Beliefs about knowing in pre-service teacher education students

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Research and Development in Higher Education Vol. 23: Flexible Learning for a Flexible Society

July, 2000, 755 pages
Published by
Lesley Richardson & John Lidstone
ISBN
0908557477
Abstract 

For the last three decades, the student learning literature has provided an impressive amount of research that supports the links between beliefs about learning and learning approaches and outcomes. This study is an investigation of a related but somewhat different set of beliefs related to learning, described as beliefs about knowing or epistemological beliefs. Using semi-structured interviews, 29 students were asked to reflect on their beliefs about knowing as they approached the end of their year-long Graduate Diploma in Teacher Education. Data were analysed using a descriptive-interpretative approach to data analysis, which means that although categories of beliefs emerged from the data, the descriptions of these categories were influenced by the epistemological beliefs literature. The interview analysis showed that, as a group, students’ beliefs ranged from naïve beliefs in the reception of absolute truths to more sophisticated beliefs in the construction of reasoned truths. These categories were similar to those described in the epistemological schemes by Perry (1970), Belenky et al. (1986) and Baxter Magolda (1993).