The Effect of Iranian Teachers’ Epistemological Beliefs on Their Teaching Practice

Malahat Yousefzadeh, Leila Babapour Azam

Abstract


Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that investigates what knowledge is and how people know whether they know something (BonJour, 2002). It addresses questions such as: What is knowledge? How do people know if they really have knowledge? What gives a reason for any knowledge that they have? This study aimed at investigating the relationships between high school teachers’ epistemological beliefs and their teaching practices. The subjects of the study were 60 teachers at Ardabil high schools. They responded to two questionnaires: an Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire and a Teaching Practices Questionnaire. In this study, the independent variables are measures of teacher epistemology and their teaching practices as the dependent variables. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was used to assess the relationship between scores on the Teaching practice scale and those on the Epistemological Beliefs scale. Findings of the study showed that teachers with inexperienced epistemological beliefs tend to traditional teacher-centered practices and experienced belief holders were more tend to constructive learner-centered practices.  

Keywords: inexperienced epistemology, experienced epistemology, teacher-centered practices, constructive learner-centered


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References


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