Students learning to teach: Conversing with students about their epistemological beliefs

Twenty-five preservice graduate teacher education students at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia were asked to describe their epistemological beliefs (beliefs about knowing, learning and teaching) at the end of their year-long course. The discussions were semi-structured and analysed from a predominantly grounded theory perspective. A number of categories of core beliefs about knowing emerged which reflected a continuum of beliefs. From naïve to more sophisticated, there was an increasing focus on truth that was constructed and reasoned with a corresponding decrease in focus on truth as absolute and received. There was also some consistency noted between core beliefs about knowing and peripheral beliefs about learning and teaching for a number of students