An Exploration of Causal Attributions of Teacher Educators: A Single Case Study

Abstract

In this study, an academic’s who has been employed in a foundation supported university teaching barriers and accompanied attributional reasoning were examined in the context of his belief system with regards to learning, teaching and knowledge. This study is a basic naturalistic inquiry. By means of qualitative data gathering and analysis, it was aimed at estimating how the relation between teaching barriers and attributional reasoning was influenced being held pedagogical-epistemological belief system of the academic. Qualitative data was collected through two different semi-structured interview protocols and gathered data was analysed with an inductive and interpretivist manner. The scholar’s beliefs system’s divergences (teacher-centred vs. learner-centred) allowed to explore the presumable relation of barrier-attribution in the context of pedagogical epistemological belief system. It was detected that the academic held a more teacher-centred pedagogical belief system. In this context, it was also detected that the academics was liable to make attributions to overly external, non-controllable and stable factors in illuminating her barrier attribution relation. Major outcomes of the study are evaluated by means of psychological (i.e., attribution theory) and instructional (pedagogical epistemological beliefs) lenses and suggestions are offered in the context of higher education.