Current Issue

Examining Beliefs and Attitudes in Language Education

July 2026

Do you know what your students believe about learning? Do you understand your own beliefs about learning, education, and teaching? This month, let’s explore what neuroscience has to teach us about our beliefs and attitudes towards learning.

“Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” –Coco Chanel

APA Reference for this issue

(author). (2026). (article title, sentence case). MindBrainEd Think Tanks: Examining Beliefs and Attitudes in Language Education, 12(7), (pages).

Watch before you read...

In this month’s issue, we’re exploring some of the beliefs and attitudes language learners and teachers hold. In our Main video, Peter Ruijten succinctly presents key characteristics of attitudes and beliefs. In our More video, Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa explains how brain science unmasks commonly held neuromyths in education and encourages teachers to reflect on their beliefs and adopt evidence-based teaching practices. Then, Afon (Mohammad) Khari introduces the issue.

In the Think Tank, Harumi Kimura and Ayaka Takahashi examine how the development of character strengths varies across different academic disciplines at university. Next, Havva Kurt Taşpınar takes a deep dive into grit by analyzing the characteristics of resilient learners, the neural underpinnings of perseverance, and practical classroom applications. Nicky De Proost unpacks the beliefs that silence some learners before they begin, showing how the native speaker narrative traps them in a self-fulfilling loop. Then, Brianna Hamamoto investigates how our beliefs can shift depending on whether we are thinking and speaking in our native language or a language learned later in life. Finally, Ana Paula Biazon Rocha reviews The Psychology of Language Teachers by Dávid Smid and Sarah Mercer and reflects on how insights from the book connect to her experiences as a language teacher.

In our Plus section, Klaus P. Michelsen distills the complexities inherent to high school teaching in a spot-on poem that is sure to hit home with teachers.

Returning to the topic of our November 2025 issue on Social and Emotional Learning, Pinar Sekmen looks at how empathy is both modeled and learned.

Our Thoughts on Beliefs & Attitudes

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.

Think Tank Articles

One morning, Ayaka, a fourth-year English major, was talking emotionally to a classmate, just when I went into the classroom. It sounded like she was referring to some differences in attitudes and values among different university majors. “English majors are more outspoken and assertive in meetings and sessions. We’ve developed these attitudes in English discussion classes.” She added, “Students of other majors kept silent and shied away from meaningful discussions. We cannot learn anything from discussions unless each of us speaks up!” I thought she was upset. I was intrigued with her apparent uneasiness and wanted to hear more from her, but I had to start a class then, so I asked her to put it into writing and explain what made her think and feel as she did.

As a mother of a chess player, at the beginning of my son’s chess career, I witnessed how even a five-and-a-half-year-old could persist, continuing to make moves despite being defeated in the previous game. This is a familiar scene for the majority of (professional) players, who return to the board after losing a game that may have lasted three hours or more. One of these games took place between the world champion Kasparov and Deep Blue, a supercomputer developed by IBM, in 1996, thirty years ago! They played a pair of six-game matches. Indeed, Kasparov was the winner in the first match in 1996. But then, in 1997, “Deeper” blue defeated the reigning world chess champion: Kasparov lost! This marked the first instance in chess history in which a machine defeated a human.

Somewhere in Japan, a student is preparing to speak English.

They have been preparing for some time. They have the grammar rules. They have the vocabulary lists. They have practised their vowels, rehearsed their phrasing, and mentally corrected themselves through conversations that have not yet happened. They are aiming, with the particular quiet determination of someone who has made a private, binding agreement with themselves, for the moment when they will finally be ready. When the accent is right. When the vocabulary is complete. When the grammar will not crack under pressure.

Imagine a thought experiment involving a runaway trolley, a moral dilemma, and a question of whom to sacrifice for the greater good. Now, imagine a similar scenario, except this time, it is expressed in a language you were taught in school and not one you grew up speaking from infancy. Time to put those three years of high school French classes to the test. According to Keysaret al. of the University of Chicago, people think about moral problems such as these differently according to the language they are thinking in. Specifically, if they are using their second language, they make decisions in a more deliberate way, less influenced by intuition and more amenable to rationality. The discomfort this finding tends to produce in people is worth sitting with, and it is natural to feel uncomfortable while doing so. This is not due to any kind of error on your part, but rather because of the realization that your certainty in believing something, the idea that what you believe is just the truth and there is no way around it, may have more to do with the language you believe it in than anything else. This leads to a rather unpleasant dilemma: If the conviction means something else when expressed in another language, then how much of your conviction actually belongs to you? What does it say about the fact that the acquisition of a foreign language could actually provide a solution?

In April 2026, The Psychology of Language Teachers by Dávid Smid and Sarah Mercer was published online as part of the Cambridge “Elements” series on Language Teaching, edited by Heath Rose and Jim McKinley. It synthesises research on language teacher psychology through three core dimensions: cognition, affect, and motivation. For me, reading it felt like being in a therapy session with someone genuinely listening to and acknowledging my struggles as a language teacher. In this review, I will summarise some of the key points discussed in the book and consider how they resonate with my own experiences in language teaching.

Think Tank Plus

Our touchscreen

vending machine

offers a hand-picked selection

of the shortest

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poems for experienced

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transitioning into a new profession.

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Become a Think Tank star! Here are some of the future issue topics we are thinking about. Would you, or anyone you know, like to write about any of these? Or is there another topic you’d like to recommend? Do you have any suggestions for lead-in, or just plain interesting, videos? How about writing a book review? Or sending us a story about your experiences? Contact us.

Looking back

As teacher trainers, our core mission transcends the simple delivery of a curriculum; we are here to equip educators with the skills to cultivate not just academic excellence, but also equip them with a holistic approach to educating their students. In the whirlwind of standardized assessments and administrative demands, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that we are teaching human beings. What is at the core here is Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), which CASEL organizes into five core competencies: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision-Making. Within this framework, the skill of empathy stands as a profoundly transformative force rather than merely a soft skill. Actually, it is a foundational intellectual and emotional capacity.

Tricider

Tricider is a privacy‑friendly, free online tool for collaborative brainstorming and decision‑making. It works really well in class: After the teacher posts a question, students submit their ideas. In the next step, students post the pros and cons of each idea. In the last step, the students vote. Users don’t need to register for Tricider, though creating an account does unlock extra features.

The MindBrained Think Tanks+

is produced by the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) Mind, Brain, and Education Special Interest Group (BRAIN SIG). Kyoto, Japan. (ISSN 2434-1002)

Editorial Staff

Stephen M. Ryan Curtis H. Kelly Julia Daley

Afon (Mohammad) Khari Heather Kretschmer Nicky De Proost

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Current Issue

Examining Beliefs and Attitudes in Language Education

July 2026

Watch before you read...

Our Thoughts on Beliefs & Attitudes

What We Think Shapes What We See Afon (Mohammad) Khari

Think Tank Articles

Nurturing Character Strengths: Celebrate Brain Plasticity! Harumi Kimura & Ayaka Takahashi

The Neuroscientific Roots for Perseverance: Revisiting “Grit” Havva Kurt Taşpınar

Self-Fulfilling Silence: The Myth of Native-Like Perfection and the Cost of Waiting Nicky De Proost

The Self that Gets Left Behind: On language, the brain, and the contingency of belief Brianna Hamamoto

Language Teachers in Therapy A Review of Smid and Mercer’s (2026) The Psychology of Language Teachers Ana Paula Biazon Rocha

Think Tank Plus

Food for Thought Klaus P. Michelsen

Call for Contributions: Ideas and Articles Think Tank Staff

Looking back

SELebration in the Classroom Through Empathy Pinar Sekmen

Tricider

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