A Study of Teacher Epistemologies

Teachers' views of knowledge, their epistemologies, are likely to affect the way they organize and transmit information in the classroom. After ethnographic study had revealed that teachers' epistemologies varied greatly in their degree of formalization, a theory of the practical implications of teacher epistemologies was developed based on Basil Bernstein's account of visible and invisible pedagogies. Epistemology and curriculum code, assessment approach and control ideology were operationalized in four Likert scales. A survey was conducted and analysis of the data lent strong support both to the Bernstein theory and its extension to include the role played by epistemology.