Educational belief

Draft

Introduction

“The last two decades have witnessed a growing tendency to perceive teachingas a professional activity requiring complex and demanding cognitiveprocesses. Understanding teaching necessitates understanding teachers’ thinking, beliefs and knowledge regarding teaching, learning and students.” (Hativa, 2000)

“The thinking, planning, and decision making of teachers constitute a large part of the psychological context of teaching. It is within this context that curriculum is interpreted and acted upon; where teachers teach and students learn. Teacher behaviour is substantially influenced and even determined by teachers’ thought processes. These are the fundamental assumptions behind the literature that has come to be called research on teacher thinking. (Clark & Peterson, 1986, p. 255).”, cited by Hativa and Goodyear (2002)

Beliefs are part of teachers' thinking, i.e. there is a relationship between teachers' thinking (e.g. their educational beliefs) and their educational practice, including the use of technology.

Biesta et al (2015) identify “three areas of teachers’ beliefs: beliefs about children and young people; beliefs about teaching; and beliefs about the purposes of education.”

“Personal epistemological beliefs influence one’s cognitive and metacognitive operations in a significant way. They also influence how teachers conceptualize teaching. It is therefore essential for teacher educators to understand the epistemological beliefs that pre‐service teachers are holding to foster mature epistemological outlooks that could facilitate educational reforms.” (Chai, 2007)

We could speculate, that there is a relationship between between teachers' educational beliefs and learners' beliefs about learning. Firstly, because teachers are also learning as reflective practitioners and, second, because their perception on how their students believe they learn may influence the way they teach.

See also:

• teaching style

Educational beliefs and use of technology in the classroom

According to Tondeur et al. (2019), “Ultimately, teachers’ personal pedagogical beliefs play a key role in their pedagogical decisions regarding whether and how to integrate technology within their classroom practices (Deng et al. 2014; Inan and Lowther 2010). Researchers have argued that teachers’ classroom practices are highly influenced by their pedagogical beliefs (Fives and Gill 2015; Kagan 1992; Pajares 1992; Richardson 1996). Based on the results of previous research (Ertmer et al. 2015; Hermans et al. 2008; Lin et al. 2012; Zhao and Frank 2003), teachers select applications of technology that align with their selections of other curricular variables and methods (e.g., teaching strategies) and that also align with their existing beliefs about ‘good’ education. [...] In this respect, research on educational innovations suggests that technology integration can only be fully understood when teachers’ pedagogical beliefs are taken into account (Ertmer 2005; Lim and Chan 2007; Liu 2011; Sang et al. 2010a).”

The authors conclude in their aggregated review of qualitative studies that “the relationship between pedagogical beliefs and technology use comprises a bi-directional relationship. [...] i.e. beliefs lead to actions, which, in turn, lead to the development of reconstructed or reaffirmed beliefs (Haney, 2002)”

Survey instruments

• Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ), Schommer, 1990.

• “Educational Beliefs Scale (EBS)”, by Yilmaz et al. (2011)

• “Revised Two-FactorStudy Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F), by Biggs et al. (2001). This is an instrument that is suitable for use by teachers in evaluating the learning approaches of their students. (not their own beliefs)

Bibliography and references

Bibliography

Also includes more general studies on epistemological beliefs etc.

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