TY - JOUR
T1 - Teachers' scientific epistemological views: The coherence with instruction and students' views***
AU - Tsai, Chin-Chung
N1 - https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.20175
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - Research about the relationship between teachers' scientific epistemological views (SEVs) and science instruction is often an important issue for many science educators. This study, by collecting research data from four Taiwanese science teachers, their students, and classroom observations, was carried out to examine the coherences between teachers' SEVs and their (1) teaching beliefs, (2) instructional practices, (3) students' SEVs, and (4) students' perceptions toward actual science learning environments. The findings suggested adequate coherences between teachers' SEVs and their teaching beliefs as well as instructional practices. The teachers with relatively positivist-aligned SEVs tended to draw attention to students' science scores in tests and allocate more instructional time on teacher-directed lectures, tutorial problem practices, or in-class examinations, implying a more passive or rote perspective about learning science. In contrast, teachers with constructivist-oriented SEVs tended to focus on student understanding and application of scientific concepts and they adopted more time on student inquiry activities or interactive discussion. These findings are quite consistent with the results about the coherence between teachers' SEVs and students' perceptions toward science learning environments, suggesting that the constructivist-oriented SEVs appeared to foster the creation of more constructivist-oriented science learning environments. Finally, although this study provided some evidence that teachers' SEVs were likely related to their students' SEVs, the teachers' SEVs and those of their students were not obviously coherent. ? 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 91:222?243, 2007
AB - Research about the relationship between teachers' scientific epistemological views (SEVs) and science instruction is often an important issue for many science educators. This study, by collecting research data from four Taiwanese science teachers, their students, and classroom observations, was carried out to examine the coherences between teachers' SEVs and their (1) teaching beliefs, (2) instructional practices, (3) students' SEVs, and (4) students' perceptions toward actual science learning environments. The findings suggested adequate coherences between teachers' SEVs and their teaching beliefs as well as instructional practices. The teachers with relatively positivist-aligned SEVs tended to draw attention to students' science scores in tests and allocate more instructional time on teacher-directed lectures, tutorial problem practices, or in-class examinations, implying a more passive or rote perspective about learning science. In contrast, teachers with constructivist-oriented SEVs tended to focus on student understanding and application of scientific concepts and they adopted more time on student inquiry activities or interactive discussion. These findings are quite consistent with the results about the coherence between teachers' SEVs and students' perceptions toward science learning environments, suggesting that the constructivist-oriented SEVs appeared to foster the creation of more constructivist-oriented science learning environments. Finally, although this study provided some evidence that teachers' SEVs were likely related to their students' SEVs, the teachers' SEVs and those of their students were not obviously coherent. ? 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 91:222?243, 2007
U2 - 10.1002/sce.20175
DO - 10.1002/sce.20175
M3 - Article
SN - 0036-8326
VL - 91
SP - 222
EP - 243
JO - Science Education
JF - Science Education
IS - 2
ER -