Teaching and Epistemology: Analysis of Faculty Member's Ontological and Epistemological World Views in Teaching Process

This research is conducted with the goal of investigating ontological world view and epistemological beliefs of university’s professors. To this aim, 32 faculty members of university of Mazandaran are selected through purposeful random sampling. The research method is qualitative and the data is collected by Schraw and Olfson four-quadrant scale and semi-structured interviews. The collected data are analyzed by thematic coding. The results of this study indicate that most professors adopt relativistic ontological and epistemological world views. Most of the participants pointed to some organizational, cultural and human factors in transforming and realizing their relativistic beliefs to educational practices. The participants report that their personality characteristics and educational experiences during academic life have significantly developed and changed their worldviews. It is concluded that acquiring more sophisticated ontological and epistemological worldviews involves serious revision in educational planning.