Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine epistemological beliefs of pre-service teachers who attend social studies and science and technology teaching programs; and to investigate how these beliefs varies regarding grade level, gender and departments. The sample of the study is composed of 300 social studies, 260 science and technology pre-service teachers who attended Ataturk University KazA±m Karabekir Education Faculty in 2013-2014 academic year. In the study, Epistemological Beliefs Scale that developed by Schommer (1990) and adapted to Turkish by Deryakulu and Ozturk (2005) was used. According to the research findings it is determined that there are significant differences in epistemological beliefs of social studies and science and technology teachers regarding the variables of gender, department and grade level. Significant differences were found regarding gender in favor of females; between first and fourth grades social studies pre-service teachers, in favor of first graders; between first and fourth grades science and technology pre-service teachers, again, in favor of first graders. Regarding department variable it is determined that first grade social studies pre-service teachers have more sophisticated epistemological beliefs than fourt grade social studies pre-service teachers and both first and fourth graders of science and technology teaching department. Key words: Epistemological beliefs, pre-service teacher.

Highlights

  • When changing and developing education understandings are historically examined we see many essential changes

  • This study is made to put forth the social studies and science and technology pre-service teachers’ epistemological beliefs differentiated or not regarding gender, grade level and departments

  • When we examine the distribution of epistemological beliefs, male students’ points are higher than the females’

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Summary

Introduction

When changing and developing education understandings are historically examined we see many essential changes. The most important change of the last years is to internalizing the learner centered education philosoph. When we analyze the roots of this understanding we see some study areas that affect constructuvist approach which is popular in last years. One of these most affective inderdisciplinary areasisepistemology. With the integration of philosophy and education areas with eachother, studies on knowledge and learning increase and the epistemology concept appears as newly realized study area with its importance and place (Demir and Akınoğlu, 2010). Epistemology consists of episteme and logos words in Greek (Buehl and Alexander, 2001). Acknowledgements of nature of the knowledge and knowing (Hofer, 2001), and the process of gaining

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