International Handbook of Research on Teachers' Beliefs

Helenrose Fives, Michele Gregoire Gill, Helenrose Fives, Michele Gregoire Gill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415539227
• eBook ISBN: 9781136265822
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teacher beliefs play a fundamental role in the education landscape. Nevertheless, most educational researchers only allude to teacher beliefs as part of a study on other subjects. This book fills a necessary gap by identifying the importance of research on teacher beliefs and providing a comprehensive overview of the topic. It provides novices and experts alike a single volume with which to understand a complex research landscape. Including a review of the historical foundations of the field, this book identifies current research trends, and summarizes the current knowledge base regarding teachers' specific beliefs about content, instruction, students, and learning. For its innumerable applications within the field, this handbook is a necessity for anyone interested in educational research.

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Introduction

Michele Gregoire Gill and Helenrose Fives, University of Central Florida, US, and Montclair State University, US

“People’s level of motivation, affective states, and actions are based more on what they believe than on what is objectively true.”

(Bandura, 1997, p. 2)

Beliefs can be conceptualized as an “individual’s judgment of the truth or falsity of a proposition” (Pajares, 1992, p. 316) or “as a set of interrelated notions” (McAlpine, Eriks-Brophy, & Crago, 1996, p. 392), or “as a set of conceptual representations which store general knowledge of objects, people and events, and their characteristic relationships” (Hermans, van Braak, & Van Keer, 2008, p. 128). As noted by Fives and Buehl (2012), defining beliefs is not always the challenge in this field (although it is a challenge), but finding consistency across these definitions so that one can come to a meaningful, pragmatic, and warranted conceptualization of the research seems to be a more epic quest for scholars in this field: a quest the authors of the International Handbook of Research on Teachers’ Beliefs have undertaken with zeal.

As Bandura (1997) argued, beliefs more than truth guide our goals, emotions, decisions, actions, and reactions. In classrooms, teachers, those responsible for the organization, structure, and tone of learning experiences and social development, rely on their implicit and explicit beliefs to function in the complex context of classrooms, embedded in schools, embedded in communities, embedded in larger national, international, diverse cultures. In the moment-to-moment existence of practice, teachers frequently rely on beliefs, particularly those that underlie their intuition, automaticity, and habit, to meet the demands of practice. Teachers’ beliefs can facilitate or hinder practice by serving to filter, frame, and guide experience, decisions, and actions (Fives & Buehl, in press). The importance of teachers’ beliefs is evidenced by decades of research and continued exploration of this construct theoretically and practically.

Educational researchers have addressed teachers’ beliefs in their work for more than half a century. In some cases teachers’ beliefs were the direct focus of inquiry, and, more frequently, they served as an additional variable or contextual component included in explanations of theory and evidence gathered. This growing body of research spans multiple disciplines, theoretical paradigms, and methodological approaches. Several substantive reviews of this literature exist (e.g., Calderhead, 1996; Fives & Buehl, 2012; Kagan, 1992; Pajares, 1992; Thompson, 1992); however, each of these important works reflect a specific framework of the researchers involved (e.g., quantitative studies of mathematics teachers’ beliefs), and little work has been done to draw across interrelated fields of study to examine the full corpus of perspectives on teachers’ beliefs. This handbook provides such an effort and frames the similarities and distinctions across the varied approaches to teachers’ beliefs. Specifically, the goal of this project was to provide novices and experts in the field with a single volume that discloses the complex landscape of the research and theory on teachers’ beliefs. Chapters in the Handbook review the historical foundations of the field, identify current trends in the research, and span the varied work that investigates teachers’ specific beliefs about content, instruction, students, and learning.

Overview of Sections and Chapters

The Handbook is organized into six sections that house different approaches to questions and studies of teachers’ beliefs. Our organization is one approach, and a blunt one at that, to map the field and name the areas of investigation. The sections of this book reflect both common groupings of investigations of teachers’ beliefs as well as an organizational scheme that might be seen in other areas of research. Thus, we sought to present the research in the most commonly recognized way. Sections I (“Foundations of Teachers’ Beliefs Research”) and II (“Studying Teachers’ Beliefs”) provide a theoretical, historical, and methodological framing of the field and orient the reader to the scope of the work, key findings, common conundrums, and varied approaches to investigating teachers’ beliefs. Section III, “Teachers’ Identity, Motivation, and Affect,” frames current understandings of the intersection of teachers’ beliefs within their self-systems as an aspect of motivation for practice, professional identity, and emotional or affective responses. Sections IV–VI summarize the “beliefs about” research. Pajares (1992) noted that teachers (or anyone) do not just have a “teacher belief”; rather, they have beliefs about specific topics or constructs, and in particular contexts these specific beliefs seem to matter in varied ways. Much research has been conducted within key topic areas that are reflected in these sections of the Handbook, namely teachers’ beliefs about pedagogy and school context (Section IV), knowing and teaching in academic domains (Section V), and learners (Section VI). Following the section overviews, we highlight some considerations for theory, research, and practice that span the topical organization of the Handbook. We invite the readers to consider these issues as they read across chapters.

Foundations of Teachers’ Beliefs Research

We begin in Section I of the Handbook by addressing the foundations of research on teachers’ beliefs with chapters on the nature of these beliefs, historical and theoretical perspectives on the field, how beliefs develop, and the relation of beliefs to practice. Skott (Chapter 2) provides an overview of the current state of research in the field by addressing the promises of beliefs research as well as the conceptual and methodological problems that have plagued this area of research, setting the stage for the more detailed discussions of these issues that occur in ensuing chapters. He then focuses on addressing the divide between teachers’ beliefs and their practice, arguing that a participatory framework has potential for advancing research and theory on teachers’ beliefs. In Chapter 3, Ashton provides a thorough historical overview of the evolution of research on teachers’ beliefs, identifying how theoretical perspectives have changed over time. Her chapter should serve as a foundational introduction for both those well-versed in beliefs research as well as newcomers to the field. Levin (Chapter 4) builds on these two foundational chapters by delving into the under-researched issue of how beliefs develop, focusing on the source, context, and stability of teachers’ beliefs. She then uses research on Personal Practical Theories as a model to explain how tacit beliefs develop into explicit beliefs for preservice, novice, and experienced teachers. Section I concludes with an ambitious chapter by Buehl and Beck (Chapter 5) in which they tackle the thorny issue of the relation between teachers’ beliefs and practices. In their chapter, they provide a helpful overview of the all the possible ways teachers’ beliefs may be related to their practices, supported by a strong review of research. They then discuss the internal and external factors that influence the enactment of beliefs and promote key theoretical frameworks for examining research on beliefs. We agree that these frameworks are helpful and will serve to advance future research and theory on teachers’ beliefs. As a whole, these chapters provide a comprehensive overview of both the past and current state of the field as well substantive directions for future research.

Studying Teachers’ Beliefs

Section II of the Handbook, titled “Studying Teachers’ Beliefs,” provides in-depth examinations of the methodological issues in studying teachers’ beliefs. In their organizational review of how teachers’ beliefs are assessed, Schraw and Olafson (Chapter 6) provide keen insight into the conceptual and measurement challenges faced by researchers interested in teachers’ beliefs. They identify 10 strategies for accessing teachers’ beliefs and in doing so provide a solid introduction for chapters 7 and 9. In Chapter 7, Hoffman and Seidel present a comprehensive review of the tools and methods used to assess teachers’ relatively stable beliefs that have been related to effective teaching and learning. In doing so they identify five areas of belief “topics” (e.g. beliefs about self, knowledge, teaching, etc.) and review 33 different measurement tools and approaches that can be used to tap into teachers’ beliefs. Olafson, Salinas, and Owens (Chapter 8) review common qualitative approaches to research on teachers’ beliefs and highlight the power of qualitative approaches for researchers who seek to understand teachers’ beliefs embedded in the lived experiences and contexts of learners. Finally, in Chapter 9, Bullough provides a unique exploration into alternative methods for accessing teachers’ beliefs: teacher writing, scenarios, and metaphors. In doing so, he offers a rich historical contextualization of these methods and describes the strengths and concerns associated with using each. Taken together, the chapters in Section II provide a structured introduction to research methodologies in this field, an objective critique of common approaches, and sound recommendations for research.

Teachers’ Identity, Motivation, and Affect

The third section of the Handbook focuses on teachers’ identity, motivation, and affect. Chapters in this section focus on identity and self-beliefs (e.g., self-concept, possible selves), teachers’ motivation, teachers’ sense of efficacy, and the connection between beliefs and affect. Zembylas and Chubbuck (Chapter 10) provide a ground-breaking analysis of the intersection between teachers’ beliefs and their identity from a political framework. In doing so, they address the issue of teacher identity and how it is both distinct from, yet informed by teachers’ beliefs. Further, they foreground the political context surrounding teachers’ identity, thereby addressing the issue of contextual influences on the formation of teachers’ beliefs. In Chapter 11, Watt and Richardson extend three leading theories of motivation (expectancy-value theory, achievement goal theory, and self-determination theory), usually applied to student learning, to address teachers’ motivation and beliefs, thereby broadening these theories’ scope to provide a more comprehensive overview of the teaching and learning process. Siwatu and Chesnut (Chapter 12) provide an interesting perspective on teachers’ self-efficacy research by focusing on the role of self-efficacy beliefs in the career development of teachers. In particular, they address the pressing question of how to obtain and retain high-quality teachers, and they offer a list of 10 practical suggestions for helping teachers to develop resilient efficacy beliefs. Gill and Hardin (Chapter 13) conclude this section by focusing specifically on the relation between teachers’ beliefs and affect, highlighting the iterative relationship between teachers’ beliefs and emotions and providing definitions and clarifications of affective constructs related to beliefs, based on a review of social psychological and cognitive psychological research. In addition, they review research related to teachers’ beliefs about emotion and research on hot models of conceptual change, proposing a theoretical framework for studying beliefs in a more realistic context using hot models of cognition. The chapters in this section make an important contribution to research and theory on teachers’ beliefs by addressing the contextual, motivational, and affective factors related to teachers’ beliefs. In doing so, the authors provide a more nuanced portrayal of how teachers’ beliefs are intricately tied to the educational process.

Contexts and Teachers’ Beliefs

The chapters in Section IV focus on teachers’ domain general beliefs about teaching, assessment, instruction, and the school context as well as how the context interacts with those beliefs. This section opens with a chapter by Fives, Lacatena, and Gerard (Chapter 14) in which investigations of teachers’ domain-general beliefs about teaching and learning are reviewed. A salient finding in this work is that very few studies address teachers’ beliefs about learning. Further, the research on teachers’ beliefs about teaching seems to conflate issues of epistemology, instructional practices, and learning such that when the common dichotomous comparison of teaching (e.g., traditional versus constructivist teaching) is adopted, the findings are difficult to interpret due to conflated and underspecified descriptions of what is meant by each perspective. A similar issue of ill-defined constructs is reported by Rubie-Davies, in her chapter on teachers’ beliefs about the school climate (Chapter 15). In this chapter, Rubie-Davies describes the ways that teachers’ beliefs influence their instructional decisions and subsequently influence the class climate. Specifically, she identifies four sets of beliefs that teachers hold (i.e., self-efficacy, mastery goals, differentiation, and expectations) as critical to the development of the instructional and socioemotional climate in classrooms. Barnes, Fives, and Dacey (Chapter 16) review the literature on teachers’ beliefs about assessment by (a) describing the research on teachers’ beliefs about the purposes of assessment that range from a learning perspective (assessment is to facilitate learning) to an accounting/accountability perspective (assessment is to hold learners, teachers, and schools accountable), (b) comparing teachers’ beliefs about assessment purposes across high- and low-stakes international contexts, and (c) examining the alignment between beliefs about assessment and teaching practices. The final chapter in this section by Tschannen-Moran, Salloum, and Goddard (Chapter 17) provides an analysis of the influence of teachers’ collective beliefs in shaping the school context, which in turn influences instructional activities in schools. Tschannen-Moran and colleagues underscore the contextual nature of beliefs and remind readers that teachers’ beliefs are not developed in a vacuum; rather, they are constructed through interactions with others in their school, and as such they both shape and are shaped by teachers’ personal beliefs and experiences. Further, they highlight the important role of school administrators in creating the school climate. The chapters in this section highlight the intersection of context and beliefs. Further, they illuminate the conceptualization of beliefs as part of and shaping the context itself. Fives et al. (Chapter 14) and Rubie-Davies (Chapter 15) focus on teachers’ classroom level beliefs about teaching and learning. Barnes et al. (Chapter...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Section I FOUNDATIONS OF TEACHERS’ BELIEFS RESEARCH
• Section II STUDYING TEACHERS’ BELIEFS
• Section III TEACHERS’ IDENTITY, MOTIVATION, AND AFFECT
• Section IV CONTEXTS AND TEACHERS’ BELIEFS
• Section V TEACHERS’ BELIEFS ABOUT KNOWING AND TEACHING WITHIN ACADEMIC DOMAINS
• Section VI TEACHERS’ BELIEFS ABOUT LEARNERS
• List of Contributors
• Index