Relations of epistemic beliefs with motivation, achievement, and aspirations in science: Generalizability across 72 societies.

Abstract

The proliferation of information and divergent viewpoints in the 21st century requires an educated citizenry with the ability to critically evaluate information and make informed decisions. To meet this demand, adaptive epistemic understandings and beliefs about the nature of knowledge are needed, such as believing that scientific knowledge is evolving (development of knowledge) and needs to be justified through experimentation (justification of knowledge). Our study is the first to use nationally representative samples from 72 countries/regions (PISA 2015 database; N = 514,119 students) to examine how scientific epistemic beliefs about development and justification of knowledge in science are associated with students' science motivation, achievement, and career aspirations in the STEM fields, as well as the cross-national generalizability of these relations. Results showed that (a) students who had more adaptive beliefs about knowledge being changeable and stemming from experimentation were likely to have high science self-efficacy, utility value, and particularly high intrinsic value; (b) epistemic beliefs were more strongly linked to science achievement than were motivational constructs; (c) the positive relation between epistemic beliefs and STEM-related career aspirations was largely explained by motivation and achievement; (d) the pattern of results generalized well across societies. Our findings suggest that epistemic beliefs are substantially positively associated with adolescents' science learning, implying that developing effective interventions that focus on development and justification of knowledge would be fruitful for promoting science educational outcomes. Educational Impact and Implications StatementHolding adaptive epistemic beliefs about the nature of scientific knowledge is critical in distinguishing accurate and useful information from diverse, less trustworthy sources in the digital era. Based on data from more than half a million 15-year-old students from 72 countries/regions, we found that adolescents with more adaptive epistemic beliefs tend to have higher science achievement, feel more self-efficacious, be more intrinsically and extrinsically motivated to engage in science learning, and have higher aspirations to pursue a STEM-related career. Notably, epistemic beliefs are more strongly linked to science achievement than are motivational constructs. Consistent patterns across societies suggest that preparing students for 21st century challenges will require policy initiatives that ensure epistemic cognition is a core component of science education and scientific literacy.

Who Makes an Effort? A Person-Centered Examination of Motivation and Beliefs as Predictors of Students’ Effort and Performance on the PISA 2015 Science Assessment

“…Even if all indicators were positively and significantly correlated with science performance, the relationship between instrumental motivation and performance was the weakest, while the strongest relationship with performance was observed for the epistemic beliefs. Overall, descriptive results are rather well in line with what previous research has shown (e.g., Guo et al, 2021).…”

“…In the official reports from PISA 2015, the 6 items intended to assess students' epistemic beliefs are treated as indicators of a single latent variable (e.g., OECD, 2016). However, the formulations adhere closely to the two commonly used epistemic belief dimensions justification and development, as is noted by, for example, Guo et al (2021). Like we did in the present study, Guo et al used CFA to inform their decisions whether to keep the two dimensions separate or combine them into a single dimension and they concluded that the high correlation between the two epistemic belief factors (r 0.83) justified a merger of the two.…”

Meta-Analyzing Individual Participant Data From Studies With Complex Survey Designs: A Tutorial on Using the Two-Stage Approach for Data From Educational Large-Scale Assessments

“…Such research opportunities involve in-depth meta-analyses of policy-relevant subgroups, for example, to provide reliable empirical evidence of the consistency and generalizability of the magnitude of gender differences among top-performing students (i.e., the top 5%) in mathematics (Keller et al, 2021). Likewise, IPD meta-analyses of ELSAs allow researchers to examine the generalizability of (novel) theoretical propositions across countries, for example, to test predictions about nonlinear relationships between achievement and academic self-concepts (Keller et al, 2020), relationships between innovative school environments and teaching practices (Blömeke et al, 2021), relationships between epistemic beliefs and educational outcomes in science (Guo et al, 2021), year-in-school effects on academic selfconcept (Marsh, 2016), or, as we illustrate in the present paper, how gender differences in students' achievement are moderated by their SES (see Else-Quest & Hyde, 2016).…”

A meta-analytic review of the associations between dimensions of religious coping and psychological symptoms during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Islam and Hinduism are the second and third most widely practiced religions, respectively, and are the dominant religions in many non-Western countries in the Middle East and Asia ( 57 , 58 ). In addition to the dominant religion, there are also vast between-country variations in the extent of national religiosity, which reflects the overall level of religiosity of the residents of a country ( 59 ). National religiosity comprises the key components of religious affiliation, attendance of religious activities, and religious beliefs ( 60 , 61 ).…”