Science education researchers agree about the importance of evidence in science practices such as argumentation. Yet, disagreements and ambiguities about what counts as "evidence" in science classrooms pervade the literature. We argue that these ambiguities and disagreements can be viewed as falling along three fault lines: (i) the…

Background: While there has been increasing recognition of the importance of attending to students' views about what counts as knowing and learning a STEM field, surveys that measure these "epistemological" beliefs are often used in ways that implicitly assume the fields, e.g., "physics," to be a single domain about which…

Evidence from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience suggests that cognition and emotions are coupled. Education researchers have also documented correlations between emotions (such as joy, anxiety, fear, curiosity, boredom) and academic performance. Nonetheless, most research on students' reasoning and conceptual change within the…

Problem solving in groups can be rich with tension for students. This tension may arise from conflicting approaches (conceptual and/or epistemological) and/or from conflict emerging in the social relations among group members. Drawing on video records of undergraduate students working collaboratively, we use three cases to illustrate the…

Background: Students' identities and sense of belonging in a program affect whether they stay in engineering. Research suggests that students' ways of knowing and beliefs about what counts as knowing and learning -- their personal epistemologies -- can be aspects of their identities, or sense of self as knowers and learners. Purpose/Hypothesis:…

Students' epistemological views about biology--their ideas about what "counts" as learning and understanding biology--play a role in how they approach their courses and respond to reforms. As introductory biology courses incorporate more physics and quantitative reasoning, student attitudes about the role of equations in biology become…

This study investigates how elite Turkish high school physics students claim to approach learning physics when they are simultaneously (i) engaged in a curriculum that led to significant gains in their epistemological sophistication and (ii) subject to a high-stakes college entrance exam. Students reported taking surface (rote) approaches to…

This study explored how researchers' views about the form of students' epistemologies influence how the researchers develop and refine surveys and how they interpret survey results. After running standard statistical analyses on 505 physics students' responses to the Turkish version of the Maryland Physics Expectations-II survey, probing students'…

Researchers have argued against deficit-based explanations of students' difficulties with mathematical sense-making, pointing instead to factors such as epistemology. Students' beliefs about knowledge and learning can hinder the activation and integration of productive knowledge they have. Such explanations, however, risk falling into a…

Some researchers, including B. K. Hofer and P. R. Pintrich (1997) and W. A. Sandoval (2005), argue for defining "personal epistemology" as views about the nature of knowledge and knowing but not views about the nature of learning. Others continue using a more expansive definition of "personal epistemology" that includes views about learning. I…

Questions the scientific community's consensus on the epistemological sophistication concerning scientific knowledge. Argues for a distinction between correctness and productivity of an epistemological stance and against certain blanket generalizations about the nature of knowledge and learning that do not attend to context. (Author/MM)

Explains the effect of students' epistemological beliefs on their approach to physics courses. Discusses instructional practices and curricular elements suitable for both college and high school that help students develop substantially more sophisticated beliefs about knowledge and learning as measured by the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey…

Most research on personal epistemologies has conceived them as made up of relatively large, coherent, and stable cognitive structures, either developmental stages or beliefs (perhaps organized into theories). Recent work has challenged these views, arguing that personal epistemologies are better understood as made up of finer grained cognitive…

Explores connections between naive epistemology and everyday instructional practice. Reviews examples of naive epistemologies as made up of fine-grained, context-sensitive resources. Presents strategies designed to help students tap those resources for learning introductory physics. Reflects on this work as an example of interplay between two…