ABSTRACT
Teacher educators are confronted with the challenge of creating meaningful learning experiences for would-be teachers that develop them into knowledgeable, reflective, skillful, and effective practitioners. Of course, this is no easy task, for several reasons. First, teachers need to build up knowledge systems that are fundamental to teaching, including knowledge of student thinking and learning, and knowledge of subject matter (Shulman, 1986). Second, teaching is dependent upon highly flexible access to organized systems of knowledge (Putnam & Borko, 2000). Furthermore, teachers must use their knowledge and make decisions in a complex, ill-structured, dynamic environment (Leinhardt & Greeno, 1986). Finally, research has suggested that preservice teachers bring their own beliefs and attitudes that influence what they learn from teacher education programs (Hollingsworth, 1989; Holt-Reynolds, 1992). In addition, beliefs about the nature of knowledge, that is personal epistemologies, have been found to be related to learning (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997). In this chapter we discuss what we know about the role of personal epistemology in teacher education and the limitations of the current knowledge about personal epistemology in teacher education.
