This study explored the effects of explicit and implicit epistemologically enhanced instructions probing 9th-grade students' personal epistemologies on their physics-related personal epistemology (PPE) and physics achievement in the heat and temperature unit. In the implicit epistemologically enhanced instruction (IEEI), different dimensions of…

Researchers in science education lacks valid and reliable instruments to assess students' "disciplinary" and "epistemic" reading of scientific texts. The main purpose of this study was to develop and validate a Reading in Science Holistic Assessment (RISHA) to assess students' holistic reading of scientific texts. RISHA…

This study examined fostering low-achieving students' epistemic understanding of discourse in knowledge building classrooms using video-based visual learning analytics. The participants were two Grade 9 visual arts classes of low-achieving students. The experimental class (n = 33) engaged in a knowledge building classroom supported by video-based…

This study examined students' understanding of, and reflective inquiry into discourse, specifically their epistemic discourse understanding and meta-discourse, and investigated their roles and relationships in fostering productive inquiry in knowledge building. The participants comprised two classes of ninth grade visual arts students inquiring…

Knowledge Building is a pedagogical approach that emphasizes students' collective responsibility to continuously improve their community knowledge. Advancing the frontiers of community knowledge is an exciting but challenging process, especially for low-achieving students, because it involves a continuous experience of cognitive disequilibrium and…

Epistemological beliefs (EB) play a vital role in students' performance (Buehl & Alexander, 2001, 2006; Fives & Buehl, 2004; Lodewyk, 2007). The paper was designed to examine the relationship between students' EB about the Mathematics curriculum and their academic achievement (marks) at the secondary level. Eight hundred and ten…

This paper illustrates the role of metalanguage in an explicit literacy instruction to talk about the forms and functions of scientific genres, particularly the genre of explanation. In the context of science, metalanguage refers to the technical terms for talking "about" scientific language using words like law, hypothesis, and…

Background: South Africa's "Language-in-Education Policy" (LiEP) provides for bi/multilingual education, but schools are only supported to choose monolingual English language policies from Grade 4 and ignore the learners' home language or languages as resources for learning. Many teachers translanguage orally, using the learners' home…

This study was designed to develop an assessment tool to measure high school students' personal epistemology (PE) in the physics domain by using validation processes. Based on theoretical foundations of PE, the PPEQ was conceptualised on six hypothetical dimensions: structure of knowledge [SK], justification of knowledge and knowing [JK],…

This article is based on the assumption that indigenous communities have a capacity to generate knowledge, and this capacity is largely underutilized or peripheralized in mainstream research. In this empirical qualitative study, the author makes a case for employing local non-Western analytic tools, in addition to Western analytic tools, to…

According to our approach to mathematics education, the optimal aim of the teaching of mathematics is to assist students in achieving efficient mathematical work. But, what does efficient exactly mean in that case? And how can teachers reach this objective? The model of Mathematical Working Spaces with its three dimensions--semiotic, instrumental,…

In 1820 the Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism by his famous wire-compass experiment. Ørsted was one of the foremost scientists of the nineteenth century, and he was also one of the leading figures in Denmark in the 19th century with a vital influence in the fields of aesthetics,…

Learning to integrate multiple information sources is vital for advancing learners' digital literacy. Previous studies have found that learners' epistemic metacognitive knowledge about the nature of knowledge and knowing is related to their strategic integration performance. The purpose of this study was to understand how these relations come into…

This article exemplifies how assessment design might be grounded in theory, thereby helping to strengthen validity claims. Spanning work across multiple related projects, the article first briefly summarizes an assessment system model for the elementary and secondary levels. Next the article describes how cognitive-domain theory and principles are…

Research has found students' epistemic beliefs to predict their achievement goal orientations. Much of this research emerged from the dimensional approach of epistemic beliefs, which hypothesized a relationship between particular independent dimensions of epistemic beliefs with different achievement goals. Research in this approach has primarily…