Jacob Manu

Date of Award

January 2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Teaching & Learning

First Advisor

Woei Hung

Abstract

This quantitative research sought to investigate the relationship between epistemological beliefs and instructional practice of preservice and inservice teachers. Despite the vigorous emphasis and investment on the need for teachers to adopt teaching and learning practices that are more authentic, learner-centered, project-based, meaningful, and context-based, there is a growing trend where inservice teachers are trained in constructivist learning environment but end up adopting traditional learning pedagogies. Thus, teachers are constantly struggling to incorporate the tenets of constructivism into the teaching and learning process. With the use of the discipline-focused epistemological beliefs questionnaire and instructional practice scale, preservice and inservice teachers were purposively sampled to respond to the survey questions.

After gathering the data and analyzing the responses, the researcher found that there was no significant difference between the epistemological beliefs of preservice and inservice teachers. There were significant differences among the four dimensions of epistemological beliefs (certainty/simplicity of knowledge, source of knowledge, justification for knowing, and attainment of truth) for both preservice and inservice teachers. Also, there was evidence to support the hypothesis that teachers did not have the same level of epistemological development across the four dimensions studied. Finally, this research indicated that there were significant positive correlational relationships between the overall epistemological beliefs and instructional practice of preservice and inservice teachers. The implications for practice are discussed

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