Epistemological development in higher education

Research has been carried out on students’ epistemological development in higher education for at least 50 years. Researchers on both sides of the Atlantic have converged on accounts that describe students’ epistemological development in terms of a sequence or hierarchy of qualitatively distinct stages or positions. The rich qualitative data obtained from longitudinal investigations do demonstrate intellectual changes, but whether the same scheme fits all students and whether the changes found are a specific result of exposure to higher education are open to debate. Well-validated quantitative instruments that could be used to measure epistemological development in large samples of students are still lacking. Unresolved issues include: whether students can adopt multiple epistemological positions; whether these are culturally and contextually specific; and whether they are mental entities, discursive practices or social constructions.     

Relative expertise in an everyday reasoning task: Epistemic understanding, problem representation, and reasoning competence

Experts in cognitive domains differ from non-experts in how they represent problems and knowledge, and in their epistemic understandings of tasks in their domain of expertise. This study investigates whether task-specific epistemic understanding also underlies the representation of knowledge on an everyday reasoning task on which the competent reasoners have neither expert domain knowledge nor training. 180 people on jury duty were assessed for epistemological understanding about the nature of knowledge and knowing in general, understanding of the specific task of the juror, and level of argument skill and evidence representation on two jury cases. Epistemic construal of the juror task and task-specific competent reasoning was found related to general epistemology, argument skills, and representation of the evidence. Additionally, estimations of the possibility of certainty in general and in a juror task predicted the participants' expressed certainty about their verdict choices. Implications for developing everyday reasoning competence are discussed.     

Epistemological beliefs and self-regulated learning with hypertext

This study investigated the relationship between epistemological beliefs, prior domain knowledge and self-regulated learning. Biology students (n?=?25) and humanities students (n?=?26) who varied in their epistemological beliefs learned with a hierarchical hypertext about the topic of genetic fingerprinting. During their learning processes, logfiles and questionnaire data were collected. Results indicate that students do metacognitively calibrate their learning process to the complexity of the presented learning material, e.g. by processing more complex deeper-level nodes longer. Furthermore, these calibration processes were significantly related to epistemological beliefs. For example, more ‘sophisticated’ epistemological beliefs were associated with processing more nodes, whereas more ‘naïve’ beliefs were related to spending more time on single nodes. Both effects were especially pronounced on deeper hierarchical hypertext levels. Prior domain knowledge also had an impact, especially on comprehensibility ratings: biology students considered all nodes more comprehensible than humanities students. Additionally, epistemological beliefs as well as prior domain knowledge were also significantly associated with the learning outcome: for example, more prior domain knowledge led to significantly higher learning outcome.     

Scientific sensemaking supports science content learning across disciplines and instructional contexts

Science consists of a body of knowledge and a set of processes by which the knowledge is produced. Although these have traditionally been treated separately in science instruction, there has been a shift to an integration of knowledge and processes, or set of practices, in how science should be taught and assessed. We explore whether a general overall mastery of the processes drives learning in new science content areas and if this overall mastery can be improved through engaged science learning. Through a review of literature, the paper conceptualizes this general process mastery as scientific sensemaking, defines the sub-dimensions, and presents a new measure of the construct centered in scenarios of general interest to young adolescents. Using a dataset involving over 2500 6th and 8th grade students, the paper shows that scientific sensemaking scores can predict content learning gains and that this relationship is consistent across student characteristics, content of instruction, and classroom environment. Further, students who are behaviorally and cognitively engaged during science classroom activities show greater growth in scientific sensemaking, showing a reciprocal relationship between sensemaking ability and effective science instruction. Findings from this work support early instruction on sensemaking activities to better position students to learn new scientific content.     

Exploring the relationship between physics-related epistemological beliefs and physics understanding

Three studies are reported that investigated the relationship between secondary school students’ physics-related epistemological beliefs and physics conceptual understanding. Study 1 involved the development of a Greek Epistemological Beliefs Evaluation Instrument for Physics (GEBEP) which was administered to 394 students (10th graders). Study 2 investigated the hypothesis that physics epistemological sophistication as measured by the GEBEP is a good predictor of physics understanding. The participants were selected from the 394 students who participated in Study 1. More specifically we selected the 10% (38) students with the highest scores in the GEBEP (high epistemological sophistication group, HES) and the 10% (38) students with the lowest GEBEP scores (low epistemological sophistication group, LES) and measured their understanding of Newton’s three laws using the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation instrument (FMCE) developed by Thornton and Sokoloff (1998). The results showed that the HES group had significantly higher scores in the FMCE than the LES group. Regression analysis showed that beliefs regarding the Construction and Stability of physics knowledge and the Structure of physics knowledge were good predictors of physics understanding. Study 3 re-examined the same hypothesis on a new independent sample of students. The results based on the entire sample, showed again that beliefs regarding the Construction and Stability of physics knowledge predicted physics understanding. Overall, the results suggest that sophisticated physics-related epistemological beliefs are necessary but not sufficient for physics understanding and point to the importance of taking them into consideration in physics education.     

Epistemological commitments in the learning of science: Examples from dynamics

An observation schedule was developed to find out if girls have less interaction with teachers than boys in physics lessons. The schedule was intended to be used by a single observer with pencil and paper. It was also intended that the analysis of the data collected should be as straightforward as possible, without the need for video or audio playback, as all interpretation of the classroom interaction takes place during the live observation.

It was found that boys received more ‘public’ interactions concerning the cognitive content of their physics lessons than girls. This seemed to be related to the higher incidence of boys calling out answers, rather than the teachers initiating more interactions with the boys.     

Epistemological resources for thought experimentation in science learning

Thought Experiments (TEs) are reasoning processes that are based on 'results' of an experiment carried out in thought. What is the validity of an experiment- that has not been actually executed- for knowledge about the physical world? What are the features that make it distinctive and how do we integrate it into learning environments to support such thought processes? This study suggests that a thought experiment draws on three epistemological resources: conceptual-logical inferences, visual imagery and bodily-motor experience. We start by stating how students' TEs are related to recent research on learning science and then proceed to describe the nature of TEs. The central part of the paper deals with cognitive theories and empirical examples of visual imagery and bodily imagery. It also deals with how these enable implicit knowledge about the world to be retrieved. Students may have, but are not aware of, such knowledge for it is hidden when learning is only based on formal representations. We show that imagination is structured, goal-oriented, based on prior experiential imagery and internally coherent. Students can, for example, mentally rotate objects at constant velocity. Students can 'zoom in and out' to inspect imaginary situations, transfer objects, predict paths of imaginary moving objects and imagine the impact of forces on mechanical systems. We show that the TEs are powerful because of these capabilities. We further claim that these are not exploited by school learning environments and offer a first step towards understanding imagery in science learning.     

The process of understanding the task: how is agency distributed between students, teachers and representations in technology-rich learning environments?

In this article, we explore how students’ agency relates to both highly structured and open-ended learning environments. This is done by analysing how students’ understanding of tasks evolves through their activities in relation to the representations inscribed in two technology-rich learning environments. Based on the sociocultural approach to thinking, reasoning and learning we argue that it is necessary to include activities, artefacts and aspects of the knowledge domain in order to understand how and what the students’ learn. We conclude by arguing that the process of understanding a task is often complex and ongoing through the activity.     

Students' learning in science lessons: towards understanding the learning process

Constructivist views of learning have been applied to science education largely as a response to attempts to understand the origins of students' misconceptions in science, and therefore the learning process. As part of this effort to understand learning in science lessons, Appleton (1989) proposed a learning model drawn mainly from Piagetian (1978) ideas and generative learning theory (Osborne & Wittrock, 1983). This paper explores the development and evolution of the learning model as other constructivist view were applied, and as the model was tested against students' responses in science lessons. The revised model finally arrived at is then examined. It was found to be a useful means of describing student's learning processes during a science lesson. Specializations: primary teacher education, teaching strategies in science, cognitive change and learning theories. Specializations: secondary science teacher education, chemical education.     

理解视野中科学与教育论

就解释学来说 ,“理解”意味着意义的自我揭示与价值的生成。科学并非只能“说明”,同样需要“理解”。理解科学已逐渐成为当代科学教育的新取向 ,从意义生成的角度而言 ,科学教育应回归“生活世界”。     

Embodying emotions: making transactions explicit in science learning contexts

In this Forum paper we synthesize some of the main ideas from three papers: Auli Orlander and Per-Olof Wickman’s (Cult Stud Sci 6, 2011), Bodily experiences in secondary school biology, Roger Sages’ (Cult Stud Sci Educ 6, 2011), About Descartes: Uses and misuses, and Steve Alsop’s (Cult Stud Sci Educ 6, 2011), The body bites back! These papers challenged us to identify how emotions functioned as elements of bodily experiences in classroom transactions and why science teachers often are not responsive to students’ emoting. We also explored how teachers making use of curriculum and companion meanings could support the construction of learning environments that more productively support students’ science learning.     

Personal inquiry learning trajectories in geography: technological support across contexts

Student engagement in the design and implementation of inquiries is an effective way for them to learn about the inquiry process and the domain being studied. However, inquiry learning in geography can be challenging for teachers and students due to the complexity of scientific inquiry and the diversity of pupils' and teachers' knowledge and abilities. To address this, the Personal Inquiry project has designed a tool kit that includes nQuire, a Web-based tool to support students through the inquiry process. Here, we identify when, across five lessons comprising an inquiry into microclimates, nQuire was used by a teacher and a case study group of her 12 to 13-year-old students, and the ways in which they adopted nQuire as a tool to facilitate the creation of a coherent and cumulative inquiry learning experience over time. We found that students' use of nQuire supported them in capturing and representing their evolving understanding of inquiry, in defining and supporting their progression through the process of inquiry and in resourcing their cognitive engagement in data interpretation and representation. nQuire supported the students in accumulating and integrating new understandings across contexts and over time. In this way, nQuire successfully resourced and supported the students' learning journeys or trajectories. We conclude that nQuire can be an effective tool for supporting teachers' and students' understanding of the nature of inquiry and how to design and implement inquiries of their own.     

Integrating the epistemic and ontological aspects of content knowledge in science teaching and learning

A study has been made of how physics problems are attempted by school and by university students, in both examination and tutorial situations. The performance of the students is interpreted within the framework of a psychological model of learning which incorporates working memory capacity and disembedding ability. The implications of the results for teaching and for setting problems is emphasized, in that the same question in different forms may be testing different skills.     

Exploring the contexts of urban science classrooms. Part 2: The emergence of rituals in the learning of science

In Part 1 of this paper, I described the corporate and communal nature of research, teaching, and learning in urban science classrooms as both a theoretical approach to understanding, and way of viewing practices within these fields. By providing a new approach to theorizing the cultural misalignments that are prevalent in urban schools, I look to provide an informative tool for investigating under-discussed dynamics that impact science teaching and learning. In this body of work, I further expose the nature of the corporate|communal by describing practices that define communal practice. I do so conversant of the fact that synthesizing my previous work on corporate and communal practices necessarily pushes science education researchers and teachers to look for somewhat tactile explications of communal practices. That is to say, if communal practices do exist within the corporate structures of science classrooms, how do they present themselves and how can they be targeted? This paper begins a journey into such a study and focuses on student transactions, fundamental interactions and rituals as a key to redefining and attaining success in urban science classrooms.     

Epistemological beliefs,school achievement,and college major: A large-scale longitudinal study on the impact of certainty beliefs

Epistemological beliefs are subjective theories on the structure and acquisition of knowledge. Using data collected in the final year of high school (Time 1) and early in the college career (Time 2) as part of a large-scale longitudinal study, we examined the relationship of beliefs in the certainty of knowledge with school achievement and choice of college majors in Germany. In line with our hypothesis, students high on certainty beliefs showed lower school achievement at Time 1, even when controlling for indicators of intelligence and family background. Certainty beliefs also predicted the choice of future fields of study at college (self-selection hypothesis) and were shaped by enrolment in specific fields of study at college (socialization hypothesis).     

Teacher leadership enactment in professional learning community contexts: towards a better understanding of the phenomenon

Professional learning communities (PLCs) have gained considerable attention in education. However, PLCs are dependent on how group members collectively work and learn towards shared goals on improving teaching and learning. This would require leadership to support meaningful and productive interactions within PLC contexts, and hence, the importance of teacher leaders. In this article, we report on an ethnographic case study involving three PLCs investigating how teacher leadership supports PLC conversations using an intervention framework provided by the research team. The findings showed that teacher leadership has potential in supporting PLC conversations along three dimensions of its construct.     

The role of self-determination in informal and formal science learning contexts

Learning Environments Research - The goal of this research was to explore cognitive, self-determined learning and autonomous motivational effects in the context of a mobile science exhibition...     

A new look in representations for mathematics and science learning

Representations such as formal notations and diagrams routinely figure in students' learning of mathematics and science. However, in light of the extensive research on students' misunderstanding in these subject matters, it is reasonable to ask whether other kinds of representations might help students to reach better understandings. Indeed, a number of educators have developed innovative representations, typically on computers, that supposedly foster understanding through suggestive visual analogies and microworlds to manipulate. Evaluative research on these new look representations as we call them suggests that they indeed can help students to understand.In this review, we focus on exactlyhow these representations aid understanding. We propose that they do so by facilitating the learner's construction of explanations, justifications, predictions, and the like. These constructions require search in problem spaces, in the sense of Newell and Simon (1972). The representations in question reduce the cognitive load of such searches, clarify the structure of the problem spaces that need to be searched, and make certain moves in the problem spaces more immediate. We invoke Gentner's (1983) theory of structure mapping to explain how these advantages are attained. We also examine several characteristic pitfalls of representations in this style.     

Developing conceptual understanding in ray optics via learning with multiple representations

A particular difficulty in physics learning is the fact that pupils’ “intuitive” concepts are often resistant to instruction. This article reports empirical results from two related studies within an interdisciplinary project of physics education and educational psychology in ray optics. Two different kinds of treatment groups (TG A and TG B), both targeted at widespread pupils’ intuitive concepts (N?=?511), were compared with the results of a control group (CG C) learning with conventional tasks (N?=?218) provided by a related study II. Pupils in TG A) of study I worked on cognitively activating tasks related to widespread intuitive concepts in ray optics explicitly requiring them to deal with multiple representations. Pupils in the TG B) of study I worked on the same intuitive concepts, but without the cognitively activating representational component. TG A) and B) were compared with each other and with CG C) learning with conventional tasks. The results indicated that tasks addressing widespread intuitive pupils’ concepts improved conceptual understanding significantly more than conventional tasks. There was evidence of a significant intermediate effect showing medium-term stability.