ABSTRACT

Available evidence indicates that teacher candidates undergo shifts in beliefs throughout the process of learning to teach, and various contextual realities contribute to reshaping their general teaching beliefs. The concept of epistemic beliefs is key to understanding teacher development as cross-cultural teacher education becomes increasingly common. This study examines Nigerian teacher candidates’ conceptions about the nature and process of knowing, epistemic beliefs. This exploration of these epistemic beliefs is framed within the United States-based Schommer model. Exploratory factor analysis was employed to examine a sample of 1009 full-time teacher candidates at two large public institutions in southwestern Nigeria. Findings indicate that Nigerian teacher candidates expressed dependently complex, yet distinct epistemic beliefs compared to their U.S. counterparts. The findings are contextualized within the effective deployment of teacher education research across cultures, highlighting sociocultural antecedents to the nature of reality in the measures of teacher candidates’ epistemic beliefs in non-Western contexts. Implications for educational theory, research, and practice are discussed.

摘要

现有证据表明，教师候选人在整个学习教学的过程中经历了信念的转变，各种背景现实有助于重塑他们的一般教学信念。随着跨文化教师教育变得越来越普遍，认知信念的概念是理解教师发展的关键。本研究考察了尼日利亚教师候选人对认识、认知信念的性质和过程的概念。对这些认知信念的探索是在美国的 Schommer 模型中进行的。探索性因素分析被用来检查尼日利亚西南部两个大型公共机构的 1009 名全职教师候选人的样本。调查结果表明，尼日利亚教师候选人表达依赖复杂，然而，与美国同行相比，他们有着截然不同的认知信念。研究结果在跨文化教师教育研究的有效部署中进行了情境化，在非西方背景下教师候选人的认知信念的测量中突出了现实本质的社会文化前因。讨论了对教育理论、研究和实践的影响。