What constitutes beliefs?

There has been an interest in studying teachers’ thinking and classroom practice for many decades. Between the 1950s and through the early 1970s a lot of attention was pointed towards teachers’ attitudes. In later years there has been more focus on beliefs (Richardson, 1996). There have been several summaries of research pointing to both attitudes and beliefs and the influence they may have on teachers’ classroom practices and teacher change processes (Nespor, 1987; Pajares, 1992; Richardson, 1994; Murphy & Mason, 2006).

Several have attempted to define these concepts. Peirce (1877) noted we generally know when to ask a question and when to make a judgment. He argued there is a practical difference between belief and doubt, where “beliefs guide our desires and shape our actions” (p. 4) and saw beliefs as habits of action. Viewing historical foundations of the concept, Allport (1967) defined attitude as “a mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related” (p.8).

Richardson (1996) pointed to the sense of attitudes as predispositions and the influence this had on teaching and teacher education for years. She referred to several studies in the 1960s and early 1970s that focused on teachers’ social attitudes, their attitudes and values, and how attitudes affect teacher-student interactions. In this period the cognitive aspect of social psychology became

more prominent. Bandura’s work concerning social cognitive theory and more specifically self-efficacy (Bandura, 1986, 2002), has had a major impact on theory and practice concerning teachers’ beliefs and this will be returned to later.

Rokeach (1976) looked upon beliefs as “inferences made by an observer about underlying states of expectancy” (p. 2) and gave us this definition: “a belief is any simple proposition, conscious or unconscious, inferred from what a person says or does, capable of being preceded by the phrase “I believe that….” ” (p. 113). He goes on to describe beliefs as descriptive, evaluative or prescriptive and that “all beliefs are predispositions to action” (p. 113), not unlike Peirce’s view, and have a cognitive, affective and behavioral component. In analyzing beliefs Rokeach made three assumptions (p. 3):

 Not all beliefs are equally important, but vary along a central-peripheral dimension.

 The more important or central the belief is, the more it will resist change.

 The more central the belief changed, the more widespread the repercussions in the rest of the belief system.

What is central or important in this case is, according to Rokeach (1976), defined in terms of connectedness, and he proposed the following four defining criteria of connectednes: Existential versus nonexistential beliefs;

Shared versus unshared beliefs about existence and self-identity; Derived versus underived beliefs; Beliefs concerning and not concerning matters of taste (p. 5). The most central beliefs are those concerned with personal identity and these have the strongest connectedness and influence on other beliefs. When beliefs are shared with others, they tend to be more connected and important than those that are not shared. While the most central beliefs are learned by direct encounter with the object of belief, some beliefs are learned more indirectly from reference persons or groups. These types of derived beliefs are assumed to have less functional connectedness and consequences for other beliefs. The beliefs that seem to have the least functional connectedness and consequence are those perceived as more or less arbitrary and stem from matters of taste. Pajares (1992) summed up this conceptual model by pointing to the simple premise that “human beings have

differing beliefs of differing intensity and complex connections that determine their importance” (p. 318).

While Rokeach (1976) defined an attitude as “a relatively enduring organization of beliefs around an object or situation predisposing one to respond in some preferential manner” (p. 112), Fishbein (1967) separated attitudes from beliefs, and doing so narrowed the extent of the concept by applying it to the affective component. His definitions are: “Attitudes are learned predispositions to respond to an object or class of objects in a favorable or unfavorable way. Beliefs, on the other hand, are hypotheses concerning the nature of these objects and the types of actions that should be taken with respect to them”( p. 257). In his view the cognitive component of beliefs were about objects, while the conative or active component of beliefs concerned what should be done with the objects (p. 259). Fishbein (1967) goes on to distinguish between ‘belief in’ an object and ‘belief about’ an object. ‘Belief in’ has to do with the existence of an object, while ‘belief about’ refers to the “probability or improbability that a particular relationship exists between the object of belief and some other object, concept, value, or goal” (p.259).

Stephenson (1965) was concerned about the wide range use of the terms opinion, attitude and belief and called attention to the need to redefine them to fit operational possibilities and to provide rules for a model to study a person’s attitude of mind. In his view opinions are as numerous as the waves of the sea, attitudes of mind are considerably fewer, and beliefs are few indeed, and described the terms in the following manner (Stephenson, 1965):

“Opinions are judgments which are open to contention or doubt - in logic of science they are synthetic propositions and not facts. Attitudes, expressed in terms of such opinions, are neither true nor false: they are modes or instruments of behavior largely involving the self. Beliefs are deeply ego-involving systems, the truth of which is accepted by the person on the grounds of authority, trust, faith, evidence or by exigencies of upbringing.

Beliefs, at root, are commitments, largely culturally determined” (p. 286).

Could Stephenson here be relating to existential beliefs as background for states of mind, opinions and consequently actions?

Although more attention was given attitudes in earlier periods, there has been more focus on beliefs in later years. Both seem intertwined and several researchers have studied different aspects of the phenomenon and given their definitions with some variations. Several have pointed to belief systems.

Beliefs develop over time and some are more important to us than others, and therefore more difficult to change. We may be conscious or unconscious of our beliefs. Some of them may be difficult to pinpoint and are inferred by what we say or do. Different aspects of beliefs have been viewed and some whish to reserve the affective component to the term attitude, while the cognitive- and conative components are defined into the term belief. Beliefs are not necessarily facts, but issues we hold to be true and this suggests deeply ego-involving systems. Beliefs play a central role in teaching and teacher education (Green, 1998), and Green goes on to say: “Teaching has to do , in part at least , with the formation of beliefs, and that means that it has to do not simply with what we shall believe, but with how we shall believe it. Teaching is an activity which has to do, among other things, with the modification and formation of belief systems” (p. 48).