Elementary Teachers’ Educational Beliefs and Their Instructional Approaches: In Search of a Meaningful Relationship

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature and raises arguments that elementary school teachers’ instructional approaches in science are in part influenced by a variety of their educational beliefs. These instructional approaches are discussed relative to their being either the traditional content-focused approaches or the recommended inquiry-based approaches. It is suggested that since teacher education science curricula has for many years been emphasizing inquiry based approaches to science instruction, there is probably some very compelling reasons why teachers generally fall back to using the traditional approaches. Since the research literature has indicated that individuals’ beliefs are strongly influential in their decisions and behaviours, the conclusion is made that this may also apply to teachers with regards to a variety of their educational beliefs influencing their science teaching approaches. Three types of educational beliefs were suggested by the literature as being likely to influence teachers’ instructional decisions. These are epistemological, science teaching and learning and science teaching efficacy beliefs. In addition, the situation specific construct applicability beliefs was conceptualized by the authors of this paper to explain teachers’ beliefs about various social, psychological and environmental factors affecting their attempts at inquiry based science instruction.