Developing relational epistemology through relational pedagogy: New ways of thinking about personal epistemology in teacher education

Abstract

Personal epistemology research over the past few decades has helped us to understand better the nature of effective learning and teaching in teacher education. However, personal epistemology has been based predominantly on psychological frameworks in which knowledge and beliefs are individually constructed. In this chapter, we present a social constructivist perspective on the development of epistemological beliefs in which beliefs are constructed through interactions with social and learning contexts. We argue for the term relational epistemology to be used rather than personal epistemology to better reflect the role that external and internal relations play in the social construction of epistemological beliefs. From this framework, we then report on research into early childhood professionals' beliefs that provide new ways of thinking about the referential and structural dimensions of relational epistemology and how these might be facilitated using an extended model of relational pedagogy in teacher education. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.