The Investigation of Iranian Teachers' Conceptions of learning and Teaching

Background and Aim: Teachers have different Conceptions about learning and teaching which affect how they approach lesson plans. Such conceptions that are mostly inconsistent with scientific theories of learning and teaching known as misconceptions or intuitive beliefs. Methods Semi-structured interviews were carried out with ۱۲ teachers until reaching data saturation. Numbers of open-ended questions about learning and teaching were asked. The idea was to see whether teachers would spontaneously use expressions from mind, brain and education science (e.g. the role of the prior knowledge, emotion, mental processes and teaching learning strategies explicitly) while defining and explaining learning processes. Some questions were fixed (e.g. what is your definition of learning?) and some prompt questions were added as needed (e.g. what do you mean by acquisition of knowledge?). All interviews were audio-recorded and extensively transcribed.The authors studied and discussed the transcribed interviews and the utterances were given a preliminary code. The initial categories are descriptive locate teachers' answers into two broad, general categories: Consistent with principles of mind, brain and education - Inconsistent with principles of mind, brain and education Progressively, based on the literature review, the excerpts were recoded into more detailed categories. Results: The aim of this study was to investigate Iranian teachers' common misconceptions about teaching and learning and to see if there is any correspondence between their ideas and the principles of mind, brain and education science. Conclusion: Teachers' beliefs about the role of prior knowledge. Teachers mostly referred to the prior knowledge as being 'correct' or "incorrect” and failed to describe its role as a framework of understanding and interpreting new ideas and information. Teachers' beliefs about the role of emotion. Teachers were aware that emotional factors and motivation is necessary for learning, however they showed lack of scientific theories of motivation. Teachers' beliefs about the role of mental processes. We couldn't find any explicit and spontaneous mentioning of the role of attention, memory and other mental processes. When teachers were asked to explain the role of attention and memory they emphasized the need of strengthening the memory and attention without showing awareness of the vital role of them in the whole process of learning. Teachers' beliefs about explicit teaching of learning strategies to students. Two misconceptions could be seen here. First, teachers believed that learning is innate and second teachers should not try to teach "how to learn" verbally and explicitly.

کلیدواژه ها:

Conceptions ، Mind ، Brain and Education principles