An Investigation of Epistemological Beliefs of Physics Teachers According to Different Variables

Abstract

Epistemological beliefs adopted by individuals determine their knowledge, learning and teaching orientations. For this reason, the purpose of this research is to study physics teachers’ belief levels, as well as the questions about what effect gender, professional experience, and educational background variables have on these levels. Causal-comparative model was used to study these variables. Participants were 205 physics teachers consisting of 106 women and 99 men who work in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. All of the data was collected with the Scientific Epistemological Beliefs Scale developed by Conley, Pintrich, Vekiri & Harrison (2004). This scale was adapted into Turkish by Özkan (2008). The data was analyzed using parametric tests. Ultimately, findings indicated that physics teachers had sophisticated epistemological beliefs. In addition, there was no statistically significant difference between female and male teachers in terms of beliefs. Educational background variable was found not to have any effect on epistemological beliefs of physics teachers. In regards to professional experience variable, teachers with less experience had more sophisticated epistemological beliefs about the source of knowledge, certainty of knowledge and justification of knowledge.