Exploring the relations between epistemic beliefs,emotions, and learning from texts

Conflicting claims about important socio-scientific debates are proliferating in contemporary society. It is therefore important to understand the individual characteristics that predict learning from conflicting claims. We explored individuals’ beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing (i.e., epistemic beliefs) and their emotions as potentially interrelated sets of learner characteristics that predict learning in such contexts. Undergraduate university students (N = 282) self-reported their topic-specific epistemic beliefs and were given three conflicting texts about climate change to read. Immediately after each of the three texts, participants self-reported the emotions they experienced. Following reading and self-report, participants wrote summaries of the conflicting texts. Text-mining and human coding were applied to summaries to construct two indices of learning from conflicting texts that reflected which source’s information is privileged in memory. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that epistemic beliefs were consistent in their predictions of emotions, which in turn variously predicted different learning outcomes. In particular, a belief that knowledge is justified by inquiry predicted surprise and curiosity, which at times facilitated learning. In contrast, confusion, predicted by passive reliance on external sources, related to impaired memory of conflicting content. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed for research on the relations between epistemic beliefs, emotions, and learning about controversial topics.     

Triangulation of language assessment modes: learning benefits and socio-cognitive prospects

An experimental design was adopted in the present study to cross-compare the effect of two formative assessments, namely peer assessment (PA) and teacher assessment (TA), with summative assessment (SA) on the improvement of language learners’ writing skill and self-efficacy. Writing excellence was operationalized by structural (grammar), lexical (word choice), and discoursal (cohesion and coherence) well-formedness. Furthermore, focused group interview was run to elicit the learners' attitudes and preferences toward type of assessment. Three cohorts of proficiency-matched language learners sat for a semester-long experimentation (20 sessions × 90 min = 30 h) and three testing sessions. The results revealed that PA group significantly improved in the writing skill, but TA and SA groups did not. Self-efficacy was not enhanced in any of the assessment groups under study. The interviews and follow-up member checkings indicated that the pupils did not have positive attitudes toward PA and preferred TA. Among the sources of this disfavor, they referred to misunderstanding, lack of knowledge or attention, tiredness, poor handwriting of the assesse, shyness, friendship bias, and even feeling not qualified enough to judge their peers’ tasks. Overall, then, the study reported a mismatch between the students’ actual performance and attitudinal beliefs under different assessment conditions, implying that (a) Iranian students are more inclined toward teacher-dominated pedagogies and (b) triangulation of assessment modes provides more reliable optimal results.     

Pre-service teachers’ episodic memories of classroom management

This study focused on past excellent teachers’ classroom management strategies from the perspective of 148 pre-service teachers. The purpose of the study was to examine how pre-service teachers’ memories reflect classroom management models that are typically taught in teacher education coursework prior to their study of those models, as well as to explore memories that did not fit a particular model. Results indicated that pre-service teachers related episodes that clustered on establishing rules, but were less likely to relate experiences based on other strategies such as withitness, smooth transitions, or formal classroom meetings. Implications for teacher education are explored.     

Epistemic beliefs in action: Spontaneous reflections about knowledge and knowing during online information searching and their influence on learning

In the present study it was investigated whether high school students are spontaneously able to reflect epistemologically during online searching for information about a controversial topic. In addition, we examined whether activating epistemic beliefs is related to individual characteristics, such as prior knowledge of the topic and argumentative reasoning skill; also whether learning from the Web is influenced by epistemic beliefs in action and the ability to detect fallacies in arguments. The participants (N = 64) were students of Grade 13, who were asked to think aloud during navigation. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed. Findings reveal that most participants spontaneously activated beliefs about all four dimensions identified in the literature, that is, about the simplicity/complexity, certainty/uncertainty, justification, and source of knowledge, at different levels of sophistication. Most epistemic reflections were about the source of knowledge. Two patterns of contextualized epistemic beliefs emerged and significantly influenced learning from the Web, which was also affected by participants' ability to identify argumentative fallacies.     

The cross-lagged relations between children’s academic skill development, task-avoidance, and parental beliefs about success

This longitudinal study investigated the cross-lagged associations between children’s academic skill development, task-avoidant behaviour in the context of homework, and parental beliefs about their child’s success from kindergarten to Grade 2. The participants were 1267 children. The children’s pre-skills were assessed at the end of the kindergarten year, and math and reading skills at the end of Grade 1 and Grade 2. Parents provided ratings of their beliefs about their children’s school success and task-avoidant behaviour with regard to homework at the end of Grades 1 and 2. The results showed that children’s math and reading skills predicted children’s task-avoidant behaviour regarding homework as rated by mothers, but not by fathers, when autoregressive effects were taken into account. In addition, task-avoidant behaviour predicted the mothers’ subsequent beliefs about their children’s school success but not vice versa. A reciprocal effect was found between fathers’ beliefs about success and children’s task-avoidance.     

农村妇女宗教信仰的特点及其生成机制——以九江县G镇H村为例

宗教信仰是农村社会的一种普遍现象,拜神是其最基本的形式。农村妇女的宗教信仰呈现出盲目性、功利性和多元性等特点,这些特点的形成既有社会、历史的因素,又有个人的因素。而留守妇女作为农村妇女中的特殊群体,其宗教信仰既有着一般农村妇女宗教信仰的共性,又在宗教诉求内容等方面表现出自己独有的特点。     

宗教、社会与权力关系——“宗教市场论”的社会学解读

以斯达克等为代表的宗教市场论自其诞生以来就受到学界的广泛关注,该理论在备受诟病的同时,也颠覆了宗教世俗化理论的固有范式,开启了当代宗教社会学研究的新视野。就宏观层次而言,斯达克的宗教市场论是一独特的宗教结构论,它不仅对宗教现象和宗教活动展开分析,同时也涉及到宗教与个体信仰、国家、社会、政治等相互之间多重复杂的互动关系。可以认为,宗教市场论新范式为当代学界研究中国宗教现象提供了一个全新的理论视角,刺激了更多的学者来推动中国宗教社会学的实证研究,以获取丰富数据和事实来检验宗教市场论的命题在中国情境中的适用性。同时,宗教市场论亦可为宗教管理当局和宗教组织提供有益借鉴,为宗教管理方式和宗教发展思路开拓一个新的途径。     

Teachers' Voices in the Context of Higher Education Reforms in Armenia

In this article, teachers' sense-making and reasoning about higher education reforms in a post Soviet country, namely Armenia, are examined using an analytical framework with six sensitising concepts: beliefs, emotions, attitudes, change knowledge, attributions and organisational culture. The results of semi-structured interviews with 12 Armenian higher education teachers showed that they mainly felt distrust towards reforms and that the implementation initiatives caused dissatisfaction, frustration and therefore distortion. At a deeper level, the teachers mostly felt excluded from the reform process and that their role was depreciated. One striking feature was the predominant causal attribution of teachers to external, unstable and uncontrollable factors which question the success of the reforms.     

Turkish elementary student teachers’ epistemological beliefs and moral reasoning

The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationships among Turkish elementary student teachers’ epistemological beliefs and moral reasoning, and to determine which types of epistemological beliefs elementary student teachers exhibit. The findings of the present study demonstrated that epistemological beliefs did not make a unique contribution to moral reasoning and student teachers’ epistemological beliefs developed as more or less independent beliefs. The factor analyses results suggest that multidimensional theory is more appropriate than unidimensional theory in explaining student teachers’ epistemological beliefs.     

转型时期我国民间信仰问题研究述评

学术界对我国民间信仰问题的研究非常活跃,主要围绕民间信仰概念、功能及对策而展开。在基本认同民间信仰特征的基础上,对民间信仰概念、功能和对策均存在较大分歧。虽然研究成果丰富,但也存在明显不足。