The focus of this book is to explore teachers’ evolving personal epistemologies, or the beliefs we hold about the origin and development of knowledge in the context of teaching. The chapters focus on a range of conceptual frameworks about how university and field?based experiences influence the connections between teachers’ personal epistemologies and teaching practice. In an earlier volume we investigated preservice and inservice teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices (Brownlee, Schraw and Berthelsen, 2011). While we addressed the nature of teachers’ personal epistemologies, learning and teaching practices, and approaches for changing beliefs throughout teacher education programs, the volume did not address conceptual frameworks for the development of teacher’s personal epistemologies. To address this gap, the book is focused on teacher educators, teachers and teacher education programmers in universities with an overall aim of highlighting how we might support preservice teachers’ involvement in learning that is challenging and inservice teachers’ engagement in professional experiences that promote changes in teaching practice. We argue that teachers need to be encouraged to question their beliefs and develop increasingly sophisticated beliefs about their knowledge and their students’ knowledge that facilitate learning and intellectual growth.

Personal Epistemology and Teacher Education, edited by Joanne Brownlee, Gregg Schraw and Donna Berthelsen, provides an international perspective on teachers’ personal epistemology, or beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing. Research from The Netherlands, Cyprus, Australia, United States, Canada, Norway, and Taiwan is presented to provide diverse viewpoints on personal epistemology for early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary teaching contexts. The text provides a platform for cutting-edge theory and research about how personal epistemology can be applied to the context of teacher education, thereby making explicit the connection between personal epistemology and teaching and students’ learning outcomes. Topics include: Cultural differences in teacher epistemology and the impact on students’ learning Teachers’ epistemological beliefs and inclusion Teachers’ epistemology and reading lessons, citizenship education, and teaching science Epistemology in a social context Teachers’ epistemological beliefs and student autonomy Teacher education and analysis of preservice and practicing teachers Implications of teachers’ epistemological beliefs Connections to future practice Teacher education and teacher behaviours are fore-grounded across the topics, with an emphasis on the origin and composition of teachers’ epistemological beliefs and how universities motivate change through formal teacher education. Teaching behaviours are discussed in relation to how teachers’ beliefs are related to the curricular and pedagogical choices that they make in their classrooms, assessment of learning outcomes, and classroom management practices.

The Handbook of Epistemic Cognition brings together leading work from across disciplines, to provide a comprehensive overview of an increasingly important topic: how people acquire, understand, justify, change, and use knowledge in formal and informal contexts. Research into inquiry, understanding, and discovery within academic disciplines has progressed from general models of conceptual change to a focus upon the learning trajectories that lead to expert-like conceptualizations, skills, and performance. Outside of academic domains, issues of who and what to believe, and how to integrate multiple sources of information into coherent and useful knowledge, have arisen as primary challenges of the 21st century. In six sections, scholars write within and across fields to focus and advance the role of epistemic cognition in education. With special attention to how researchers across disciplines can communicate and collaborate more effectively, this book will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the future of knowledge and knowing. Dr. Jeffrey A. Greene is an associate professor of Learning Sciences and Psychological Studies in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. William A. Sandoval is a professor in the division of Urban Schooling at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Dr. Ivar Bråten is a professor of Educational Psychology at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Oslo, Norway.

There is strong social and political interest in active citizenship and values in education internationally. Active citizenship requires children to experience and internalize moral values for human rights, developing their own opinions and moral responsibility. While investment in young children is recognised as an important factor in the development of citizenship for a cohesive society, less is known about how early years teachers can encourage this in the classroom. This book will present new directions on how teachers can promote children's learning of moral values for citizenship in classrooms. The research provided offers important insights into teaching for active citizenship by: • providing an analysis of educational contexts for moral values for active citizenship • highlighting teachers’ beliefs about knowing and knowledge (personal epistemologies) and how these relate to children’s learning and understanding about social and moral values • discussing the impact of teachers’ beliefs on teaching practices. Evidence suggests that investment in the early years is vital for all learning, and specifically for developing an understanding of active citizenship for tolerant and cohesive societies. This book will be essential reading for the professional education of early years teachers interested in teaching for active citizenship.

Teacher beliefs play a fundamental role in the education landscape. Nevertheless, most educational researchers only allude to teacher beliefs as part of a study on other subjects. This book fills a necessary gap by identifying the importance of research on teacher beliefs and providing a comprehensive overview of the topic. It provides novices and experts alike a single volume with which to understand a complex research landscape. Including a review of the historical foundations of the field, this book identifies current research trends, and summarizes the current knowledge base regarding teachers’ specific beliefs about content, instruction, students, and learning. For its innumerable applications within the field, this handbook is a necessity for anyone interested in educational research.

This handbook synthesizes both contemporary research and best practices in early childhood teacher education, a unique segment of teacher education defined by its focus on child development, the role of the family, and support for all learners. The first volume of its kind, the Handbook of Early Childhood Teacher Education provides comprehensive coverage on key topics in the field, including the history of early childhood teacher education programs, models for preparing early childhood educators, pedagogical approaches to supporting diverse learners, and contemporary influences on this quickly expanding area of study. Appropriate for early childhood teacher educators as well as both pre- and in-service teachers working with children from birth through 8, this handbook articulates the unique features of early childhood teacher education, highlighting the strengths and limitations of current practice as based in empirical research. It concludes by charting future directions for research with an aim to improve the preparation of early childhood educators.

This book brings together two topics which have both been of increasing interest in different countries. The first refers to the quality of Religious Education as a school subject (RE) in general, the second is about the education of teachers of RE and its possible contribution to better quality RE. There have been many public, and often controversial, debates concerning both of these topics. The chapters contained in this volume, however, are not meant to continue such debates (even if it is inevitable that they will contribute to these debates as well), but to make use of research, especially research on teacher education in the field of RE, in order to provide insights based not just on political or personal opinions, but on rigorous academic scholarship.

Indhold: Part I: Science Learning. Part II: Culture, Gender, Society, and Science Learning. Part III: Science Teaching. Part IV: Curriculum and Assessment in Science. Part V: Science Teacher Education.

This work evaluates teacher professional development programmes. These programmes are evaluated in terms of participants' classroom teaching behaviour, as assessed by their school students' perceptions of their classroom learning environments.