Belief, knowledge, and science education

Epistemological questions about the nature of knowledge and belief underlie many of the controversial issues fundamental to research and practice in s cience teaching and learning. In an effort to bring some clarity to questio ns of knowledge and belief embedded within science education research and t eaching, we first describe the distinctions drawn between knowledge and bel ief in both philosophy and educational psychology, each of which have shape d the various definitions employed within science education. This discussio n is followed by an examination of the distinctions drawn between knowledge and belief employed by three groups of science educators: the traditional distinctions of the foundationalists that are co-opted by researchers focus ing on teacher thinking/cognition, the nonfoundational epistemology of the fallibilists and the evolution educators working from this framework, and t he radical constructivists who react to and attempt to move past the limita tions of these other positions. In this analysis, we explicate the differen t ways in which knowledge and belief are understood and operationalized in a broad spectrum of research, we describe the theoretical and philosophical assumptions underlying these approaches, and we explore the important area s of contention (both theoretical and empirical) surrounding each of these distinctions.