A Longitudinal Mixed Methods Study of Norwegian Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs About Sources of Teaching Knowledge and Motivation to Learn From Theory and Practice

Abstract

We set out to investigate preservice teachers’ beliefs about sources of teaching knowledge and their motivation to learn from practice and theory in teacher education in a longitudinal study ( n = 96, at the beginning of the study). Participants placed more trust in experiential knowledge sources compared with formalized sources and participants’ beliefs about sources of teaching knowledge generally predicted their motivation to learn from different sources. Quantitative results were further supported and elaborated by qualitative interview data that suggested development of preservice teachers’ beliefs about sources of teaching knowledge and their understanding of the relation between theoretical and practical knowledge over time. The findings extend existing literature by providing a window on how (preservice) teachers may articulate their views about sources of teaching knowledge and relations between theory and practice, with expected consequences for teaching practice. Implications for teacher educators’ practice are also discussed.

Unpacking pre-service teachers’ beliefs and reasoning about student ability, sources of teaching knowledge, and teacher-efficacy: A scenario-based approach

“…Our findings align with prior research (Fives and Buehl, 2008;Bråten and Ferguson, 2015;Ferguson et al, 2022) but also provide new insight by merit of participants' responses to scenarios and their reasoning about the described problems. In particular, the pre-service teachers' beliefs about student 10.3389/feduc.2022.975105 performance actually placed most emphasis on the role of the teacher, their actions, and the ways they interact with students and adapt and vary their teaching methods and exercises.…”

“…The authors identified the following six main themes related to sources of teaching knowledge in participants' responses: formal education in terms of pre-service education and professional development; formalized bodies of knowledge, including research articles and the Internet; observational (or vicarious) learning from other teachers; collaboration and shared meaning making; enactive experiences from personal, professional, and other experiences; and self-reflection and synthesis of information and experiences. In accordance with this study, pre-service teachers' and teachers' emphasis on personal, enactive, and experienced-based knowledge has been confirmed in later work (e.g., Bråten and Ferguson, 2015;Kiemer and Kollar, 2021;Thomm et al, 2021c;Ferguson et al, 2022). Still, the mechanisms explaining this emphasis have only recently become the object of more systematic investigation.…”

“…At the same time, pre-service teachers in the information society have more access to scientific, research-based knowledge than their predecessors. Still, empirical studies have clearly documented pre-as well as in-service teachers' preference for informal or experience-based over research-or evidence-informed sources of teaching knowledge (Thomm et al, 2021c;Ferguson et al, 2022). Possible reasons for this dilemma include lacking competency or efficacy in using and reasoning about researchbased knowledge, or even unwillingness to do so (Thomm et al, 2021b).…”

“…Based on those experiences, pre-service teachers in initial teacher education programs may hold well-developed, potentially powerful belief systems about education that are incompatible with established bodies of knowledge from relevant fields, such as the educational and learning sciences (Menz et al, 2021). Further, these beliefs are likely to influence their interactions with educational theories and research (Ferguson et al, 2022).…”

“…This study is part of a large longitudinal mixed methods project(Ferguson et al, 2022). However, the research questions, the materials, the analyses, and the results are all unique to this study and not reported elsewhere.…”