Knowledge

The study aimed to investigate the Iranian EFL teachers’ knowledge of educational ethical codes in academic settings through the employment of a newly-designed questionnaire, developed by the researchers. To this end, six university professors as experts were invited to participate in an unstructured interview related to the issue under study. The preliminary themes were extracted from the relevant literature and the experts’ opinions through qualitative analysis. Next, the initial questionnaire items were generated and approved by three experts. The reliability of the constructed questionnaire was calculated using Cronbach's alpha. Afterwards, the 40-item questionnaire was administered to 400 EFL teachers resulting in the elimination of eleven items through exploratory factor analysis. Five factors were drawn from the responses of teachers through EFA representing their knowledge of educational ethical codes. Additionally, the confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the five extracted components of the newly developed questionnaire including educational, affective, socio-cultural, behavioral, and professional ethics factors were all acceptably loaded on their constructs at an acceptable level, and the scale can successfully determine EFL teachers’ knowledge of ethical codes in educational settings. The findings of the study have valuable implications for teachers, students, teacher trainers, educational policymakers and administrators.

Epistemologists have widely accepted that truth, justification, and belief are necessary conditions for knowledge. This article challenges the necessity of the two components, “belief” and “justification”, in the definition of knowledge. It argues that belief is distinct from knowledge; belief is an act of will, whereas knowledge is acquired automatically. One may possess knowledge without being actively willing to believe it, and conversely, one may will to believe something without actually knowing it. Additionally, justification should be seen as a method of validating knowledge, not a fundamental part of its definition. Therefore, knowledge without justification remains knowledge, even though its truth cannot be proven. Building on this perspective, the proposed definition of knowledge shifts to “awareness or recognition of facts.” According to this definition, the Gettier problem and the lottery paradox find alternative solutions.