The Effect of Different Educational Programs on the Development of Students' Epistemological Beliefs

Epistemological beliefs are beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing. The purpose of this paper is to examine the different educational programs (English teacher education, computer technology teacher education, and food technology) in terms of epistemological beliefs and to reveal the epistemological beliefs of fresh graduates studying these programs in Turkey and from different educational backgrounds. The interview questions used in this study focused on the source of knowledge, nature of knowledge, and elements in acquiring knowledge. The results revealed that prospective English teachers had relatively sophisticated ideas and the prospective food technologists had relatively naive ideas on each dimension of epistemological beliefs. Computer technology teachers had medium epistemological beliefs. This could be because English teacher education programs focus more on the students' epistemological beliefs, whereas food technologist programs focus more on the subject rather than on students' beliefs about knowledge on food subjects.