Assessment of Social Sciences Teacher Candidates' Epistemological Beliefs: A Validation and Reliability Study of Scale

This research mainly aims to test the reliability and validity of the Epistemological Beliefs Scale developed by Kop and Demir (2014) on the level of social sciences teaching from Faculty of Education. A total of 176 students participated in the study, which was carried out on 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades of the Social Sciences Teaching Department from the Faculty of Education in Kafkas University. An exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was performed for the construct validity of the scale. Within the scope of reliability studies, the internal consistency (Cronbach Alpha) coefficients of the items were examined. As a result of the factor analysis, a total of 15 items consisting of the sub-dimensions that are 'a belief that learning depends on effort' (BLDE), 'a belief that learning depends on ability' (BLDA) and 'a belief of that there is only one truth' (BOOT) have been obtained. The Cronbach Alpha internal consistency coefficients for dimensions describing 47,783% of the total variance have been found to be 0.71 in total, 0.78 for the first factor, 0.69 for the second factor and 0.51 for the third factor. The compliance indicator examined as a result of confirmatory factor analysis has given satisfactory results in goodness of fit of the model and data. (KMO=0.784; Barlett Sphericty test χ2=610.108, χ2=122.03, sd=87, p<.01, RMSEA=0.048 and χ2/df=1.402, RMR=0.055, STRMR=0.066, GFI=0.91, AGFI=0.88, NFI=0.81, NNFI=0.92, CFI=0.93, IFI=0.93)