Teacher beliefs play a fundamental role in the education landscape. Nevertheless, most educational researchers only allude to teacher beliefs as part of a study on other subjects. This book fills a necessary gap by identifying the importance of research on teacher beliefs and providing a comprehensive overview of the topic. It provides novices and experts alike a single volume with which to understand a complex research landscape. Including a review of the historical foundations of the field, this book identifies current research trends, and summarizes the current knowledge base regarding teachers’ specific beliefs about content, instruction, students, and learning. For its innumerable applications within the field, this handbook is a necessity for anyone interested in educational research.

Why should inquiry - the engine for independent, curiosity- and interest-driven, life-long learning - be a curricular imperative, and its presence a criterion for excellent education? Is it possible to teach inquiry skills systematically and to engage learners in being inquirers across elementary, secondary, and post-secondary schooling? To answer these urgent questions, this book pulls together more than four decades of expert opinion, quantitative research, and qualitative research on inquiry in different disciplines, school subjects, and levels of education; and presents a dozen different pedagogical, philosophical, and disciplinary traditions within which evidence and rationale are found for building learning and teaching experiences around inquiry-based curricula Inquiry in Education, Volume I: The Conceptual Foundations for Research as a Curricular Imperative is the first book to gather all these sources together, to build a cross-disciplinary case for inquiry as the central core of sound curriculum design, and to offer an organized interpretation of this large body of knowledge from a variety of perspectives and for different educational purposes. A companion volume, Shore, Aulls, & Delcourt, Eds., Inquiry in Education, Volume II: Overcoming Barriers to Successful Implementation, focuses on a corollary question: If inquiry is such a good thing, why is it not universal practice? What barriers stand in the way, and how can teachers overcome them? Inquiry in Education, Volume I is intended for scholars, faculty, and students of education, and for practitioners at all levels of schooling who support inquiry-oriented reforms in education and who want to learn more about how to use inquiry in their own practice.

This volume provides a needed elaboration of theories and potential applications of constructivism in science education. Although the term "constructivism" is used widely, there has been a dearth of materials to guide science educators concerning the potential of constructivism to influence what is done in the field. In fact, there has been a tendency for constructivism to be viewed as a method that can be used in a classroom. This view tends to diminish the power of constructivism as a way of thinking about education, and in particular, about science education. The chapters in this book address the need to document the theoretical roots of constructivism and to describe how practitioners have applied constructivist oriented beliefs in the practice of K-12 teaching of science and mathematics, as well as teacher education. Not only does this book contain different theoretical perspectives on constructivism, but it also features a chapter that critiques constructivism as an epistemology. Specific topics covered include: * cooperative learning, * the negotiation of meaning, * problem centered learning, * social construction of knowledge, * science in culturally diverse settings, * curriculum planning and implementation, and * instructional technology. Issues associated with the preparation and enhancement of science teachers and the reform of science education are also explored.