Development of the Beliefs about Primary Education Scale: Distinguishing a developmental and transmissive dimension

In this article the development and validation of the Beliefs about Primary Education Scale (BPES) are described. The BPES is an 18-item scale for assessing primary school teachers’ beliefs toward the nature of good education, subdivided in a transmissive dimension (TD) and a developmental dimension (DD). Both dimensions assess beliefs toward the general orientation and objectives of education, the nature of the educational content, and desirable ways of knowledge acquisition. An explorative study (n=352n=352) revealed a two-factor structure. Both dimensions were uncorrelated, which leads to the suggestion that teachers hold layered belief systems. In a following study (n=381), construct validity of the BPES was confirmed. The BPES’ DD and TD were shown to correlate significantly with constructivist and traditional teaching beliefs.