3.2 The Nature of Beliefs

While beliefs have been described as the most valuable psychological construct to teacher education (Pintrich, 1990), they also are one of the more difficult to define. Pajares (1992), in his review of the research on the topic, refers to beliefs as a "messy construct", one that has not always been accorded much precision and which "travels under the alias" of: "attitudes, values, judgements, axioms, opinions, ideology, perceptions, conceptions, conceptual systems, preconceptions, dispositions, implicit theories, personal theories, internal mental processes, action strategies, rules of practice, practical principles, perspectives, repertories of understanding, and social strategy, to name but a few that can be found in the literature" (p.309).

Pajares explains that confusion with the concept centres around the distinction between knowledge and belief. However, as many researchers have found, it is not so much that knowledge differs from beliefs, but that beliefs themselves constitute a form of knowledge. In his attempts to characterize beliefs, Nespor (1987) provides some distinctions between the two. He singles out four features of the construct previously identified by Abelson (1979) and considers them in relation to teachers:

1. Existential presumptions or personal truths are generally unaffected by persuasion and are perceived by the teacher as being beyond his/her control or influence. These types of beliefs would include a teacher’s beliefs about students’ innate abilities or characteristics.
2. Alternativity is a feature of beliefs that would include situations such as when teachers attempt to establish an instructional format of which they have no direct experience but which they might consider ideal. Nespor theorizes that it is in this respect that beliefs "serve as a means of defining goals and tasks, whereas knowledge systems come into play where goals and the paths to their attainment are well defined". (p.310)
3. Belief systems can be said to rely much more heavily on affective and evaluative components than knowledge systems. For this reason, knowledge of a domain can be distinguished from feelings about a domain such as a subject area taught by a teacher. Teachers’ values and feelings often affect what and how they teach and may conflict with their knowledge.
4. Belief systems are composed mainly of episodically stored material which is derived from personal experience, episodes or events which continue to influence the comprehension of events at a later time. Whereas beliefs reside in episodic memory, knowledge is semantically stored.

A further distinction between beliefs and knowledge, notes Nespor, is that, while knowledge often changes, beliefs are "static". As well, whereas knowledge can be evaluated or judged, such is not the case with beliefs as there is usually a lack of consensus about how they are to be evaluated. Furthermore, there do not appear to be any clear rules for determining the relevance of beliefs to real world events. While there are no doubt other distinctions that could be made between the two constructs, a better understanding may be gained by exploring the relationship between the two and by considering beliefs as a form of knowledge. This form of knowledge could be referred to as personal knowledge. Kagan (1992) refers to beliefs as a "particularly provocative form of personal knowledge" and argues that most of a teacher's professional knowledge can be regarded more accurately as belief.

According to Kagan, this knowledge grows richer and more coherent, as a teacher's experience in classrooms grows and thus forms a highly personalized pedagogy or belief system that actually constrains the teacher’s perception, judgment, and behavior. In terms of beliefs as being personal knowledge, Kagan explains: "A teacher’s knowledge of his or her profession is situated in three important ways: in context (it is related to specific groups of students), in content (it is related to particular academic material to be taught), and in person (it is embedded within the teacher’s unique belief system)" (p.74).

Like Clark (1988) who equates 'implicit theories' with beliefs, Nespor (1987) explains how beliefs become personal pedagogies or theories to guide teachers' practices:

...teachers’ beliefs play a major role in defining teaching tasks and organizing the knowledge and information relevant to those tasks. But why should this be so? Why wouldn’t research-based knowledge or academic theory serve this purpose just as well? The answer suggested here is that the contexts and environments within which teachers work, and many of the problems they encounter, are ill-defined and deeply entangled, and that beliefs are peculiarly suited for making sense of such contexts. (p.324)

Rust (1994) describes beliefs as socially-constructed representational systems. These systems then are used to interpret and act upon the world. Since beliefs are generally contextualized and associated with a particular situation or circumstance (Kagan, 1992), it is not surprising that systems of beliefs may contradict each other (Ennis, 1994). Furthermore, wide variance can be found among the systems of beliefs of different teachers from within a similar group (Bussis, Chittenden, Armel, 1976). Wehling and Charters (1969) discuss beliefs in terms of complex organizations consisting of discrete sets of inter-related concepts. They include beliefs in the category of representations, or cognitive maps of the external world which serve as mediators for experiencing and responding to reality. This conception of beliefs fits with the notion of beliefs as personal knowledge, personal pedagogies and implicit theories.

Munby (1982) also equates implicit theories with teachers' beliefs. Clark and Peterson (1986) in their review of the literature on teachers' thought processes, argue that teachers' theories and beliefs represent a rich store of knowledge. Teachers make sense of their complex world and respond to it by forming a complex system of personal and professional knowledge and theories which, as Kagan (1992) describes, are often tacit and unconsciously held assumptions about students, classrooms and the material to be taught.

Pajares (1992) provides a synthesis of the findings on beliefs which he drew from his review of the literature on the topic:

1. Beliefs are formed early and tend to self-perpetuate, persevering even against contradiction caused by reason, time, schooling, or experience.
2. Individuals develop a belief system that houses all the beliefs acquired through the process of cultural transmission.
3. The belief system has an adaptive function in helping individual define and understand the world and themselves.
4. Knowledge and beliefs are inextricably intertwined, but the potent affective, evaluative, and episodic nature of beliefs makes them a filter through which new phenomenon are interpreted.
5. Thought processes may well be precursors to and creators of beliefs, but the filtering effect of belief structures ultimately screens, redefines, distorts, or reshapes subsequent thinking and information processing.
6. Epistemological beliefs play a key role in knowledge interpretation and cognitive monitoring.
7. Beliefs are prioritized according to their connections or relationship to other beliefs or other cognitive and affective structures. Apparent inconsistencies may be explained by exploring the functional connections and centrality of the beliefs.
8. Belief substructures, such as educational beliefs, must be understood in terms of their connections not only to each other but also to other, perhaps more central, beliefs in the system. Psychologists usually refer to these substructures as attitudes and values.
9. By their very nature and origin, some beliefs are more incontrovertible than others.
10. The earlier a belief is incorporated into the belief structure, the more difficult it is to alter. Newly acquired beliefs are most vulnerable to change.
11. Belief change during adulthood is a relatively rare phenomenon, the most common cause being a conversion from one authority to another or a gestalt shift. Individuals tend to hold on to beliefs based on incorrect or incomplete knowledge even after scientifically correct explanations are presented to them.
12. Beliefs are instrumental in defining tasks and selecting the cognitive tools with which to interpret, plan, and make decisions regarding such tasks; hence, they play a critical role in defining behaviour and organizing knowledge and information.
13. Beliefs strongly influence perception, but they can be an unreliable guide to the nature of reality.
14. Individuals’ beliefs strongly affect their behavior.
15. Beliefs must be inferred and this inference must take into account the congruence among individuals' belief statements, the intentionality to behave in a predisposed manner, and the behavior related to the belief in question.
16. Beliefs about teaching are well established by the time a student gets to college. (Pajares, 1992, p.324)

For the purposes of this study, beliefs will be defined based on the common elements described in this review of the nature of beliefs. From these common elements, we can derive specific statements about beliefs as follows:

• Beliefs represent teachers' personal knowledge.
• Beliefs represent implicit theories.
• Beliefs serve as cognitive maps.
• Beliefs serve as mediators for experiencing and responding to the environment.
• Beliefs represent a complex inter-related system.
• Beliefs have a cognitive and an affective component.
• Beliefs are often tacit and unconsciously held.

From these statements, we can establish a definition of teachers' beliefs which will be used in this study:

Teachers’ beliefs represent a complex and inter-related system of personal and professional knowledge that serves as implicit theories and cognitive maps for experiencing and responding to reality. Beliefs rely on cognitive and affective components and are often tacitly held.