Teachers' Epistemic Authority: Perceptions of Students and Teachers

Social Psychology of Education 6: 17–42, 2003.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Teachers’ epistemic authority: perceptionsof students and teachers

AMIRAM RAVIV1,∗, DANIEL BAR-TAL2, ALONA RAVIV3, BRAHA BIRAN2

and ZVIA SELA2

1Department of Psychology, 2School of Education, 3Department of Statistics and OperationsResearch, Tel Aviv University, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel

Abstract. The present study examines students’ perception of the teacher’s role as epistemic authori-ties, that is, a source of determinative influence on the formation of individuals’ knowledge, fromthree perspectives. First, it examines 7th and 10th graders’ perception of their teachers as epistemicauthorities. The results showed that a teacher’s subject matter, as well as students’ age and gender,influence perception of him/her as an epistemic authority. In addition, interest in the subject matterwas found to be an important predictor of students’ perception. The second part focuses on teachers’self-perceptions as epistemic authorities. The results indicated that teachers’ personal efficacy is themost powerful predictor of their self-perception. Finally, the study compares students’ perceptions ofteachers as epistemic authorities, teachers’ self-perceptions in these terms and teachers’ perceptionsof how their students perceive them. Two main findings showed the following: (a) teachers perceivethemselves as being more of an epistemic authority than their students consider them; (b) teachersbelieve that students perceive them as being more of an epistemic authority than the students actuallythink.

1. Introduction

One of a teacher’s principal roles is to transmit knowledge to students (Strauss,1993). Whether or not they are successful in this depends, among other factors, onstudents’ perceptions of teachers as reliable sources of information. Lay epistemictheory (Kruglanski, 1989, 1990), which describes knowledge acquisition, directlycontributes to our understanding of teachers’ role as a source of knowledge. In itsdiscussion of the factors that affect knowledge acquisition, the theory introducesthe concept of epistemic authority, which denotes a source that exerts determinativeinfluence on the formation of individuals’ knowledge.

The concept epistemic authority was originally presented as a factor in the pro-cess of knowledge formation through which individuals receive information per-ceived as valid and, consequently, stop seeking alternative knowledge (Kruglanski,1989). Individuals trust information dispensed by epistemic authorities, assimilateit into their own repertoire and rely on it. In this respect, epistemic authorities, asreliable sources of knowledge, define the scope of legitimate, truthful, and factual

∗Author for Correspondence: Tel.: 972-3-6407948; Fax: 972-3-6409547;E-mail: [email protected]

18 AMIRAM RAVIV ET AL.

information and enable individuals to construct their own knowledge. The layepistemic theory suggests that any source can potentially become an epistemicauthority to the extent that the individual considers him/her/it to possess those char-acteristics that turn this source into such an authority. Thus, only an individual’ssubjective beliefs determine who is to be considered an epistemic authority. Thereare individuals who believe, for example, that people who assume certain roles,such as priests or teachers, are by the nature and definition of their roles, epistemicauthorities. There are others who rely on particular individuals whose knowledgethey trust. An epistemic authority such as a rabbi may be perceived as having validknowledge in all, or most, domains or he/she may be considered an expert only ina particular domain of knowledge, as would be the case with a biology teacher.

In schools, teachers are expected to function as epistemic authorities, that is,be perceived by their students as reliable sources of information, at least in thediscipline they teach. The present study investigates the perception of teachers asepistemic authorities. It examines students’ perceptions of their teachers as epi-stemic authorities, teachers’ self-perception of themselves as epistemic authorities,teachers’ perceptions of to what extent their students perceive them as epistemicauthorities and, finally, comparisons will be made among these three perceptions.In addition, the present study attempts to shed light on the factors that influencethese perceptions among students and teachers.

Although it is generally agreed that teachers transmit knowledge to their stu-dents, there is disagreement about the scope of this transmission, based on thedifferent approaches as to what a teacher’s role entails. One approach empha-sizes the task-oriented mission of teaching disciplinary knowledge (Berliner, 1983;Weinstein, 1991), while another expands the teachers’ mission to include a widerange of responsibilities, such as helping students to actualize themselves and tosocialize them (Gump, 1967; Fiedler, 1975; Weinstein, 1991; Blumenfield, Puro,& Mergendoller, 1992; Goodenow, 1992; Levine, Resnick, & Higgins, 1993). Re-cently, Gardner (1999) proposed that the different approaches are reflected in thepedagogical perspectives provided by the different disciplines. According toGardner (1999), teachers piece facts together in a certain way and place them in theservice of a particular theory, framework or sequence, according to the disciplinethey teach. Thus, teachers in some disciplines put an emphasis on the importanceof narrative, connecting the knowledge of their discipline to pupils’ everyday life;others merely focus on the transmission of dry facts. However, both of these roledefinitions entail the transmission of knowledge as part of the realization of teach-ers’ functions and, in both cases, the perception of teachers as epistemic authoritiesis of importance to perform satisfactorily.

Developmental studies comparing attribution of epistemic authority to variousagents of socialization in different knowledge areas have found that for youngchildren teachers serve as generalized epistemic authorities in several areas. Incomparison to parents and friends, children rely on teachers mostly in the areaof science, but also in the emotional domain, social relations and rules/laws (Raviv,

TEACHERS’ EPISTEMIC AUTHORITY 19

Bar-Tal, Raviv, & Houminer, 1990). As children grow older, entering pre-adolescence and adolescence, the perception of teachers as generalized epistemicauthorities decreases. While teachers continue to be regarded as epistemic authori-ties in specific knowledge areas related to school, such as science, their influenceis considerably reduced in other knowledge areas (Kutnick, 1980; Raviv, Bar-Tal,Raviv, & Peleg, 1990; Bar-Tal, Raviv, Raviv, & Brosh, 1991).

The first objective of the present study was to examine students’ perception oftheir teachers as epistemic authorities and elucidate those variables that influencethat perception. One of the variables studied was the subject matter (i.e., discipline)taught by the teachers. It has been well established that subject matters belonging tothe humanities and social sciences differ considerably from subject matters belong-ing to biological and exact sciences (Schulman & Quinlan, 1996). The former havelong been viewed as more subjective, inaccurate in data collection, unable to yielddefinite rules, plagued by uncertainty and characterized by contradictory theories(Kuhn, 1970; Zuckerman & Merton, 1971; Yoels, 1974). These views correspondto teachers’ understanding of the nature of knowledge in the subject matter theyteach. Yaakobi and Sharan (1985) found that while science teachers believe that theknowledge in their discipline exists ‘out there,’ and is factual and valid, humanitiesteachers believe that the knowledge in their discipline is based on subjective, per-sonal invention, reflecting individual creativity. When interviewing teachers in bothtypes of disciplines, Donnelly (1999) found that science teachers express commongoals, an emphasis on factual contents, and hesitancy in handling intellectual skills.They also exhibit a tendency to ground relevance in instrumentality and to perceiveuncertainty and lack of factual knowledge as threatening. In contrast, teachers ofhumanities (historians in this case) emphasize personal judgment, case-making,and interpretation as well as transmitting inherently uncertain evidence. Followingthe present line of reasoning proposed here, it can therefore be assumed that thedifferential nature of the subject matter and of its object of knowledge, influencesstudents’ perception of their teachers as epistemic authorities. Because of the well-defined, unequivocal answers and solutions, as well as the unambiguous rules thatstudents typically encounter in the exact and biological sciences, students will tendto perceive teachers of these subjects as epistemic authorities in their disciplinesmore than they perceive teachers of social sciences and humanities as such. How-ever, the opposite is predicted with regard to students’ perception of their teachersas generalized epistemic authorities. This prediction is based on the fact that teach-ers of the social sciences and humanities discuss a wide range of issues and topicsdue to the nature of their subject matter. Their lectures may include psychological,sociological, cultural or political themes, which are, moreover, often relevant toreal-life issues (e.g., Husbands, 1996). Such teachers may project an understandingof a wide range of issues, supporting students’ perception of them as generalizedepistemic authorities. Bar-Tal, Darom and Sorek (1978) indeed found that teachersof the social sciences and humanities who emphasize the application of learnedmaterial to everyday life, define their role more as ‘educators’, whereas teachers


of the exact and biological sciences tend to define their role as ‘experts’ ratherthan ‘educators.’ These role definitions probably affect the way teachers presentlectures and, in turn, influence students’ perception of them. This assumption isconfirmed by a study by Raviv, Bar-Tal, Raviv and Abin (1993), who found thatuniversity students of statistics perceive their professors as epistemic authorities intheir disciplinary knowledge more than do students of psychology. However, thelatter, more than the former, perceive their professors as epistemic authorities ingeneral domains of knowledge.

In addition, students’ age is an important factor that influences students’ per-ception of teachers as epistemic authorities. As they grow older, children developindependent and cognitive and social skills and, consequently, tend to rely less onadults, become more differentiated in their reliance on sources of information, aremore skeptical and critical in their selection of sources of information and dependincreasingly on their own knowledge (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958; Kassin, 1981;Damon, 1983). The tendency to rely more on ones own knowledge, judgment, anddecisions is a result of the increased self-perception as an epistemic authority withage.

A study by Bar-Tal, Raviv, Raviv and Brosh (1991) showed that the perceptionof external information sources as epistemic authorities (e.g., parents, teachers,siblings) depends on the development of self-perception and the consequent viewof oneself as an epistemic authority. As adolescents develop self-consciousnessand a sense of identity, they tend to formulate their own opinions about realityand begin to perceive themselves as authoritative sources of knowledge (Offer,Ostrov, Howard, & Atkinson, 1988). This development leads to a decreased reli-ance on other sources of knowledge, including teachers. As a result, the perceptionof teachers as epistemic authorities can be assumed to decrease with age, whilestudents’ perception of themselves as an epistemic authority increases with age.

Gender is another factor that may affect students’ perceptions of teachers as epi-stemic authorities. This originates from the differential gender roles in society, withmales being expected to be more autonomous, rebellious, achievement oriented,critical, and challenging of authority than females (Ruble & Martin, 1998). Due tovarious political, cultural, and religious reasons, gender differentiation in Israel isstill very widespread and salient (Izraeli, Friedman, & Shift, 1982; Izraeli et al.,1999). Moreover, it has been well established that female and male students main-tain differential interactions with their teachers (Irvine, 1986; Darom & Rich, 1988;Jules & Kutnick, 1997). Also, male students perceive their teachers differently thando female students. For example, Good, Biddle and Brophy (1975) found thatfemale high school students evaluate their teachers more favorably than do malehigh school students. Similarly Raviv, Bar-Tal, Raviv and Peleg (1990) found thatfemale pre-adolescents and adolescents overall attributed more epistemic authorityto various sources than did male pre-adolescent and adolescents. In this study,analysis showed that in the 12th grade girls attributed more epistemic authorityto teachers in the domain of social knowledge than did boys. Thus we hypothesize


that female students, more than male students, perceive their teachers as epistemicauthorities.

In addition, we hypothesize that the perception of teachers as epistemic au-thorities is dependent on students’ interest in the subject matter as well as ontheir evaluation of their own knowledge and academic performance in that sub-ject matter. This assumption is based on well established findings indicating thatinterest and academic success in a subject matter affect students’ perception ofteachers. That is, students who find a subject matter interesting and who succeedacademically in it evaluate the teacher of that particular subject matter positivelyand likewise respect him/her (Brophy & Good, 1986; Goodenow, 1992).

The second part of the study focuses on teachers’ perception of themselves asepistemic authorities. Two influencing variables were investigated: subject mattertaught and teachers’ self-efficacy. The first variable has already been discussedand we assumed that teachers know the nature of their subject matter (Yaakobi& Sharan, 1985). Thus, it was predicted that teachers of the exact and biologicalsciences would more readily perceive themselves as epistemic authorities in dis-ciplinary knowledge than would teachers of the humanities and social sciences.Regarding the general knowledge domain, we offer a polar hypothesis, such thatteachers of the humanities and social sciences do more readily perceive themselvesas epistemic authorities in generalized knowledge than do teachers of exact andbiological sciences.

Self-efficacy has been defined as ‘the extent to which the teacher believes heor she has the capacity to affect student performance’ (Berman et al., 1977, p.137). It reflects how teachers perceive their own capacities in their role enactmentvis-à-vis their students. Therefore, the concept is related to the specific perceptionof oneself as an epistemic authority and the assessment of one’s own role per-formance (Tschannen-Moran, Hoy, & Hoy, 1998). The scale developed by Gibsonand Dembo (1984) demonstrates that self-efficacy consists of two factors: personalefficacy, which refers to one’s own skill or capacity to bring about student learning,and teaching efficacy, which refers to one’s beliefs about the ability of teaching,as a profession, to make a change. According to this conception, self-efficacy, ingeneral, concerns teachers’ evaluation of their abilities, both as individuals andas professional teachers, to bring about positive change in their students. Self-perception as an epistemic authority, on the other hand, refers to teachers’ eval-uation of themselves as being able to serve as reliable sources of knowledge,knowledge that students trust and accept as valid. Furthermore, teachers’ self-efficacy was found to be related to enthusiasm and commitment to teaching (e.g.,Guskey, 1984; Coladarci, 1992; Allinder, 1994), willingness to invest more effortin teaching (e.g., Ashton & Webb, 1986), and to achieve better outcomes (e.g.,Ross, 1992). It can be assumed that these variables likewise influence teachers’perceptions of themselves as epistemic authorities to their students.

Finally, the present study compares three perspectives on epistemic author-ity: students’ perceptions of teachers, teachers’ perceptions of themselves, and


teachers’ perceptions of how their students perceive them. Past research has foundthat teachers tend to see themselves in a more positive light than students viewthem (Abraham, 1974). They also tend to think that students perceive them ina more positive light than students actually do (Abraham, 1974). For example,Raviv, Raviv and Reisel (1990) found that teachers tend to perceive the classroomenvironment in which they teach, especially their own involvement and support,more favorably than their students do. These findings are related to another lineof research about positive self-bias, which shows that people in general and teach-ers in particular tend to take personal responsibility only for positive outcomes(i.e., their students’ successes) and not for negative ones (Johnson, Feigenbaum, &Wiley, 1964; Abraham, 1974; Bar-Tal & Guttmann, 1981). This ego-enhancementtendency is also expected to play a role in the present comparisons. Hence, weexpect teachers to perceive themselves more as epistemic authorities than studentsperceive them to be, and that teachers believe their students perceive them as beingmore of an epistemic authority than students actually do.

2. Method

2.1. PARTICIPANTS

Two groups of participants took part in the study: students and teachers.Students were 1465 junior high and high school students from the central region

of Israel: 786 from twenty-five 7th grade classes (aged 12–13; 389 boys and 397girls), and 679 from twenty-five 10th grade classes (aged 15–16; 315 boys and364 girls). The two groups came from similar socio-economic backgrounds, thatis, middle class families.

Teachers were drawn from different schools than were the students. This wasdone for ethical and methodological reasons. Some of the teachers of the classestaken by the students in our sample expressed reservations about participating inthe study. Taking only those teachers who agreed to participate would have createda problem with the study design, since only a small part of the classes were matchedwith all four teachers of the examined subject areas. We made special efforts tomatch the schools of participating teachers and students. The schools from whichstudents and teachers were drawn respectively, were the same geographical area,all were secular public schools with the same Ministry of Education curriculum,and similar with regard to socio-economic status of the students and teachers.

Participants were 131 female teachers (32 literature teachers, 52 mathematicsteachers, 12 biology teachers, and 35 history teachers) from 10 junior high and highschools in the central and southern regions of Israel. The participating teachers hada mean age of 38.5 (ranging between 24 and 60), with mean teaching experienceof 12.6 years (ranging between 1 and 37).


2.1.1. Students’ Instrument

The instrument used for the students contained several parts. The first measuredstudents’ perceptions of their teachers’ epistemic authority. The second assessedtheir own self-perceived epistemic authority, and the final part measured self-evaluation. Following is a description of each of these parts.

2.1.1.1. Epistemic authority measurement. The measurement of epistemic au-thority was based on the Epistemic Authority Scale (EAS) an instrument developedby Raviv, Bar-Tal, Raviv and Abin (1993). The EAS consists of 17 items referringto different aspects of a person’s reliance on a source’s knowledge. The presentinstrument contains only nine items, with responses given on a 6-point rating scaleranging from 1 (definitely disagree) to 6 (definitely agree). The nine items of thescale administered to students were as follows: (1) He/she has a great deal of knowl-edge, (2) I do not trust his/her knowledge, (3) I accept what he/she says as correct,(4) He/she is no great expert, (5) He/she is careful to give accurate facts, (6) His/herarguments are based on verified knowledge, (7) When asked a question, he/sheknows what the right answer is, (8) His/her knowledge is not greater than that ofother teachers, and (9) It is possible to rely on his/her knowledge wholeheartedly.

The items were selected from the original EAS by five teachers, who wereinstructed to select those items that would allow students to best evaluate theirteachers’ epistemic authority. The items in the original instrument that were relatedto change of attitude or behavior under the influence of the authority were omitted.We left intact the items attributing knowledge and trustworthiness to teachers. Twoitems were greatly modified and, at the suggestion of high school students whoparticipated in a pilot study, several slight changes were made to clarify the items.The described instrument was used to assess the students’ attribution of epistemicauthority to teachers in four subject matters: literature, mathematics, biology, andhistory. Teachers were assessed in two domains: (a) as epistemic authorities in theknowledge of their particular discipline (disciplinary domain), and (b) as nonspe-cific epistemic authorities in various domains of knowledge (general domain). Thequestions were formulated as follows: What is the extent of epistemic authoritythat you attribute to your teacher (a) in the domain of the discipline she is teaching,(b) in general, in various other domains of knowledge. Thus, each student ratedfour different teachers (literature, mathematics, biology, and history), regardingtheir epistemic authority in the disciplinary and general domains. The reliability ofthe instrument used to measure teachers’ attributed epistemic authority in the foursubject areas and the two domains of knowledge (disciplinary and general) wasexamined by means of Cronbach’s alpha. The eight alphas varied between 0.81and 0.90.

In addition, the students were asked to assess their own epistemic authorityregarding various school subjects. The assessments were made using the same nineitems, modified to measure self-attribution (self epistemic authority = self EA).Cronbach’s alpha of this scale was 0.77.


2.1.1.2. Self-evaluation. Students were asked to evaluate their interest, knowl-edge, and performance in each of the four subject areas (literature, mathematics,biology, and history). They were asked: (a) “To what extent does (e.g., literature)interest you?” with answers ranging from 1 (not interesting at all) to 6 (very in-teresting), (b) “How well do you know (e.g., literature)?” with answers rangingfrom 1 (I have no knowledge) to 6 (I have much knowledge), and (c) “My gradesin (e.g., literature) are usually . . .” with answers given on a scale ranging from 1(fail) to 6 (very good/excellent). Computation of Cronbach’s reliabilities for thethree questions yielded 0.68, 0.79, 0.81, and 0.76 for literature, mathematics, bi-ology, and history, respectively. The average scores for the above three questions,calculated for each subject area constituted the self-evaluation scores for the foursubject matters.

Finally, the students were asked to note the level of education of their parents.

2.1.2. Teachers’ Instrument

The teachers’ instrument consisted of three parts: a scale for measuring teachers’self-perceptions of their epistemic authority, a scale for measuring teachers’ per-ceptions of how their students perceive their epistemic authority, and a scale formeasuring teachers’ self efficacy.

2.1.2.1. Teachers’ perceptions. The self-perception of teachers as epistemic au-thorities was measured with the same scale as that used in the case of the students.The nine items were used to assess the epistemic authority which teachers attributeto themselves (self-attributed epistemic authority) in the two domains: disciplin-ary and general. In addition, using the same instrument, teachers’ perception ofstudents’ attribution of epistemic authority to them (perceived students’ attributionof teachers’ epistemic authority) was assessed in these two domains. Reliabilities(Cronbach’s alpha) were α = 0.76 for self-attribution in the disciplinary domain,α = 0.77 for self-attribution in the general domain, α = 0.81 for perception ofstudents’ attribution in the disciplinary domain, and α = 0.86 for perception ofstudents in the general domain.

2.1.2.2. Teacher self-efficacy scale. This instrument was developed by Gibsonand Dembo (1984) and translated into Hebrew by Eylon (1995), who validated itand used it with a sample of 254 Israeli teachers. The scale included 16 items withanswers ranging from 1 (I definitely do not agree) to 6 (I definitely agree). The twofactors that emerged in those studies (Eylon, 1995; Gibson & Dembo, 1984) arepersonal efficacy, including 9 items, and teaching efficacy, including 7 items. Inour study, reliabilities were α = 0.80 for personal efficacy, α = 0.65 for teachingefficacy, and α = 0.77 for the total score of all the 16 items.

Finally, the teachers were asked for some background information: their age,teaching experience (years), and level of education.


2.2. PROCEDURE

The questionnaires were administered to students in their classrooms by a femaleresearcher. The study was presented as research on ‘the extent of children’s andadolescents’ reliance on things that their teachers tell them in the domain theyteach and in other domains.’ All the instructions appeared in print in the question-naire, and they were also read aloud in class. The researcher elaborated on twodomains by providing examples of each and she asked the students whether theyhad understood the instructions. Students were promised anonymity (they were notasked to write down their names) and asked to express their sincere opinions.

Teachers were individually approached by a female researcher in the teach-ers’ common room at their schools. They were given a stamped envelope withthe request to complete and return the questionnaire, presented as a study aboutteachers’ self-perception and students’ perception of them. They, too, were assuredanonymity and requested to give their sincere response.

3. Results

The reporting of the results will be divided into three main parts. First, the resultspertaining to students’ perception of their teachers as epistemic authorities will bereported. Next, the results concerning teachers’ self-perception as an epistemic au-thority will be presented. Finally, comparisons of the perception of students abouttheir teachers and the self-perception of teachers with teachers’ perception of howstudents think about them, all with regard to epistemic authority, will be reported.

3.1. STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS

3.1.1. Attribution of Epistemic Authority to Teachers (Teacher EA)

The scores indicating the extent of attributed epistemic authority are the averagescores from the nine questionnaire items, to which answers were given on a 6-pointscale. Each respondent received eight scores derived from his/her evaluation of theteachers in the four subject matters: literature, mathematics, biology, and history,each in the two knowledge domains: disciplinary and general. Since students ineach class evaluated the epistemic authority of the same four teachers, the class wasused as a grouping factor nested in the two age groups. Thus, evaluation of teacherEA was analyzed using a MANOVA, with gender and age as grouping factors, classas a grouping factor nested in age, and the two knowledge domains (disciplinaryv.s. general) and four subject matters as within-subject factors.1 Table 1 presents

1In order to take into consideration the fact that all the students in one class evaluated the samefour teachers, another analysis was conducted, using class means of boys and girls as the observations(N = 50 classes). A MANOVA was used, with age as the grouping variable (n = 25 classes in eachage group) and gender, domain, and subject matter as within-subject variables. Results yielded thesame conclusions as those reported here, although F -values were not the same, of course.


Table I. Means and standard deviations of teacher EA in the disciplinary and the general domain,reported by students, by subject matter and age (class scores, N = 50 classes)

Disciplinary knowledge General knowledge

7th grade 10th grade 7th grade 10th grade

History

Mean 4.79c 4.71b 4.36c 4.17b

SD 0.40 0.31 0.41 0.39

Literature

Mean 4.57a 4.40a 4.09b 3.78a

SD 0.32 0.26 0.39 0.27

Mathematics

Mean 4.70bc 4.66b 3.89a 3.72a

SD 0.43 0.52 0.41 0.54

Biology

Mean 4.60ab 4.36a 3.97a 3.83a

SD 0.55 0.79 0.46 0.69

Note. Means of subject matters within a column having the same subscript letter are not significantlydifferent at p < 0.05 by the Bonferroni correction.

the classes’ means and standard deviations of teacher EA scores, where each classscore is an average of the scores given by the students in the same class. It shouldbe noted that means based on the students’ scores are merely the weighted av-erage of the classes’ means, depending on class size. Class within age group wasfound significant as a main effect and also when interacting with the within-subjectfactors. For example, the class (within age) × domain × subject matter interactionresulted in F(144, 4239) = 2.66, p < 0.01 (with error mean square of 0.17). Thisindicates that students in different classes differed in their evaluation of teachers’epistemic authority (even when evaluating teachers of the same subject matter inthe same domain). Results show a main effect of gender, F(1, 1413) = 16.12,p < 0.01, with no interaction of gender with any of the other variables. Thissuggests that girls attribute more epistemic authority to teachers than do boys(overall means are 4.55 and 4.63 for boys and girls, respectively, regarding dis-ciplinary knowledge, and 3.92 and 4.04 regarding general knowledge). The maineffect for age, F(1, 1413) = 39.44, p < 0.01, suggests that, overall, the youngerstudents (7th grade) tended to attribute more epistemic authority to their teachersthan did the older students (10th grade). However, the age by subject matter bydomain interaction, F(3, 1411) = 12.56, p < 0.01, suggests that age differencesare not the same for each subject matter or domain. The appropriate means arepresented in Table 1, and the interaction is illustrated in Figure 1. Significant


Figure 1. Teachers EA means by age group, domain (disciplinary v.s. general), and subjectmatter, as reported by students.

main effects of domain, F(1, 1413) = 1964.00, p < 0.01, and subject matter,F(3, 1411) = 76.21, p < 0.01, were also found, as well as a domain × subjectmatter interaction, F(3, 1411) = 98.04, p < 0.01.

In view of the three-way interaction of age by domain by subject matter, weexamined subject matter differences for each domain within each age group sepa-rately. In addition, both age and domain differences were tested for each of the foursubject matters. All the tests were done accounting for class within age group, andsignificance was decided by using the Bonferroni method correction for multiplecomparisons, with α = 0.05.

3.1.1.1. Age difference. For disciplinary knowledge, literature and biology teach-ers were attributed with a significantly higher level of epistemic authority by 7thgraders compared to 10th graders (see Table 1). Regarding general knowledge,teachers in all the four subject matters were attributed a higher level of epistemicauthority by 7th graders students than by 10th graders (see Table 1).

3.1.1.2. Domain difference. The evaluation of teachers’ epistemic authority indisciplinary knowledge was higher than in general knowledge for all four subjectmatters in the two age groups. The three-way interaction of domain by subjectmatter by age suggests that these domain differences are not the same for all subjectmatters in the two age groups (see Figure 1).

3.1.1.3. Subject matter differences. Regarding disciplinary knowledge, older stu-dents (10th grade) attributed more epistemic authority to their history and math-ematics teachers than to their literature and biology teachers (see Table 1). Theyounger students (7th grade) also rated the epistemic authority of their historyteachers as higher than that of their biology and literature teachers, while


mathematics teachers were rated higher than literature teachers, but no differentthan biology teachers. Regarding general knowledge, the older students rated theirhistory teachers higher as epistemic authorities than they did their mathematics,literature, and biology teachers, while the younger students rated their historyteachers the highest, literature teachers second, and biology and mathematicsteachers last.

3.1.2. Self-attribution of Epistemic Authority (Self EA)

Because of the positive correlations between students’ self EA and their parents’level of education, an ANCOVA was conducted on self EA with gender and age asgrouping variables and parents’ education (combined mean of father’s and mother’seducation) as a covariate. The results showed a significant effect of the covariate,F(1, 1460) = 30.95, p < 0.01, with a positive relationship between parents’education and self EA. They also showed a main effect of gender, F(1, 1460) =15.59, p < 0.01, suggesting that boys have higher self EA scores than do girls(M = 4.36, SD = 0.70 for boys, and M = 4.22, SD = 0.70 for girls); and amain effect of age group, F(1, 1460) = 14.41, p < 0.01, suggesting that youngerstudents have higher self EA scores than do the older ones (M = 4.35, SD = 0.73for 7th grade, and M = 4.21, SD = 0.66 for 10th grade). The means adjusted forthe covariate are very similar to those mentioned above because parents’ educationdoes not vary as a function of gender or children’s age group.

3.1.3. Relationships Between the Variables

Although we found that teacher EA was evaluated as higher in the disciplinarydomain than in the general domain, high positive correlations were found betweenteacher EA in the two domains for all four subject matters (r = 0.66, 0.61, 0.75,and 0.72 for literature, mathematics, biology, history, respectively, all significantat the 0.01 level). Correlations between evaluations of teacher EA in the differentsubject matters were much lower, though significant, due to the large sample.

In Table II we see that the correlations between teacher EA and self EA arerelatively low. In addition, Table II presents correlations between teacher EA inthe disciplinary domain and students’ self-evaluation in the same subject matters.All correlations presented are positive, but it seems that the variable most stronglycorrelated with teacher’s attributed epistemic authority is the respondent’s reportedinterest in the subject matter, followed by the respondent’s self-evaluated knowl-edge, with performance in the subject matter reported as last. In addition, theepistemic authority attributed to mathematics teachers is not as strongly relatedto student’s self-evaluation as the epistemic authority attributed to teachers of theother subject matters.

The background variables of the students were found to affect their perceptionof teachers’ epistemic authority. The three self-evaluation scores are correlated


Table II. Pearson correlations between teacher disciplinary EA and self-evaluation items in theteacher’s subject matter, and correlations between teacher disciplinary EA and self EA (N = 1465students)

Teacher’s disciplinary EA

History Literature Mathematics Biology

Self EA 0.147 0.095 0.160 0.078

Self-evaluation

Interest 0.315 0.313 0.251 0.354

Knowledge 0.251 0.215 0.136 0.249

Performance 0.200 0.113 0.137 0.201

Note. All correlations are significant at the 0.01 level.

with the background variables and among themselves. Thus, in order to controlfor background variables and isolate the specific contribution of each of the self-evaluation items to the prediction of the perceived teacher EA, we conductedregressions of teacher’s disciplinary EA (for each of the four subject matters sep-arately) on the variables: gender, age group, parents’ education, self EA, and thethree self-evaluation items (interest, knowledge, and performance) in that samesubject matter. The regression analyses were carried out hierarchically, in a step-wise manner. The results are presented in Table III. In addition to this analysis,we conducted an analysis taking into account the classes to which the studentsare affiliated. This was done using MANOVAs with gender and class (nested inthe two age groups) as grouping factors and parents’ education, self EA, and thethree self-evaluation as covariates. The results were almost identical to the mul-tiple regression above, thus we decided on reporting the stepwise regression. Itseems that the relations between EA and the explanatory variables here did notdepend on the students’ class affiliation. In all four subject matters, the first self-evaluation variable to enter into the regression was the degree of interest in thesubject matter. For literature and biology, this was the only self-evaluation vari-able that was entered into the regression. For history teachers, self-evaluation ofschool performance in history entered into the regression of the disciplinary do-main as well. For mathematics teachers, self-evaluation of knowledge in math-ematics entered the regression of the general domain. Table III also shows thatstudent’s self EA is an important variable explaining teacher’s epistemic authority.Thus, the results of the above analyses suggest that in all four subject matters, therespondent’s degree of interest contributes most to the prediction of a teacher’sattributed epistemic authority, which means that the more a student is interested inthe subject matter, the more he/she attributes epistemic authority in that disciplineto the teacher.


Table III. Summary of stepwise regressions predicting students’ perceptions of teachers EA(N = 1465 students)

Disciplinary knowledge General knowledge

Step Variable β t Step Variable β t

History (R2 = 0.113, p < 0.01) History (R2 = 0.109, p < 0.01)

1 Interest 0.28 10.35∗∗ 1 Interest 0.28 10.22∗∗2 Self EA 0.07 2.72∗∗ 2 Self EA 0.10 3.91∗∗3 Gender 0.06 2.26∗ 3 Gender 0.08 3.18∗∗4 School performance 0.06 2.14∗

Literature (R2 = 0.109, p < 0.01) Literature (R2 = 0.126, p < 0.01)

1 Interest 0.30 12.04∗∗ 1 Interest 0.30 12.08∗∗2 Age group −0.07 −2.96∗∗ 2 Age group −0.13 −5.34∗∗3 Self EA 0.07 2.69∗∗ 3 Self EA 0.07 2.98∗∗

Math (R2 = 0.078, p < 0.01) Math (R2 = 0.093, p < 0.01)

1 Interest 0.23 8.85∗∗ 1 Interest 0.29 9.47∗∗2 Self EA 0.11 4.33∗∗ 2 Self EA 0.14 5.27∗∗3 Gender 0.06 2.49∗ 3 Gender 0.08 3.19∗∗

4 Knowledge −0.10 −3.02∗∗

Biology (R2 = 0.129, p < 0.01) Biology (R2 = 0.117, p < 0.01)

1 Interest 0.34 13.82∗∗ 1 Interest 0.35 13.92∗∗2 Age group −0.06 −2.45∗ 2 Parents’ −0.05 −2.13∗

education

Note. Only the significant variables are presented in the table.Age group is coded as: 1 = 7th grade, 2 = 10th grade; Gender is coded as: 1 = Boys, 2 = Girls.∗p < 0.05. ∗∗p < 0.01.

3.2. TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS

Analysis of teachers’ self-attributed EA scores was conducted by a 2 × 4 × (2)MANOVA, with school (junior high school, high school) and subject matter(literature, math, biology, and history) as grouping factors, and domain (disci-plinary, general) as a within-subject factor. The results showed that the school factordid not yield any effect. The means of EA scores by subject matter are presen-ted in Table V, column 2 (the two school levels together). The obtained domaineffect indicates that teachers gave higher self EA scores for the disciplinary thanfor the general domain, F(1, 123) = 73.69, p < 0.01. In addition, domain bysubject matter interaction was found, F(1, 123) = 4.87, p < 0.01. The variouscomparisons conducted showed that teachers of all the subject matters attributedmore self EA to the disciplinary knowledge domain than to the general knowledgedomain. Also, mathematics teachers had higher disciplinary self-EA scores thandid history teachers. Teachers of different subject matters did not differ in their


Table IV. Summary of stepwise regressions predicting self EA scoresreported by teachers (N = 131 teachers)

Step Variable β t

Disciplinary domain

1 Personal efficacy 0.29 3.63∗∗2 School 0.26 3.26∗∗3 Mathematics 0.22 2.79∗∗ R2 = 0.195, p < 0.01

General domain

1 Personal efficacy 0.21 2.46∗ R2 = 0.045, p < 0.01

Note. Only the significant variables are presented in the table.School is coded as: 1 = Junior-high, 2 = High; Subject matter dummyvariables in the regression were indicators of literature, mathematics, andhistory.∗p < 0.05. ∗∗p < 0.01.

general self EA. Thus, the obtained interaction is a result of the greater differencebetween disciplinary self EA and general self EA for mathematics teachers thanfor teachers of the other subject matters (see Table V, column 2). A correlationcalculated between self-perception of disciplinary EA and general EA shows thatthe two scales strongly correlate, r(131) = 0.52, p < 0.01.

In addition, scores of teacher efficacy were analyzed with 2 × 4 × (2) MAN-OVA, where the two factors of the scale, personal efficacy and teaching efficacy,are the within-subject factors, and school (junior high school, high school) and thefour subject matters are the grouping factors. The results did not yield any groupingdifferences. However, the factor personal efficacy was rated higher than the factorteaching efficacy, F(1, 123) = 74.12, p < 0.01. The means are M = 4.52,SD = 0.66 for personal efficacy and M = 3.72, SD = 0.79 for teaching efficacy.

To examine the relations between teachers’ self EA scores and teaching efficacy,controlling for background variables, regressions were conducted on the self EAscores. Results show that personal efficacy, school, and subject matter were theonly variables explaining the variability of teachers’ self EA scores (see Table IV).They indicate the following: (a) higher self-perception of EA in the disciplinarydomain relates to higher personal efficacy, to high school teachers as compared tojunior high school teachers, and to mathematics teachers as compared to the otherteachers; (b) higher self-perception of EA in the general domain relates to higherpersonal efficacy only.

3.2.1. Comparison Between Perceptions of Students and of Teachers

The collected data allowed comparisons to be made among the three followingperspectives related to perceptions of teachers’ epistemic authority: (a) students’

32A

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Table V. Means and standard deviations of teachers’ epistemic authority: (1) Students’ perception of teachers,(2) Teachers’ self perceptions, and (3) Teachers’ perceptions of students

(1) (2) (3) (1) versus (2) (1) versus (3) (2) versus (3)

Students Teachers’ self- Teachers’

perception perception perception df t df t df t

of teachers of students (two-sample) (two-sample) (paired)

Disciplinary EA

History 4.75 (0.35) 5.06 (0.59) 5.37 (0.41) 51.0 2.77 65.8 7.13∗ 34 3.73∗Literature 4.49 (0.30) 5.15 (0.46) 5.48 (0.56) 47.9 7.24∗ 42.4 9.17∗ 31 4.17∗Math 4.68 (0.47) 5.35 (0.42) 5.53 (0.45) 97.4 7.58∗ 99.3 9.31∗ 51 3.84∗Biology 4.48 (0.68) 5.22 (0.38) 5.33 (0.37) 31.1 5.10∗ 32.0 5.94∗ 11 0.96

General EA

History 4.27 (0.41) 4.74 (0.61) 5.04 (0.57) 55.0 4.03∗ 57.5 6.88∗ 34 3.88∗Literature 3.93 (0.36) 4.72 (0.56) 5.26 (0.63) 47.8 6.97∗ 44.4 10.76∗ 31 6.06∗Math 3.80 (0.48) 4.64 (0.56) 5.09 (0.66) 99.0 8.15∗ 93.1 11.21∗ 51 4.81∗Biology 3.90 (0.58) 4.70 (0.57) 5.05 (0.55) 17.0 4.40∗ 17.3 6.46∗ 11 3.12

∗p < 0.05 (corrected for 24 comparisons by Bonferroni).


perception of their teachers as epistemic authorities in disciplinary and generalknowledge domains, (b) teachers’ self-perception as epistemic authorities in thetwo domains of knowledge, and (c) teachers’ perception of how students perceivetheir epistemic authorities in the two domains of knowledge.

The first comparison was conducted between the two latter perceptions: teach-ers’ self-perception and teachers’ perception of how students perceive them. Thiscomparison was conducted by a 2 × 4 × (2 × 2) MANOVA, analyzing these twoperceptions as a within-subject factor (perception object), in addition to the formerschool by subject matter by domain factors used previously in the MANOVAdesign analyzing the teachers’ data. The results showed that teachers’ perceptionsof how students perceive their epistemic authority are higher than teachers’ self EAperceptions, F(1, 123) = 50.26, p < 0.01. An interaction of perception object bydomain was also found, F(1, 123) = 9.57, p < 0.01, due to a greater differencebetween the two domains in self-perception than in attribution to students. Themeans of attribution to students are presented in Table V, column 3. Comparisonsbetween teachers’ self-perception and teachers’ attribution to students (columns 2and 3 of Table V) were also conducted for the disciplinary and the general domainof knowledge in all the four subject matters. The analyses were conducted bypaired t-tests, with the Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons. The results,shown in Table V, show that teachers’ perception of self EA is indeed significantlylower than their attribution to students in all the subject matters, except biology(see Table V).

The comparisons of the data collected from students and from teachers couldnot be performed by MANOVA because students evaluated each of their fourteachers (in the four subject matters) while the reports of the teachers of differentsubject matters are all independent. Thus, subject matter is a within-subject factorin the students’ data, while it is a grouping factor in the teachers’ data. There-fore, two sets of comparisons between students’ perceptions of teachers’ epistemicauthorities and teachers’ self-perception of their own epistemic authority, as wellas between students’ perceptions of teachers’ epistemic authorities and teachers’of how students perceive them as epistemic authority, were calculated separatelyfor each subject matter and for each knowledge domain. For these comparisons,the scores of students’ perceptions of teachers’ epistemic authority used were themeans of the scores given to the teachers by the students in their classes. Thus, themeans in column 1 of Table V are means of N = 50 class scores, and columns 2and 3 are the means of the teachers’ sample grouped by subject matter.

Comparisons between students and teachers were done by two-sample t-tests,separately for each subject matter, using unequal variances. In order to controlfor the error rate, significance was decided by using the Bonferroni correction formultiple comparisons (see Table V).

The comparisons show that for all the four subject matters and the two knowl-edge domains, students’ perceptions of their teachers’ epistemic authority arelower than the self-perceptions of the teachers themselves (column 1 vs. column 2),


which are, in turn, lower than teachers’ perceptions of how students perceive them(column 2 vs. column 3). Similarly, students’ perceptions of their teachers’ epi-stemic authority are lower than the teachers’ perceptions of how students perceivethem (column 1 vs. column 3). There are three exceptions to these results: for his-tory teachers, the comparison of students’ perception of teachers to teachers’ self-perception (column 1 vs. column 2) was non-significant in the disciplinary domain,and for biology teachers, the comparison of teachers’ self-perception to their per-ception of how students perceive them (column 2 vs. column 3) was non-significantin the disciplinary as well as in the general domains.

4. Discussion

The present study was designed to illuminate the perceived role performance ofteachers as transmitters of knowledge from the perspective of lay-epistemic theory.This theory, proposed by Kruglanski (1989), introduced the concept of epistemicauthority, which allows the present examination of the perception of teachers asvalid sources of information in the discipline they teach and in general knowl-edge domains. This examination was performed in three parts. First, students’perceptions of their teachers as epistemic authorities were assessed. The study in-vestigated the influence of several important variables on these perceptions: teach-ers’ subject matter and students’ age, gender, self-evaluation and perception ofthemselves as epistemic authorities. Second, teachers’ perceptions of themselvesas epistemic authorities were measured and the effects of self-efficacy, teachingexperience, and subject matter taught on this perception were investigated. Finally,the study compared three perspectives on teachers’ perceptions as epistemic au-thorities: students’ perceptions, teachers’ self-perception and teachers’ perceptionof how students perceive them. Following is a discussion of the three parts of thestudy.

4.1. STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF THEIR TEACHERS AS EPISTEMIC

AUTHORITIES

The study showed that, when we use absolute measures, students perceive theirteachers as moderate epistemic authorities. The mean scores of teachers’ percep-tions as epistemic authorities on a 7-point scale ranged between 4.36 and 4.79 in thedisciplinary knowledge and between 3.72 and 4.36 in the general knowledge do-main. These results are in line with the findings by Raviv, Bar-Tal, Raviv and Peleg(1990) and Bar-Tal, Raviv, Raviv and Brosh (1991) which showed that adolescentsrely moderately on teachers’ knowledge of science, somewhat less than they relyon their father for the same information. These studies also showed that duringadolescence, the perception of teachers as epistemic authorities in other areas ofknowledge (e.g., values, social relations, future, planning, past-time) is low. Thatis, although teachers, in comparison to other sources of knowledge, function as


generalized epistemic authorities of importance during childhood (Raviv, Bar-Tal,Raviv, & Houminer, 1990), with age and prolonged experience in school, childrenlearn about their teachers’ limitations. And although they still view teachers asreliable sources of disciplinary knowledge, they realize that other sources may bemore reliable, that teachers are not always good transmitters of knowledge and thatthey do not always have sufficient knowledge in their discipline (Emler, Ohana, &Moscovici, 1987; Bar-Tal, Raviv, Raviv, & Brosh, 1991). Thus, children greatly re-duce their reliance on teachers, particularly in various general knowledge domains(but also somewhat in disciplinary knowledge), and they come to view teachers andother sources (e.g., peers, the media) as alternative epistemic authorities (Raviv,Bar-Tal, Raviv, & Peleg, 1990; Smetana & Bitz, 1996).

A more focused look at the results shows that a number of variables influencestudents’ perception of teachers as epistemic authorities. Regarding gender, as pre-dicted, female students perceive their teachers as epistemic authorities more thando male students; at the same time, they perceive themselves as less of an epistemicauthority than do male students. This finding is not surprising in view of the genderexpectations and sex roles prevalent in school and in society. In general, females areexpected to be more passive, obedient and dependent, while males expected to bemore autonomous, original and active (Ruble & Martin, 1998). These expectationsalso exist in the school setting. Various studies show that female students are moreobedient to school rules and more accepting of teachers’ authority (Smetana &Bitz, 1996).

With regard to age, the main effect shows that, in general, younger studentshave a greater tendency to perceive their teachers as epistemic authorities thando older students. This finding is in line with the cognitive and social develop-ments we know to take place during adolescence. Between the ages of 12–13 and15–16, adolescents change their frame of reference towards knowledge, sourcesof information, and reliance on authorities. They develop criteria for evaluatingknowledge, grow confident of their own knowledge, become more critical andskeptical, and decrease their reliance on external authorities, as well as on externalsources of information (Piaget, 1970; Turiel, 1983; Damon & Hart, 1988; Smetana,1995). Developmental studies of epistemic authority show that with age, on the onehand, adolescents increase their perception of themselves as epistemic authorities,and, on the other hand, they decrease their epistemic reliance on their parents andteachers (Raviv, Bar-Tal, Raviv, & Peleg, 1990; Bar-Tal, Raviv, Raviv, & Brosch,1991). They also become more differentiated in their reliance on external sources ofinformation, as they become able to differentiate among domains of knowledge andidentify sources of information which correspond to those domains. The findingof the present study to the effect that adolescents perceive their teachers as greaterepistemic authorities in their own discipline than in the general knowledge domain,supports this observation.

Analysis of the influence of teachers’ subject matter on their being perceived asepistemic authorities presents a somewhat complex picture. Regarding disciplinary


knowledge, contrary to our expectations, history teachers of 7th and 10th graderswere evaluated as highly as were mathematics teachers. Within the realm of generalknowledge, the results were less surprising. History teachers of both age groupswere perceived to have the highest level of epistemic authority. In the younger agegroup, teachers of literature were perceived more as epistemic authorities than wereteachers of mathematics and biology.

The surprising findings regarding the perception of history and biology teacherssuggest that the teaching of these two subject matters has a rather different char-acter than we originally assumed. There are clear indications that although historyteachers recognize uncertainty and subjectivity as being inherent to their discipline,they also construct their teaching with a reliance on factual knowledge (Donnelly,1999). This reliance on facts provides solid grounds for presenting history as anobjective and accurate discipline. This approach probably raises the disciplinarystatus of history teachers, who are perceived as transmitting valid historic knowl-edge in their classes. Another possible cause for the perception of history teachersas epistemic authorities in their discipline derives from the fact that they are seen ashaving a wide range of knowledge in different domains, which they use in historylessons. That is, in order to explain various events and processes, they use political,economic, social, and even psychological knowledge. This does not only greatlyinfluence the perception of history teachers as epistemic authorities in generaldomains of knowledge, but also increases students’ reliance on these teachers asepistemic authorities in their own discipline.

The relatively low perception of biology teachers as epistemic authorities canbe explained by the recently defined objectives of this curriculum in Israel. Thenew biology curriculum attempts to encourage students’ open-mindedness, criticalthinking, the ability to differentiate between data and inferences, and the ability toform autonomous opinions in view of data, without compliance to teachers’ author-ity (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1990). These objectives reduce teachers’epistemic authority and transfer the knowledge basis directly to empirical obser-vations. Indeed, Israeli biology teachers who attempt to realize these objectiveswere found to include much data collection in their lessons, serving as a basisfor the formation of disciplinary knowledge, while they themselves taking a lessimportant role in knowledge transmission (Ratner, 1995). As a result of this prac-tice, students rely less on teachers’ knowledge and, therefore, perceive them asepistemic authorities to a lesser degree.

Teachers of mathematics and literature were perceived as we hypothesized. Theformer were attributed a high level of epistemic authority in their disciplinaryknowledge, while the latter were attributed a low level of epistemic authority intheir disciplinary knowledge. This situation was reversed with regard to generalknowledge domains, especially among the younger age group: mathematics teach-ers were attributed less epistemic authority than literature teachers. As a discipline,mathematics, in contrast to literature, is viewed as well-defined, unequivocal, sci-entific, and objective. Hence, its teachers are perceived as experts in their discipline


but as limited sources of information in general knowledge (Kuhn, 1970; Lodahl& Gordon, 1972; Yoels, 1974; Peirce, 1976). In contrast, literature is viewed as asubjective, undefined, equivocal, ‘artistic’ discipline and, therefore, its teachers areperceived less as disciplinary epistemic authorities and more as epistemic author-ities in general knowledge areas. The latter perception probably derives from theuse in literary analysis of interpretations based on general knowledge.

Of special interest in the present study is the finding indicating students’ in-terest in the subject matter is the best predictor of the perception of teachers asepistemic authorities: The higher the interest in the subject matter, the higher theperception of the teacher as an epistemic authority. This finding can be explainedby the observation that teachers’ instruction and management practices are cru-cial determinants of students’ interest in the subject matter (Emmer, Evertson,& Brophy, 1979; Brophy & Good, 1986; Doyle, 1986; Goodenow, 1992). Whenteachers present the subject matter interestingly, with enthusiasm, and relate well tostudents, they succeed in stimulating the interest of students in the subject matter.The students, in turn, perceive them as epistemic authorities. It is however alsopossible that mere interest in a subject matter already tunes and focuses students tothe contents conveyed by their teachers, thus increasing the latter’s perception asepistemic authority (Askell-Williams & Lawson, 2002).

4.2. TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS

The results of teachers’ self-perception measures on epistemic authority are aspredicted. In general, teachers perceived themselves to be more of an epistemicauthority in the disciplinary knowledge domain than in the general knowledgedomain. Teachers of mathematics perceived themselves to be more of an epistemicauthority to their students in the disciplinary knowledge domain than teachersof other subject matters. This indicates that mathematics teachers perceive theirdiscipline differently than do other teachers and, because of the status of their dis-cipline as an exact science, they perceive themselves to be knowledgeable experts.With regard to general knowledge, no difference among the teachers of the foursubject matters was found. It is possible that all the teachers view themselves as‘educators’ and many of them fulfill the role of homeroom instructor. Thus, theydo not relate their self-perception as epistemic authorities in general knowledgedomains to the nature of the subject matter they teach, but to their role as teachers.This finding corroborates the results of a study by Strauss and Shilony (1994), whohypothesized that teachers of different subject matters have different mental modelsof how their students learn and what the role of instruction is, but these differenceswere not confirmed by their findings, which showed that teachers of differentsubject matters share a common model of children’s minds and of learning.

Not surprisingly, the factor personal efficacy on the teacher efficacy scale wasfound to be the best predictor of teachers’ self-perception as epistemic authorities.This factor refers to their personal beliefs about their own skills and abilities to


bring about student learning (Gibson & Dembo, 1984). The results indicate thatteachers who believe that they have an influence on their students also perceivethemselves as epistemic authorities for their students. Indeed, in other studies, thisparticular factor was found to be related to instructional experimentation, includingthe willingness to try alternative materials and approaches, as well as organization,planning, clarity, and enthusiasm in teaching (e.g., Allinder, 1994).

4.3. COMPARISONS AMONG THE THREE PERSPECTIVES

Finally, the comparisons among the three perspectives indicate that students in thepresent study perceived teachers as having less epistemic authority than did theteachers perceive themselves, except in the case of history teachers in the disci-plinary knowledge domain. Also, all teachers except for biology teachers believedtheir students perceived them as more of an epistemic authority than they perceivedthemselves to be. This ego-enhancement result replicates the results of a line ofstudies that demonstrate that teachers perceive themselves in a more positive lightthan their students perceive them (e.g., Raviv, Bar-Tal, Raviv, & Houminer, 1990).

The findings of the present study together with other observations show thatteachers not only overrate themselves, but that they also greatly overestimate theirstudents’ positive perception of them. These findings can be explained by twocomplementary processes. The ego-enhancement explanation suggests that teach-ers’ perceptions are partly determined by ego enhancement needs, as are people’sattitudes and beliefs in general (Hoorens, 1995). Individuals tend to magnify theirsuccesses, influence, status, or achievements in order to be able to view themselvespositively. The other explanation, that is, self-protection, suggests that teachers,like other human beings, protect their perceived role performance in order to avoidrealization of failure. Knowledge transmission is viewed by many educators as thefocal aspect of teachers’ role performance (Schulman, 1987), and so the realizationthat students do not perceive them as epistemic authorities may be a threateningexperience. Thus, in order to protect their self-professional view, teachers attributea high degree of epistemic authority to themselves and also believe that studentsperceive them in the same way.

In sum, the conception of epistemic authority and the reported study shed newlight on the perception of teachers’ role enactment. This conception focuses onteachers’ transmission of knowledge and the implications of that role, providing alens through which we may investigate factors that influence students’ and teach-ers’ evaluations of pedagogical roles. The notion of epistemic authority also gener-ates some crucial questions: Is the perception of epistemic authority functional tothe type of education that school systems should provide in the new millennium?Many educators believe that the role of teachers as epistemic authorities shouldbe complex, that is, not only reflected in their disciplinary knowledge but also intheir knowledge of how to help their students understand the subject matter. Such‘expertise’ consists of the knowledge of the learner, knowledge of the curriculum,


knowledge of the context, and knowledge of pedagogy (e.g., Wilson, Schulman,& Richert, 1987). In addition, there are schools of thought that urge teachers toenable students to construct their knowledge mainly via self-learning, observation,and experience (Ratner, 1995). Nevertheless, there is substantial agreement thatthe reliance on teacher knowledge and self-knowledge should be accompanied byopenness and skepticism (McPeck, 1981; Baron & Sternberg, 1987). In any event,the educational systems will have to adapt the role of teachers as knowledge trans-mitters and mediators to the parameters of the changing environment and students’needs.

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Biographical Notes

Amiram Raviv is a clinical and school psychologist. He is Professor in thePsychology Department at Tel Aviv University, and is currently the Chair of theDepartment. His research interest is mainly in school psychology and knowledgeformation.Daniel Bar-Tal is Professor of Psychology in the School of Education andDirector of the Walter Lebach Institute for Jewish-Arab Coexistence through Edu-cation, Tel Aviv University. His research interest focuses on knowledge formation.Alona Raviv is Senior Teacher in the Department of Statistics & OperationsResearch at Tel Aviv University.Braha Biran and Zvia Sela received their M.A. from the Counseling Programat Tel Aviv University. They presently work as school counselors in the Israelieducational system.

Documents

Teachers' Epistemic Authority: Perceptions of Students and Teachers