On the benefits of ‘doing science’: Does integrative writing about scientific controversies foster epistemic beliefs?

Rosman, Tom; Mayer, Anne‐Kathrin; Merk, Samuel; Kerwer, Martin

doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2019.02.007

Cited by 22 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…A qualitative assessment of evaluativism (e.g., by means of interviews; Greene and Yu, 2014) circumvents the issue, but is, obviously, not feasible in a large-scale online study. Another promising alternative would be scenario-based assessments (e.g., participants read a scenario depicting some scientific controversy, followed by Likert-scale items assessing their thoughts on the controversy; Barzilai and Weinstock, 2015;Rosman et al, 2019). However, such scenario-based assessments are usually topic-specific (i.e., they measure students' beliefs regarding the topic specified in the scenario) and are very hard to transfer to the context of an entire discipline.…”

Section: Interindividual Perspective: Differences In Epistemic Beliefmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As outlined earlier, we therefore did not include an evaluativism measure, which doubtlessly constitutes another limitation of our study. The latter two issues might be tackled by scenario-based assessments that include evaluativism (e.g., Barzilai and Weinstock, 2015;Rosman et al, 2019;Iordanou et al, 2019), or through qualitative interviews and analyses of trace data (e.g., Greene and Yu, 2014). Such instruments, however, are not easily adapted for different disciplines, which is why we chose an established and reliable discipline-specific self-report instrument.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Combining Intra- and Interindividual Approaches in Epistemic Beliefs Research

2020

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We combined inter-and intraindividual approaches to investigate university students' biology-and psychology-specific specific epistemic beliefs (beliefs about the nature and structure of knowledge). We expected that university students would perceive the discipline of biology as more absolute and less multiplistic than the discipline of psychology (intraindividual perspective). Furthermore, we expected students from socalled "hard" disciplines to perceive biology as more absolute and less multiplistic than students from soft disciplines (interindividual perspective). Finally, we expected that students from hard disciplines, compared to their peers from soft disciplines, would perceive stronger differences between biology and psychology (combined perspective). Hypotheses were tested, using Bayes factors, in N = 938 university students from a multitude of disciplines. Results revealed that university students perceive biology as considerably more absolute and less multiplistic compared to psychology. However, the findings also suggest that there are no strong interindividual differences between students from hard and soft disciplines regarding the perception of biology. Finally, results revealed that students enrolled in harder disciplines perceive a slightly stronger difference between biology and psychology. In sum, intraindividual effects were considerably stronger, which elicits doubt that students from hard disciplines espouse a fundamentally different set of epistemic beliefs than their peers from soft disciplines.

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Section: Interindividual Perspective: Differences In Epistemic Beliefmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining Intra- and Interindividual Approaches in Epistemic Beliefs Research

2020

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“…Epistemic beliefs according to Kuhn's model were assessed by the FREE-GST and the FREE-EDPSY at each measurement occasion. Both instruments were derived from the scenario-based German FREE questionnaire (Krettenauer, 2005) where the FREE-GST takes a topic-specific perspective (i.e., gender-stereotype discrimination in secondary schools), while the FREE-EDPSY focuses on the domain of educational psychology (Rosman et al, 2019). To define the scope of each questionnaire, controversial positions on the topic or domain under investigation are introduced, and subsequently, 15 statements are presented to which agreement is assessed on a 6-point Likert scale.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each of those statements either belongs to absolutism, multiplism, or evaluativism (sample item for multiplism: 'In educational research, scientists interpret their findings based on their personal opinion'; cf. Rosman et al, 2019). Advanced beliefs can be directly assessed by the D-Index (Krettenauer, 2005).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, its intervention concept must be in line with our epistemic volition intervention's aim of reducing absolute and multiplistic beliefs (i.e., and not absolute beliefs only) while strengthening evaluativism. For this endeavour, we built upon prior efforts by Rosman and colleagues (Rosman & Mayer, 2018;Rosman, Mayer, Merk, & Kerwer, 2019; and refined their resolvable controversies approach to fit our needs. This approach confronts students with apparently conflicting information on a socioscientific issue (gender stereotyping and discrimination in secondary schools).…”

Section: Resolvable Controversies Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Disentangling the process of epistemic change: The role of epistemic volition

Kerwer

Rosman

Wedderhoff

et al. 2020

Brit J of Edu Psychol

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Background. Many interventions on epistemic beliefs (i.e., individual beliefs about knowledge and knowing) are based on Bendixen and Rule's Integrative Model for Personal Epistemology Development. Empirically, however, the model is still insufficiently validated. This is especially true for its epistemic volition componenta will or desire to actively change one's beliefs. Aims. To experimentally scrutinize the role of epistemic volition, we investigated (incremental) effects on epistemic change of an epistemic volition intervention. Sample. 412 psychology students enrolled at German universities completed the study. Methods. We employed a randomized pre-post design with three experimental groups that differed in the administered epistemic volition and resolvable controversies interventions. The purpose of the latter was to initiate an epistemic change process, thereby laying the foundation for the epistemic volition intervention. Both data collection and interventions were conducted online. In addition to self-report measures, we applied a complementary source evaluation task to analyse epistemic change. Results. Even though we found small-to medium-sized changes in epistemic beliefs, these changes did not differ between experimental conditions. Exploratory analyses suggested, however, that source evaluation task performance might have been promoted by the epistemic volition intervention and thatacross experimental groupsmanipulation check measures on both interventions interacted positively. Conclusion. Ultimately, we failed to separate the effects that our epistemic volition intervention had on epistemic change from these of the resolvable controversies intervention. Nonetheless, our study makes some strong contributions toand interconnectsthe growing bodies of research on epistemic change and multiple source use. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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University students’ beliefs about science and their relationship with knowledge about science

Schoor

2023

Eur J Psychol Educ

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Science and personal experiences in some cases seem to be two different ways of knowledge justification. The current “post-truth” era is characterized by a rise of personal beliefs and justifications. In order to address these phenomena from a perspective of beliefs, several constructs may be considered: Beliefs about the utility of science and of personal experiences, trust in science, and epistemic beliefs. Despite some research addressing each belief’s independent relation to information seeking behavior, we do not know much about the interrelationship of these beliefs. To address this research gap and to explore whether knowledge about how science works is related to these beliefs, a paper–pencil study with 315 university students of psychology, education, and teacher education was conducted. There was a high positive relationship of trust in science with justification-by-authority beliefs, and medium negative relationships of trust in science with uncertainty beliefs and personal-justification beliefs. Trust in science was positively related to the perceived utility of science. Epistemic beliefs were also related to utility beliefs. The number of methods courses taken and knowledge about how science works was related to trust in science and epistemic beliefs, but not to utility of science or utility of personal experiences. It is concluded that we should revisit our conceptualization of epistemic beliefs in the context of “post-truth”.

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On the benefits of ‘doing science’: Does integrative writing about scientific controversies foster epistemic beliefs?

Cited by 22 publications

References 60 publications

Combining Intra- and Interindividual Approaches in Epistemic Beliefs Research

Combining Intra- and Interindividual Approaches in Epistemic Beliefs Research

Disentangling the process of epistemic change: The role of epistemic volition

University students’ beliefs about science and their relationship with knowledge about science

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