Teachers' scientific epistemological views: The coherence with instruction and students' views***

Abstract 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