According Clarck and Peterson (1986), teachers’ thought processes can be categorized into three fundamental types: a) teachers’ planning (pre-active and post-active phases of teaching), b) teachers’ interactive thoughts and decisions, and c) teachers’ theories and beliefs. The purpose of this study is to describe the thought processes of a sample of 153 Greek philologist student teachers after the end of their practicum. During this practicum student teachers have to choose one of the four philological subjects (Ancient Greek Language and Literature, Modern Greek Language, Modern Greek Literature, History) for teaching it in real classroom settings. It was of great interest for us to investigate their thought processes regarding the following five major conceptions of teaching and teacher preparation: academic, technological, personal, critical, and practical. Each conception reflects a coherent perspective on teaching, learning, and learning to teach that gives direction to the practical activities of teaching. Some of these conceptions, as the personal and the critical one, shift the emphasis from teacher to student, as they set teaching in terms of helping students to express their own positions, find their voice, and develop their conceptions as well as their personal or social identity. To determine the student teachers’ thought processes we used as instrument a questionnaire including 13 sets of statements: five sets on their teaching planning, four sets on their interactive thoughts and decisions, and four sets on their theories and beliefs. Each set incorporated five statements representing the five pre-mentioned theoretically divergent conceptions of teaching. Specifically, each set included one statement representing the academic, one the technological, one the personal, one the critical, and one the practical-based conception. We used the five-point Likert scale, from 1 (I absolutely disagree) to 5 (I absolutely agree). The questionnaire was answered by student teachers a few days after their first classroom experience. Our research questions were: which are the mainstream student teachers’ thought processes concerning the five conceptions of teaching and teacher preparation as they have emerged after their first classroom experience? Are the three fundamental types of student teachers’ thought processes (planning, interactive thoughts and decisions, and theories/beliefs) in coincidence with each other?

By examining the differences between the mean ranks of each set’s five statements, as they resulted from Friedman test, we noted the following: The mainstream student teachers’ thought processes reflect the personal and the critical conception, with the first strongly prevailing over the second. That is, student teachers primarily pay attention to motivating the students’ need for knowledge and self-fulfilment, although they focus on skills for effective teaching as well (technological conception). On the subject of their interactive thoughts and decisions, they remain on personal-centered orientations: they emphasize the students’ stimulation and their free expression without the fear of giving the “wrong answer”, and they state their expectations for students to “become unique personalities discovering what they really want out of life”. However, the student teachers’ answers concerning their planning are neither in coincidence with their theories/beliefs nor with their interactive thoughts and decisions. In this point, we found out a balance between the academic and the critical conception: In the pre-active and post-active phases of teaching, they focus, to a great extent, on the disciplinary roots of the subject to be taught, on presentation of academic content, as well as on their inadequacy to promote students’ critical thinking about social, cultural and political issues. Further research is needed on this interesting finding of inconsistency between student teachers’ theories/beliefs and interactive thoughts and decisions on the one hand, and their thoughts and decisions in the pre-active and post-active phases of teaching on the other.