Affiliation:
1. Eötvös Loránd University Institute of Business Economics, , Budapest, Hungary
Abstract
Few people would argue that beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the nature and process of knowing are not relevant for learners as well as teachers of physics. Personal beliefs about learning and knowledge have long been suspected to have important implications for learning and teaching, but there are various, potentially conflicting ways to approach epistemic or epistemological beliefs. After an Introduction, Sec. 11.2 gives an historical and methodological overview of changes in research focus and tools, discussing developmental approaches (Fisher, Perry, Kitchener, and King) as well as multi-dimensional ones (Schommer, Hofer, Pintrich, etc.), and physics-specific applications. With the quick disciplinarization of educational science, the partial uptake of various trends in developmental and cognitive psychology, repeated attempts have been made to refashion the concept of “epistemic beliefs” or to streamline an already proposed construct. Although the developmental and the dimensional research traditions advanced methodologically for over a generation, it remains debated what pertains to epistemologically relevant beliefs and how to measure them. Section 11.3 considers some foundational issues that remain unresolved partly due to ontological, epistemological, and methodological questions. Starting with conceptual issues, followed by a discussion of the experimenter's regress the section lists various factors influencing research before an analysis of some of the measurement tools, including questionnaire-items with Likert-scale. Section 11.4 lists further potential avenues for research.
Publisher
AIP Publishing LLCMelville, New York