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Much current research has focused on epistemic beliefs of students. However, teachers’ epistemic practices are also important to study because they may influence students’ epistemic beliefs. The standards for justification for different content areas necessitate that teachers use diverse pedagogical practices designed to help students develop justification for what it is they think they know. The purpose of this study is to pilot a new instrument designed to assess teachers’ beliefs about the usefulness of different pedagogical practices designed to teach students how to provide justification. Data for this study were collected from both preservice and inservice teachers. Results show that the Likert-type items developed for this study produced scores that were both internally consistent and somewhat stable over time. Participants’ descriptions of effective pedagogical practices relating to justification are similar to those evidenced by Likert-type items.

We begin with a discussion of contemporary approaches to assessment highlighting their reliance on a static, linear model of knowledgeable performance. Next we describe an ecological psychology approach to problem solving. Then, we propose the adoption of an agent-environment interaction as the unit of analysis. We continue by describing the problem-solving process from an ecological psychology perspective, to clarify the “intentional unit”. We close with a discussion of functional validity, the value added by access to assessment information during the problem-solving process.