AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PROFESSIONAL SELF EFFICACY AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL BELIEFS OF PRE-SERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS

The aim of this study is to investigate the professional self-efficacy beliefs and epistemological beliefs of pre-service teachers who received pedagogical formation training. Survey method was used in the study. The participants of this study consisted of 180 teacher candidates who graduated from the departments of physics, biology and chemistry at different universities and completed the program ofpedagogical formation training held at Mersin University in the academic year of 2014-2015. Epistemological Beliefs Scale and Professional Self-Efficacy Scale were used to collect the data for this study; and descriptive statistics, Pearson Correlation Test and regression analysis, were used for the data analysis. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that the prospective teachers’ professional self-efficacy beliefs were at a high level and their epistemological beliefs were at the developed level. Furthermore, their epistemological beliefs were significantly predictive for their professional self-efficacy beliefs. It was also found that there was a significant relationship between the sub-factors of the prospective teachers’ epistemological beliefs and the sub-factors of their professional self-efficacy beliefs. On the other hand, there was no significant relationship between the prospective teachers’ beliefs about the existence of a single truth and their self-efficacy beliefs regarding the instructional strategies