Science teachers’ beliefs and practices: issues, implications and research agenda

study of teachers ’ beliefs forms part of the process of understanding how teachers conceptualize their work which in turn is important to the understanding of teachers’ practices and their decisions in the classroom. A growing body of research argues that teachers ’ beliefs should be studied within a framework that is aware of the influence of culture. These studies also argue that teachers ’ beliefs and practices cannot be exam-ined out of context. This shows that the relationship between teachers ’ beliefs and their practices is complex and context dependent. Some researchers have found consisten-cies between teachers ’ beliefs and their practices whilst others have found inconsisten-cies. The purpose of this paper is to present an argument about the relationship of teachers ’ beliefs and practices and to find out frameworks of understanding the consis-tency and inconsistency of this relationship. In this paper, I explore the nature of teach-ers ’ beliefs. Then, I discuss how teachers ’ beliefs have been formed. Also, I will argue the relationship between knowledge and beliefs. Researchers ’ key vision of the rela-tionship between beliefs and knowledge was that “whether knowledge directs beliefs or beliefs leads to knowledge. I will argue that the relationship among beliefs, knowl-edge and practices are intertwined. Then, I present sociocultural perspectives to ex-plain the consistency and inconsistency between teachers ’ beliefs and practices. I will follow these perspectives by presenting sources of forming teacher’s beliefs which will lead to a discussion about potentials of changing teachers ’ beliefs