Integrating Teachers' Conceptions

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How teachers' beliefs about assessment, teaching, learning, curriculum, and efficacy relate to each other is not well understood. The general stereotype proposes a dichotomy between a teacher transmission of surface content for accountability conception and a learner-centred, deep learning assessed for formative purposes approach. Teachers' conceptions were examined to determine the nature of their connections. A questionnaire survey of over 230 New Zealand primary school teachers used five batteries to measure teachers' conceptions. Joint and multi-battery exploratory factor analyses of the 22 scale scores revealed four conceptions and average strength of agreement was determined. Teachers strongly agreed with the deep, humanistic and nurturing conception, moderately agreed with their ability to deliver surface learning in accountability assessments, moderately agreed with teaching and curriculum for social reform or reconstruction, and slightly agreed that assessment was bad and could be ignored because it does not improve teaching or learning, is inaccurate, and external factors prevent teachers from making improvement. This pattern revealed New Zealand teachers to be strongly child-centred with a somewhat positive orientation towards accountability. Teachers' conceptual make-up was more sophisticated than the stereotypical dichotomy.