Abstract

The study aims to analyze scientific attitudes’ effect on the relationship between teacher candidates’ scientific epistemological beliefs and their approach to scientific research. The research model of the study is relational survey, a type of descriptive model. The study group is comprised of 647 pre-service teachers from Balıkesir University Necatibey, Faculty of Education. “Scientific Epistemological Beliefs Scale”, “Attitudes to Scientific Research Scale”, and “Academic Motivation Scale” were used for data collection. Mediation analysis was conducted to answer the research questions of the study. The major finding of the study was that scientific epistemological belief affects academic motivation levels, and attitudes towards scientific research act as partial mediators in this relation. That is, a direct relationship was found between prospective teachers’ scientific epistemological beliefs and academic motivation levels. In addition, epistemological beliefs have revealed indirect attitudes towards scientific research and academic motivation level.

Key words: Pre-service teacher, epistemological beliefs, attitude, motivation, mediating role.