According to Pajares (1992), beliefs “travel in disguise and often under alias—attitudes, values, judgments, axioms, opinions, ideology, perceptions, conceptions, conceptual systems, preconceptions, dispositions, implicit theories, explicit theories, personal theories, internal mental processes, action strategies, rules of practice, practical principles, perspectives, repertories of understanding, and social strategy, to name but a few that can be found in the literature” (p. 309). Teachers’ beliefs are usually defined as personal constructs that can provide understandings, judgments, and evaluations of teachers’ practices.
Published in Chapter:
Beliefs and Concept Mapping on WebQuest Development
Harrison Hao Yang (State Universtiy of New York at Oswego, USA) and Sai-Wing Pun (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 15
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-865-9.ch020
Abstract
This chapter presents an overview on the conceptualization of the inquiry-based learning approach, and how the WebQuest, which is a Web-based inquiry-oriented activity, has been designed and developed. It intends to offer a glimpse into student teachers who study in courses of information technology in education at one university in China and one university in the United State with the objectives of: 1) investigating student teachers’ beliefs and opinions related to the WebQuests; and 2) examining the effectiveness of utilizing the concept map to aid student teachers’ WebQuests design and development.