Teachers’ Epistemological Beliefs and Inclination Towards Traditional or Constructivist Teaching

Abstract

This paper presents the results of research whose aim was to investigate the relationship between teachers' epistemological beliefs and their inclination towards either traditional or constructivist learning and teaching paradigm. The study was conducted on a sample of 126 primary school teachers in Croatia. The results show that primary school teachers understand learning as a process in which the connection between students' effort and learning outcomes is expressed and that learning ability is not innate, but on its development student and teacher can affect. Also, a positive correlation was found between teachers inclination towards the traditional paradigm of learning and their beliefs that the ability to learn is genetically innate, and between teachers` inclination towards the constructivist paradigm of learning and their beliefs about the learning process in which students' effort and learning outcomes are interdependent. Research has shown that teachers' epistemological beliefs significantly affect their inclination towards a particular learning paradigm. It has also shown that teachers are significantly more inclined towards the constructivist learning paradigm than the traditional one. Based on these findings, specific implications of such results in primary education and formal education of future teachers are discussed.