What We Think Shapes What We See
By: Afon (Mohammad) Khari
A belief can begin as a small sentence.
“I am not good at languages.”
“My students are not motivated.”
“Some people are simply not speaking types.”
“At this age, it is too late.”
Sometimes these sentences are spoken casually, almost in passing, after a difficult class, a failed test, or a moment of silence when nobody volunteers to speak, and may sound like harmless observations. Yet beliefs are also ways of organizing attention. They tell us what to notice, what to expect, what to explain, and what to stop trying.
Beliefs do not sit quietly in the background of teaching and learning; quite the opposite, they participate, and that is one of the reasons they matter so much in education. They shape the atmosphere of a classroom and the interpretation of a learner’s hesitation. They can also affect the meaning of a teacher’s correction and the emotional weight of a mistake. A student who believes that pronunciation must be native-like before speaking may hear every small correction as evidence of failure. A teacher who believes that some learners are “just not interested” may miss the quieter signs of anxiety, confusion, or fear of embarrassment. In these cases, and many similar ones, belief helps produce the situation rather than describing it.
Cognitive science has taught us that the mind is actively engaged with the environment and is not a passive recorder of reality. We do not simply open our eyes and receive the world as it is. Attention selects. Memory reconstructs. Emotion colors interpretation. Prior knowledge prepares us to see some things more easily than others. In this sense, perception is always partly guided by expectation. We see what is there, but we also see through what we already believe, or predicted, might be there.
In classrooms, this becomes especially important because the education context is rife with ambiguity. One of your students is silent today. You wonder why. Are they bored? Anxious? Are they still processing the information? Do they need help and seem lost? Are they being polite and respectful? Tired? Waiting for a safer moment to speak? Despite all your efforts, your students gave you a wrong answer. You ask yourself, or discuss it with a colleague, what caused that. This reflection may reveal carelessness, but it may also reveal risk-taking, partial understanding, or an intelligent attempt to connect old knowledge with new material. Teachers and learners interpret the classroom collaboratively, and they do so through beliefs, attitudes, memories, and habits of expectation.
This month’s Main video invites us to think about the relationship between attitudes, beliefs, and consistency. Attitudes can be understood as broad evaluations: whether we see something as good or bad, useful or useless, threatening or inviting. Beliefs are pieces of information we hold about people, actions, or the world. Consistency is the psychological comfort we often seek between what we believe, what we feel, and what we do.
This search for consistency can be both helpful and dangerous. It helps us maintain a stable sense of ourselves. Without some consistency, our mental lives would become exhausting. At the same time, when our beliefs and actions do not match, we may not always change our actions. Sometimes we change the story.
A learner who wants to become fluent but avoids speaking may begin to say’ “Speaking is not really important for me.” A teacher who values communication but designs only accuracy-based activities may conclude’ “They do not want to talk anyway.” These explanations may reduce discomfort, but they can also protect us from asking more difficult questions. What conditions have we created? What risks have we made possible or impossible? What do our routines reward? What do they quietly discourage?
This is where we outgrow our private thoughts and form beliefs, which are educationally powerful. They become practices. They become feedback patterns, seating arrangements, participation rules, assessment choices, and the tone with which we respond to errors. They influence whether a classroom becomes a place of rehearsal or performance, exploration or judgment, belonging or quiet self-protection.
The More video takes this discussion into the world of neuromyths. Neuromyths are often presented as simple misunderstandings about the brain: left-brain/right-brain learners, learning styles, fixed intelligence, or the idea that we use only a small percentage of our brain. But their persistence may not be only a matter of misinformation. They survive because they are attractive stories. They simplify complexity. They offer quick explanations. Some of them can make teachers feel that they are individualizing instruction, even when the scientific foundation is weak.
More importantly, neuromyths often attach themselves to deeper attitudes about learning and ability. Do we believe intelligence is fixed? Do we believe all learners can grow under the right conditions? Do we believe struggle is part of learning, or evidence that someone does not belong? Do we believe silence is a lack of interest, or could it sometimes be a sign of careful thinking, social fear, or proper behavior learned in previous educational experience?
The problem with myths is that they can become generous-sounding limits. A label may appear to respect a learner’s individuality while quietly narrowing what we invite that learner to try. Saying “she is a visual learner” may sound supportive, but it can also reduce the rich, multisensory nature of learning to a convenient category. Saying “he is not a language person” may sound realistic, but it can close the door before the learner has had enough chances to enter.
Of course, teachers need beliefs. Teaching without beliefs would be impossible. We need beliefs about growth, effort, care, language, identity, and human potential. The question is not whether we have beliefs, but whether we examine them. A belief can be a bridge or a wall . It can help us see learners more fully, or it can make us see only what confirms what we already thought (see our previous issue on bias).
Perhaps the central question of this issue is a simple one: What do our beliefs make possible? For our learners. For our classrooms. For ourselves.
If beliefs can create facts, as William James suggested, then education carries a serious responsibility. Because every positive thought becomes reality, and because evidence can be replaced by optimism. But also, because beliefs guide attention, attention guides action, and repeated action becomes part of a learner’s habits.
The invitation, then, is to believe more carefully.
Afon (Mohammad) Khari is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam, where he works at the intersection of language, cognition, and education. He holds an MSc in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, an MA in Philosophy of Art, and a BA in English Literature, as well as a CELTA. His work explores how findings from neuroscience can be meaningfully translated into classroom practice, with a particular focus on attention, learning, academic literacy, and academic achievement.