Epistemological Beliefs of Preservice Teachers as a Function of Their Own Mathematical Education

The objectives of the study are to assess epistemological beliefs in mathematics of a group of preservice elementary school teachers enrolled in a teacher preparation and certification program at a school in the Southwest United States. Its construct is based on the hypothesis that the degree to which preservice teachers hold constructivist beliefs depends on their own education in mathematics during high school as well as on their status (i.e. length of permanence and/or progress) in the current teacher preparation program.

A pre-existing instrument was used to measure the characteristics of our population corresponding to our construct and internal consistency and construct validity were assumed based on the similarities of the populations and the proven internal consistency found in the original study by the authors of the instrument.