Robert G. Elliott

Epistemological beliefs across cultures: critique and analysis of beliefs structure studies

The findings of epistemological beliefs studies in North America, Hong Kong and Taiwan were compared and interpreted in terms of the different cultural contexts and methodologies used in the research studies. Based on cross culture analysis a hypothesis for the structure of epistemological beliefs was proposed. Implications were also drawn for future research in this field, in light of the limitations and potential of existing measuring instruments.

Exploratory Study of Epistemological Beliefs of Hong Kong Teacher Education Students: Resolving conceptual and empirical issues

A survey study was conducted to investigate the epistemological beliefs of 352 student teachers of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Schommers 63-item questionnaire was used in the survey study with Schommers 12 conceptual subscales as variables in Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) analysis followed by varimax and oblimin rotation. Three factors were generated with an eigen value of 1.00 as cut-off. Some features distinct from Schommers studies were identified. The three factors were complex, with two to three subscales representing different dimensions loaded together. The subscale concerned with Omniscient Authority, which was not reported in Schommers findings, substantively loaded in one of the factors. Social-cultural factors were suggested to account for the apparent differences in factor structure obtained in this study, with implications drawn for teacher education. Revision of Schommers questionnaire was suggested to study epistemological beliefs for local context.