UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTHERN CARIBBEAN

MARACAS ROYAL ROAD, MARACAS, ST. JOSEPH.

Reading Report
Challenging Idealism
John W. White and Richard H. Chant

An Assignment
Presented in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the course
EDTE354: Philosophy of Education

Instructor: Janine McEwen-Simmons

By
10 July 2016

Approval………………………..
White, J. W., & Chant, R. H. (2014). Challenging Idealism: Pre-Service Teachers' Core Beliefs

Before, During, and after an Extended Field-Based Experience. Teacher Education

Quarterly, 41(2), 73-92.

John W. White and Richard H. Chant are associate professors in the Department of

Foundations and Secondary Education of the College of Education and Human Services at the

University of North Florida, Jacksonville, Florida. This paper presented by these professors is a

report on the process and results a study on pre-service teacher core beliefs before, during, and

after an extended field-based experience. This field-based experience was created by White and

Chant in order to more closely match content area teaching theories with research-based

effective practices based on the inclusion of reflective practices.

The data retrieved suggested that their pre-service teachers were much more focused on

the teacher-centred and instructional contexts of teaching and learning, rather than on classroom

contexts and the nature of students and student learning. Two emerging themes were recognised:

 that students’ initial beliefs changed very little considering the spectrum of possible

changes.

 the myriad contexts and experiences they witnessed in their classroom placements in

those instances in which there were significant shifts in students’ beliefs, these shifts

followed two distinct patterns:

o they shifted toward the epistemologies and beliefs that guided their

professors’ instruction.

o they shifted away from the best practices described in educational research

and toward the pragmatic but status quo oriented educational practices that

they had previously decried.

White and Chant (2014) reported that most of the students reacted to what they saw in their field

placements by becoming increasingly entrenched in their core beliefs; rather than altering their

beliefs, many of our students instead sought out evidence—good or bad—to justify them.

The results of this research show that the teachers were set in their beliefs, which

emphasized the concept of realism. It showed that they focused on what was familiar to them

even in the instances when they moved toward the epistemologies taught by their professors. The

educational system being focused on realism which was most likely what these pre-service

teachers experienced, when they were on the other side of the teacher’s desk, heavily influenced

their choices. The lack of a balance in both idealism and realism in the school curriculum can be

pegged as the source of this conclusion. Though not totally effective on its own, realism has

shown significant positive results. Therefore, the idea of idealism dims in comparison and is not

seen as a necessity for the student in the perspective of those who were part of the study.

The observed conclusion that the participants were not persuaded to changing and

altering their core beliefs, omitting and integrating where possible, indicates that they are

resolved on their position on realism, and it is clear that the factors that influence this choice are

great. In addition, considering that the students also sought out evidence whether good or bad to

justify their already set beliefs, furthermore alludes to the theory of realism. The aim of the

authors is to highlight the decline, or rather, the triviality of idealism in education as is made

evident by the data, proving their point through realism, with evidence for their premise. It seems

to accurately dismiss the theory of idealism especially in the classroom, yet it fails to answer the

questions which are unable to be justified or proven as a result of experimentation, conducting a

study or collecting data. The authors fail to offer a solution to equations which cannot gain

conclusions outside of these proposed methods of discovering solutions.