The challenges of measuring epistemic beliefs across cultures: evidence from Nigerian teacher candidates

ABSTRACT

Available evidence indicates that teacher candidates undergo shifts in beliefs throughout the process of learning to teach, and various contextual realities contribute to reshaping their general teaching beliefs. The concept of epistemic beliefs is key to understanding teacher development as cross-cultural teacher education becomes increasingly common. This study examines Nigerian teacher candidates’ conceptions about the nature and process of knowing, epistemic beliefs. This exploration of these epistemic beliefs is framed within the United States-based Schommer model. Exploratory factor analysis was employed to examine a sample of 1009 full-time teacher candidates at two large public institutions in southwestern Nigeria. Findings indicate that Nigerian teacher candidates expressed dependently complex, yet distinct epistemic beliefs compared to their U.S. counterparts. The findings are contextualized within the effective deployment of teacher education research across cultures, highlighting sociocultural antecedents to the nature of reality in the measures of teacher candidates’ epistemic beliefs in non-Western contexts. Implications for educational theory, research, and practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Epistemic beliefs
• pre-service teachers
• cross-cultural beliefs
• teacher development
• Nigeria

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Office of Research and Economic Development, The University of Alabama [18-1071].

Notes on contributors

Oluseyi Matthew Odebiyi

Oluseyi Matthew Odebiyi is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Development at St. Cloud State University.  His research interests include cross-cultural epistemic dynamics in teacher development, curricula-instructional meaning-making, and translation of inquiry ideas and structures in practice by teacher candidates.

Youn-Jeng Choi

Youn-Jeng Choi is an Assistant Professor of Measurement and Evaluation at The University of Alabama.  Her research interests include psychometrics, methodological issues in educational measurement, and applications using quantitative methodology.