A Content Analysis of Epistemological Beliefs in Education in the Turkey Context (2002-2020)

Epistemological beliefs refer to individuals’ beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowledge acquisition. This paper aims at examining studies on epistemological beliefs in educational sciences in Turkey and presenting an in- depth analysis of these studies in terms of type, research design, year, data collection tools, discipline, study group, model used and associated variables. A qualitative research design was used in this study and a total of 195 articles, 43 doctoral theses and 94 MSc theses were examined using the document analysis method. Content analysis was conducted on the obtained data. The findings obtained in the present study revealed that the number of epistemological beliefs studies in educational sciences in the Turkey Context has increased year after year and teacher candidates were the most preferred sample among researchers. There were relatively few studies on primary and high school students, gifted students, faculty members, and teachers. a majority of the studies were on science and classroom education. It was found that in studies where quantitative research methods were mostly used, data were generally collected through scales. It was determined that unlike one-dimensional developmental models, Turkish researchers generally use Schommer's multidimensional epistemological belief system. The findings of the current study pointed out that epistemological beliefs were related to many key variables in the teaching-learning process. Based on the obtained results, the current picture of the epistemological beliefs studies on education in the Turkey context was presented and some suggestions for future research were made.