The relationships between teachers' general beliefs about teaching and learning and their domain specific curricular beliefs

In this exploratory study the relationships between teachers' general educational beliefs about teaching and learning and their domain specific beliefs about a particular curriculum, that is, the chemistry curriculum for upper secondary education in The Netherlands were investigated. For this purpose, a questionnaire survey was conducted among the whole of the population of Dutch chemistry teachers (n = 966). The useful response was 348 (36%). Two distinct and independent belief structures were found, one in which a subject-matter oriented educational belief was combined with a curricular belief focusing on the teaching of the fundamental, theoretical concepts of chemistry, and another which combined a learner-centred educational belief with a curricular belief emphasising that chemical knowledge should be learned in relation to societal issues. Through cluster analysis, two subgroups of respondents were found whose beliefs were consistent with these two belief structures. However, it appeared that two other, larger subgroups of respondents combined elements of the two belief structures. Implications of these findings are discussed.