ABSTRACT
As we write this chapter, teachers across the United States are preparing for their first days of school. Besides the excitement associated with teaching students who are newly energized after a long summer break, science teachers also come into the school year with a host of beliefs that may well shape the ways in which they teach and may ultimately have some bearing on their students’ overall experiences with science. Although there are countless beliefs that teachers hold with regard to science, in this chapter we focus specifically on two beliefs that have received the most research attention—teachers’ self-efficacy, which describes their beliefs about their capability to teach science, and their epistemic beliefs, which describe their beliefs about the nature of scientific knowledge and knowing.
