Teachers’ beliefs and practices within and across domains

This article explores the issue of domain generality of epistemological beliefs and world views of practicing teachers in the context of elementary school teaching. We describe ongoing research that examines beliefs held by teachers and their relationship to instructional practices. We examined the world views and beliefs of practicing teachers in the context of teaching elementary school science. We conclude that teachers endorse multiple world views, report teaching practices that are consistent and inconsistent with these world views, and report domain general teaching practices that extend to subject domains other than science, as well as domain specific teaching practices within the domain of science.