The correlates of Taiwan teachers' epistemological beliefs concerning Internet environments, online search strategies, and search outcomes

This study aimed to explore the correlates among teachers' epistemological beliefs concerning Internet environments, their web search strategies and search outcomes. The sample of this study included 105 teachers from 63 grades 1 to 9 schools in Taiwan. The results show that the teachers with more advanced epistemological beliefs concerning Internet environments could utilize more sophisticated web search strategies (i.e. less irrelevant information-selecting) to filter and organize the information than those with less advanced beliefs. Also, the sophistication of epistemological beliefs was positively correlated to the search outcomes for open-ended questions. Hence, epistemological beliefs concerning Internet environments play an important role in web-based learning.