Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online) Vol.8, No.30, 2017 82 Investigating the Prospective Teachers’ Beliefs About Learning İsmail KİNAY* Ast. Prof. Dr., Dicle University, Department of Educational Sciences, Diyarbakır, Turkey Bünyamin HAN Res. Ast., Dicle University, Department of Educational Sciences, Diyarbakır, Turkey Abstract The purpose of this research is to examine the learning-related beliefs of prospective teachers who continue their education at university. Within this overall purpose of the study the following questions were tried to be answered: 1) what level is the prospective teachers’ beliefs about traditional and constructivist (cognitive, social and radical) learning? 2) Do the traditional and constructivist beliefs of prospective teachers differentiate significantly according to their gender, class and branches? This study was conducted in survey model with 293 female and 174 male, a total of 467 prospective teachers at Dicle University in the academic year of 2014-2015. As data collection tool “Belief Scale towards Learning” developed by Bay et al. (2012) was used. As the results of the study, it was found that the prospective teachers had adopted more constructivist beliefs than traditional beliefs; there is no statistically significant difference between the beliefs of the prospective teachers about learning according to their gender; there is a significant difference according to their branch; it has been determined a significant difference between the beliefs about traditional, constructivist, radical and social constructivist learning according to the class variable. However, there was no significant difference between the prospective teachers’ cognitive learning beliefs according to class variables. Keywords: Beliefs, prospective teachers, learning 1. Introduction In the training process, there are many affective factors that are thought to influence human behavior. One of the most important of these is beliefs about learning. The beliefs about learning include the thoughts of teachers about how the learning takes place. Teachers' beliefs about learning are seen to be important in order to make the students gain desired behaviors. In addition, research findings have been put forward that there is a relationship between beliefs and practices, that is, beliefs about learning affect classroom activities and practices (Luft and Roehrig, 2007: 40). The effectiveness of instructional programs is dependent on teachers' beliefs about learning and teaching (Van Dariel, Bulte and Verloop, 2007: 156). Research has also shown that teachers are guided by their beliefs about their learning and teaching (Chan and Elliott, 2004: 817; Chan, 2004). Beliefs affect not only the learning process of prospective teachers, but also the professional development of their teaching career (Duru, 2014: 17). In addition, one of the factors that increase the importance of learning beliefs is that these beliefs affect teachers' behaviors, decisions, educational strategies and practices in the learning process (Kagan, 1992: 66; Nespor, 1987: 324; Waters-Adams, 2006: 919; 3-4; Hashweh, 1996: 61-62). Research on learning beliefs has shown that these beliefs are usually examined in two major categories, traditional and constructivist learning beliefs (Chan, 2004; Chan, Tan and Khoo, 2007; Eren, 2009; Bay, et al, 2012 ; Woolley, Benjamin and Woolley, 2004; Duru, 2014; Bay et al., 2014, Kinay and Bağçeci, 2017). Traditional learning is an approach which suggests that behavior develops by establishing a link between stimuli and behavior and that behavior changes through reinforcement (Özden, 2011: 21, Bacanlı, 2012: 29: Erden and Akman, 2009: 128). In the traditional understanding that knowledge is an unchanging and objective characteristic, information is independent from the individual (Yurdakul, 2010: 39), a phenomenon that exists outside of the learners (Özden, 2011: 6, Savaş, 2009: 412). In the traditional approach, education is teacher- centered. In the teacher-student-knowledge triangle, the teacher conveys the knowledge and the student takes the knowledge. In this sense, this approach does not give the student an active role in the formation of knowledge (Özden, 2011: 54). According to this approach, the teacher -as the source of information- is in the focus of teaching activities (Ocak, Koçyiğit and Özermen, 2010: 47). In this case teacher is the source of knowledge and the student is the passive learner in the learning process (Chan and Elliott, 2004: 819, Bramald, Hardman and Leat, 1995: 25, Tezci and Dikici, 2003: 255). The teacher in the role of information source is in this role challenging and restrictive and sets the boundaries of the knowledge that the learner needs to learn on a particular topic and assumes the primary responsibility for transferring it to the student (Tezci and Dikici, 2003: 255). Another approach categorized in research on learning beliefs is the constructivist approach. Constructivism, can be defined as constitution of knowledge by the student (Özden, 2011: 55), and people’s building their knowledge and the way of presenting knowledge by basing on their own experiences and beliefs (Akınoğlu, 2009: 150). The basic philosophy of the constructivist approach is that people construct knowledge as the result