Education Commons^™

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Professional Development Providers' Epistemological And Nature Of Science Beliefs And Their Professional Development Programs, Alfonso Garcia Arriola

Dissertations and Theses

In the last twenty years in US science education, professional development has emphasized the need to change science instruction from a direct instruction model to a more participatory and constructivist learning model. The result of these reform efforts has seen an increase in science education professional development that is focused on providing teaching strategies that promote inquiry learning to learn science content. Given these reform efforts and teacher responses to professional development, research seems to indicate that whether teachers actually change their practice may depend on the teachers' basic epistemological beliefs about the nature of science. The person who builds …