The effect of teacher candidates’ episodological beliefs or beliefs regarding the nature of science on the pseudo-scientific beliefs

Abstract

Theories of the nature of science and epistemological belief approaches allow the individual to distinguish between scientific and non-scientific knowledge. Despite the accumulation of knowledge which is the product of scientific studies, many false beliefs still exist. One of the basic dimensions of scientific literacy, the nature of science, is a broad field that includes the beliefs and values inherent in scientific knowledge and considers human efforts in their development. It also tries to find answers to questions such as “What is science?", “How does it work?", “How do scientists work as a social group?", “How does society guide science and how does society react to scientific works?" (McComas and Olson, 2000). These false beliefs that are believed to be true, which are also named as pseudo-science, consist of beliefs that are not supported by scientific research and only based on hypotheses, that doesn’t go through the phases of scientific methods, that are made up of personal explanations and examples or based on religious beliefs, and practices based on these beliefs (Çetinkaya, 2013). In this research, we tried to determine the epistemological beliefs and beliefs towards the nature of the science of teacher candidates studying in different programs of the education faculty. And it was investigated that how much of an effect these beliefs of the teacher candidates have on their pseudo-science beliefs. Thus, in this study we have worked with 202 teachers in total studying at the Education Faculty of Pamukkale University. 46 of the teachers were Science Teachers, 51 of them were Elementary Mathematics Teachers, 49 of them were Computer and Instructional Technologies Teachers and 56 of them were Primary School Teachers. Combined method design based on the principle of combining the quantitative and qualitative studies and the data regarding them is used in this study. “Scientific Epistemological Beliefs Scale”, “Nature of Science Beliefs Scale” and “Science, Pseudo-Science Differentiation Scale” were applied to the teacher candidates. In addition, a semi-structured interview was conducted with a total of 12 prospective teachers, three teacher candidates from each area, to examine the mentioned effect more deeply. As a result of the research, it is seen that there are certain differences and similarities in the beliefs of the prospective teachers towards epistemological and scientific nature and that these differences and similarities are reflected in the pseudo-science beliefs of the teacher candidates in a similar way. The findings are also discussed in the light of the literature of the area. © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology.