Pre-service Teachers' Epistemology Viewed through Perspectives on Problematic Classroom Situations

This study aims to describe the epistemology of pre-service teachers in terms of the nature of knowledge and the process of knowing. Pre-service teachers were interviewed to obtain the necessary data. Findings were as follows. (1) Pre-service teachers differ in epistemology. (2) Pre-service teachers do not move from category to category of epistemology in stage-like fashion. Once they come to understand that some knowledge is uncertain in nature, they go through successive iterations of belief about the process of knowing before again changing their belief about the certainty of knowledge. (3) The epistemological beliefs of pre-service teachers appear to be interconnected in a web. (4) There appears to be no relationship between status in school and epistemology.