Teachers’ Educational Beliefs and Need for Cognition: A Quasi-Experimental Study Based on Philosophical Inquiry

Teachers’ educational beliefs act as psychological frameworks that shape how they interpret educational constructs such as teaching, learning, and classroom practice. Need for cognition (NFC) is associated with motivation in learning, problem-solving, and decision-making processes. This quasi-experimental study used a non-equivalent pretest–posttest control group design to examine the associations of a philosophical inquiry-based professional development programme (P4TEduP) with in-service teachers’ NFC and educational belief subscales. The study included 28 teachers from a single private school; 13 participated in the experimental group and 15 in the control group. The P4TEduP was delivered over five days in 10 sessions and used philosophical inquiry stimuli focused on educational concepts. Data were collected using the Need for Cognition Scale and Educational Belief Scale and analysed using paired-samples t-tests, Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, and a two-stage rank-based residualised ANCOVA with HC3 heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors. After controlling for pretest scores, no statistically significant between-group differences were found in NFC or educational belief subscales. However, NFC and progressivism increased significantly only within the experimental group. Given the small, non-randomised sample and non-significant baseline-adjusted between-group differences, the findings should be interpreted as preliminary empirical and practical evidence, not as support for programme effectiveness or a new theoretical model.