The relationships between teachers' general beliefs about teaching and learning and their domain specific curricular beliefs

Abstract

In this exploratory study the relationships between teachers' general educational beliefs about teaching and learning and their domain specific beliefs about a particular curriculum, that is, the chemistry curriculum for upper secondary education in The Netherlands were investigated. For this purpose, a questionnaire survey was conducted among the whole of the population of Dutch chemistry teachers (n = 966). The useful response was 348 (36%). Two distinct and independent belief structures were found, one in which a subject-matter oriented educational belief was combined with a curricular belief focusing on the teaching of the fundamental, theoretical concepts of chemistry, and another which..