The successful international implementation of competency-based history education hinges on teachers’ epistemic beliefs—specifically, their views on the nature of historical knowledge. This study investigated the epistemic stances of secondary school history teachers in Shambu Town, Ethiopia, and their implications for classroom practice within the context of recent curricular reforms. Adopting a pragmatist paradigm and a sequential mixed-methods design, data were collected from 16 teachers using the Beliefs about History Questionnaire (BHQ), followed by semi-structured interviews. This diagnostic phase constitutes the first micro-cycle of a larger Design-Based Research (DBR) framework. Results indicated that while teachers endorsed criterialist (evaluativist) beliefs, they simultaneously held objectivist and subjectivist views, revealing epistemic “wobbling.” Qualitative findings further revealed a stark belief–practice gap, where transmissive, textbook-centered pedagogy persisted despite a national shift toward inquiry-oriented competencies. These findings suggest that epistemic inconsistency, moderated by structural constraints, hinders the realization of Ethiopia’s educational reforms.
Geshere et al. (Mon,) studied this question.