Research findings in the last thirty years show that beliefs about learning and teaching guide teachers’ actions more strongly than acquired academic knowledge and teaching skills in formal education (Korthagen, 2004). Pajares (1992) emphasised that these beliefs are formed very early in teachers' lives as results of life experiences and socialisation processes in family and school. Raths (2001) pointed out that the beliefs which teacher students bring with them to the higher education context can hinder the effectiveness of initial teacher education. Such beliefs, emotionally coloured and based on personal experience, resist to change during teacher education process in spite of the rational argumentation and scientific proofs which might contradict them. Some authors (e.g. Korthagen, 2004; Feiman Nemser, 2001) stressed that during initial teacher education those implicit conceptions about teaching and learning should be directly addressed and discussed. It means that learning sessions with students should be organised in such a way that teacher educators stimulate critical reflection of students' entering beliefs and enable students to reconsider their beliefs in the light of educational theories and research (Raths, 2001). If these entering beliefs are overlooked by teacher educators they will continue to influence the shaping of prospective teachers' professional identity and later on their behaviour in the classrooms. Therefore, it is very important for teacher educators to learn about students' entering beliefs about learners and teaching before introducing academic contents and concepts underlining effective teaching practice. 

The research results presented in this paper are the part of a larger longitudinal study on developing teacher professional identity during the teacher initial education. The goal of the study is to compare student teacher entering beliefs with their beliefs in the final year of study in order to check whether the expected shift in their beliefs occurred during the study time. The study examines four categories of beliefs: beliefs about the purpose of education, beliefs about the role of teachers and the role of pupils, beliefs about teaching and learning process, and beliefs about teacher self-efficacy. In this paper the results of the first exploratory phase of the research are presented comparing the entering beliefs about teacher/pupils roles and beliefs about learning and teaching of students enrolled in a different teacher education programmes.

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