Modelling the Relationships among Beliefs about Learning, Knowledge, and Teaching of Pre-Service Teachers in Singapore

This paper aims to investigate the beliefs about knowledge, learning and teaching of 718 Singaporean pre-service teachers. The results show that three out of eight hypotheses were supported by the data. These hypotheses are 1) Innate ability will significantly influence traditionalist teaching positively, 2) Learning effort/process will significantly influence constructivist teaching positively, and 3) Learning effort/process will significantly influence traditionalist teaching negatively. The results also indicate that the participants may not hold relativistic outlooks and that they may be inclined towards constructivist teaching rather than traditional teaching. In addition, the participants may not be epistemologically ready for constructivist teaching. This paper contributes to the research on teachers' beliefs by applying structural equation modelling to examine the strengths and inter-relationships between different types of beliefs.