16 - Beyond epistemology: assessing teachers' epistemological and ontological worldviews

Summary

An important issue in epistemological research concerns the measurement of epistemological beliefs and other related methodological issues (Hofer, 2002; Pintrich, 2002). In our work, we have been interested in measuring the epistemological beliefs of practicing teachers and describing the relationship between epistemological beliefs and instructional practices. Previously, we documented lack of alignment between teachers’ epistemological world views and their teaching practices (Schraw and Olafson, 2002; Olafson and Schraw, 2002). In these studies we found, for example, that the majority of our forty-two participants endorsed student-centered instructional practices and believed that learners must construct shared understandings in supportive contexts in which teachers serve as facilitators. Yet these teachers also reported using teacher-centered instructional practices such as whole-group completion of common work sheets. These findings of poor alignment between teachers’ beliefs and practices are consistent with previous studies (Levitt, 2001; Marra, 2005; White, 2000).

Two issues are of concern regarding research examining alignment between teachers’ beliefs and practices. The first issue is a conceptual shortcoming due to focusing on epistemology without regard to ontology. Unlike epistemological beliefs, few studies have examined teachers’ ontological beliefs, nor have any studies investigated the joint contribution of epistemological and ontological beliefs. It is our belief that teachers’ epistemological (i.e., beliefs about the nature and acquisition of knowledge) beliefs must be examined in conjunction with their ontological beliefs (i.e., beliefs about the nature of reality and being). By doing so, we hope to explore more fully issues of alignment related to teachers’ beliefs and practices.