Pre-service teachers' epistemological beliefs and approaches to learning

This quantitative study sets out to explore the beliefs students hold about knowledge and learning and the ways they approach their learning. Participants were 632 pre-service teachers at Faculty of Education. Turkish version of Schommer's Epistemological Belief Questionnaire (EBQ) and Turkish version of Biggs' Revised Two Factor Learning Approaches Scale (RSPQ-2F) were used as data collection tool. One of the results shows that students who believe that learning depends on innate ability were likely to be surface motivated and utilise a surface strategy in their studying while students who believe in learning depends on effort would be deep-motivated and adopt a deep study strategy. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Uzunboylu