Browsing by Author "Qiu, Yue"

Many studies have shown that it is important to understand teachers' epistemic beliefs in educational reform because their epistemic beliefs often influence teachers' behaviours. Based on previous study, there were two kinds of teachers’ epistemic beliefs: reflective-collaborative and knowledge transmission. Teachers’ teaching practices could be learning-focused or content-focused. The aim of this study was to find out Chinese high school teachers’ epistemic beliefs and their teaching practices and how they were related to each other. In this study, the participants were 10 high school teachers from China. Interviews were conducted online in their mother tongue. The interview questions were adapted from previous research, and content analysis was used to analyze the transcripts. The results showed that the teachers held both epistemic beliefs. Metacognition and reflection were important, but so was the transmission of knowledge. In their self-reports, teachers would use different teaching methods depending on the situation, trying to find a balance between their own beliefs and the exam-oriented social context. For most teachers, there was no strong link between teachers' epistemic beliefs and practices, which might be caused by the socio-cultural context and the lack of adequate competencies.