards teaching profession during Covid19 pandemic when their belief may be affected from unprecedented and harsh living conditions. The results indicate that student teachers’ belief towards teaching profession was not affected negatively from pandemic conditions. Additionally, they perceive teaching profession as a sacred job which should be done willingly. Language teachers, as the practitioners of language, are the most important piece of in education systems, because teachers’ knowledge, belief and efficacy matters in attaining teaching goals (Türegün-Çoban & Kuyumcu-Vardar, 2021). In this perspective, student teachers’ high level of belief despite pandemic conditions present that they are capable of being effective language teachers. As Palmer (1998, p.3) noted that “good teaching requires self-knowledge” and even though “good teaching” can be interpreted and described differently, it is the representation of teachers’ background, experiences, knowledge, and belief in the teaching environment. CONCLUSION In the current study, it was investigated how pre-service English teachers' beliefs about the teaching profession were shaped during the Covid19 pandemic. The current research is significant in terms of presenting pre-service teachers’ beliefs on their first-hand experiences in a digital learning during the pandemic, which has a big research gap despite student teachers’ possible role in the future as teachers. Research findings show the effects of the contents of the courses conducted in virtual classroom environments during the pandemic, the attitudes, and behaviors of teachers in virtual classroom environments, and the teaching practice one and two courses being conducted in virtual classrooms on the beliefs of teacher candidates. The findings revealed that English teacher candidates perceives teaching as a valuable profession. On the other hand, courses they took during the pandemic were conducted in virtual classroom environments did not have a positive effect on the attitudes and behaviors of the teachers in these courses. Moreover, participants are not satisfied because they took one and two courses in teaching practice through distance education during the pandemic. Beliefs of prospective teachers in the teaching profession shape how they will carry out their future professions. Richards et al. (2001) pointed out that student teachers’ observation of their teachers bestow their beliefs about teaching profession. Moreover, these beliefs could reveal step by step https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity Acuity: Journal of English Language Pedagogy, Literature, and Culture. Vol.8 No. 1. 2023 https://jurnal.unai.edu/index.php/acuity 10 in their attitudes, decisions, actions and behaviors in their professional life (Subekti, 2019a). Additionally, it should be stated that student teachers’ beliefs about how and to what extend they will be willing to use internet and communication technologies in their future classes (Sadaf et al., 2012). In this context, it is of great importance to develop beliefs in a positive way. However, during the pandemic, it is unfortunately not possible to create and develop the beliefs of teacher candidates and to change their negative beliefs, if any, in virtual classroom environments. As a result of the findings of this study, it can be said that virtual classroom environments do not contribute positively to teacher beliefs. On the other hand, the participants who choose to be a teacher as a career are conscious about their future profession. Language teaching and learning has been impacted by Covid19 pandemic from various dimensions, and its impact on this world will be lasting in an unpredictable future, this qualitative study suggests student teachers’ beliefs about teaching profession. In line with the results obtained in the study, the following suggestions can be made for teacher trainers to provide more teaching practicing opportunities to student teachers in following courses. Online education and online education environments should be used effectively to foster student teachers’ beliefs on teaching profession. In this respect teacher trainers need to focus on their pedagogical and technological competences. 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