Epistemology and Networking Theories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kidron, Ivy

2016-01-01

A theoretical reflection on epistemology is presented. The important role of epistemological analysis in research in mathematics education is discussed. I analyze the epistemological evolution as a consequence of the changes in the mathematical culture and demonstrate how the epistemological analysis is tightly linked to the cultural dimension.…

Personal Epistemology of Urban Elementary School Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pearrow, Melissa; Sanchez, William

2008-01-01

Personal epistemology, originating from social construction theory, provides a framework for researchers to understand how individuals view their world. The Attitudes About Reality (AAR) scale is one survey method that qualitatively assesses personal epistemology along the logical positivist and social constructionist continuum; however, the…

Epistemological undercurrents in scientists' reporting of research to teachers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Glasson, George E.; Bentley, Michael L.

2000-07-01

Our investigation focused upon how scientists, from both a practical and epistemological perspective, communicated the nature and relevance of their research to classroom teachers. Six scientists were observed during presentations of cutting-edge research at a conference for science teachers. Following the conference, these scientists were interviewed to discern how each perceived the nature of science, technology, and society in relation to his particular research. Data were analyzed to determine the congruence and/or dissimilarity in how scientists described their research to teachers and how they viewed their research epistemologically. We found that a wide array of scientific methodologies and research protocols were presented and that all the scientists expressed links between their research and science-technology-society (STS) issues. When describing their research during interviews, the scientists from traditional content disciplines reflected a strong commitment to empiricism and experimental design, whereas engineers from applied sciences were more focused on problem-solving. Implicit in the data was a commitment to objectivity and the tacit assumption that science may be free of values and ethical assumptions. More dialogue is recommended between the scientific community, science educators, and historians/philosophers of science about the nature of science, STS, and curriculum issues.

Epistemology and Science Education: A Study of Epistemological Views of Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Apostolou, Alexandros; Koulaidis, Vasilis

2010-01-01

The aim of this paper is to study the epistemological views of science teachers for the following epistemological issues: scientific method, demarcation of scientific knowledge, change of scientific knowledge and the status of scientific knowledge. Teachers' views for each one of these epistemological questions were investigated during…

Exploring the Intersections of Personal Epistemology, Public Epistemology, and Affect

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lising, Laura J.

2007-11-01

This paper discusses an approach to exploring the divide between students' stances toward their own learning and their perceptions of what is productive for the scientific community (sometimes called "personal epistemology" and "public epistemology"). The possible relationship between this divide and students' science- and course-related affect (e.g. preferences, motivation, emotions) will also be discussed. Previous research and theory indicate certain methodological considerations in study design and analysis, particularly attention to survey context, both with respect to attempting to tease apart epistemology from course expectations, and in considering differences between stated and enacted epistemologies and, similarly, beliefs vs. resources. A survey instrument designed to explore personal/public epistemology splits and affective variables will be described and preliminary results will be presented.

Practical Applications of the Research on Epistemological Beliefs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nist, Sherrie L.; Holschuh, Jodi Patrick

2005-01-01

Theories of epistemological beliefs focus on individuals' perceptions about what knowledge is and where knowledge comes from. These beliefs are part of, and may in fact direct, the cognitive processes involved in learning. Research stemming from these theories offers varied explanations as to how beliefs relate to student learning and academic…

Prospective Elemantary Science Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Macaroglu Akgul, Esra; Oztuna Kaplan, Aysun

2009-01-01

This research study examined "prospective elementary science teachers' epistemological beliefs". Forty-nine prospective elementary science teachers participated into research. The research was designed in both quantitative and qualitative manner, within the context of "Special Methods in Science Teaching I" course.…

Preservice Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology: A Mixed Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Topcu, Mustafa Sami

2013-01-01

The purposes of the study were to assess preservice teachers' domain-specific epistemological beliefs and to investigate whether preservice teachers distinguish disciplinary differences (physics, chemistry, and biology) in domain-specific epistemological beliefs. Mixed-method research design guided the present research. The researcher explored…

Epistemological Separation of Research and Teaching among Graduate Teaching Assistants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kinchin, Ian Miles; Hatzipanagos, Stylianos; Turner, Nancy

2009-01-01

Development of a more scholarly approach to teaching at university may expose the novice university teacher to an apparent conflict in belief systems about teaching and learning (i.e. epistemological beliefs). Educational research is explicit in its recognition of a constructivist framework, whilst other academic research is often embedded more…

But…What about My Epistemological Foundations?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Curin, Raquel Isabel Barrera

2015-01-01

At one time or another, all researchers in mathematics education must face the rather complex question of their epistemological foundations. Discussing epistemological foundations naturally leads to a conversation about theories. Theories and epistemological foundations work in a circular fashion: theories can have epistemological foundations and…

Epistemological Development and Judgments and Reasoning about Teaching Methods

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spence, Sarah; Helwig, Charles C.

2013-01-01

Children's, adolescents', and adults' (N = 96 7-8, 10-11, and 13-14-year-olds and university students) epistemological development and its relation to judgments and reasoning about teaching methods was examined. The domain (scientific or moral), nature of the topic (controversial or noncontroversial), and teaching method (direct instruction by…

Educational Research in Palestine: Epistemological and Cultural Challenges--A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Khalifah, Ayman A.

2010-01-01

This study investigates the prevailing epistemological and cultural conditions that underlie educational research in Palestine. Using a case study of a major Palestinian University that awards Masters Degrees in Education, the study analyzes the assumptions and the methodology that characterizes current educational research. Using an analysis of…

Epistemological Beliefs in Science: An Exploratory Study of Lebanese University Students' Epistemologies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rizk, Nadya; Jaber, Lama; Halwany, Sarah; BouJaoude, Saouma

2012-01-01

Beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing have been investigated extensively in educational and developmental psychology research. Hofer's framework on personal epistemology is adopted in the present study for assessing Lebanese university students' epistemologies of science. Participants were 213 students in their first year of…

Research on Cognitive Effects of Non-Educational TV: An Epistemological Discussion.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gomez, Guillermo Orozco

This paper makes a critical exploration into the core epistemological assumptions of mainstream television effects research and explains why the mainstream study of the cognitive impact of television on children suffers from two reductionist tendencies, i.e., television is understood by most researchers to be solely a technical medium, and most…

2015 AERA Presidential Address: Morally Engaged Research/ers Dismantling Epistemological Nihilation in the Age of Impunity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

King, Joyce E.

2017-01-01

This article presents Joyce E. King's 2015 AERA presidential address, which artfully combined scholarly discourse with performance elements and diverse voices in several multimedia formats. In discussing morally engaged research/ers dismantling epistemological nihilation, the article advances the argument that the moral stance, solidarity with…

Changing Epistemological Beliefs: The Unexpected Impact of a Short-Term Intervention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kienhues, Dorothe; Bromme, Rainer; Stahl, Elmar

2008-01-01

Background: Previous research has shown that sophisticated epistemological beliefs exert a positive influence on students' learning strategies and learning outcomes. This gives a clear educational relevance to studies on the development of methods for promoting a change in epistemological beliefs and making them more sophisticated. Aims: To…

More than Method?: A Discussion of Paradigm Differences within Mixed Methods Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harrits, Gitte Sommer

2011-01-01

This article challenges the idea that mixed methods research (MMR) constitutes a coherent research paradigm and explores how different research paradigms exist within MMR. Tracing paradigmatic differences at the level of methods, ontology, and epistemology, two MMR strategies are discussed: nested analysis, recently presented by the American…

Epistemological depth in a GM crops controversy.

PubMed

Hicks, Daniel J

2015-04-01

This paper examines the scientific controversy over the yields of genetically modified [GM] crops as a case study in epistemologically deep disagreements. Appeals to "the evidence" are inadequate to resolve such disagreements; not because the interlocutors have radically different metaphysical views (as in cases of incommensurability), but instead because they assume rival epistemological frameworks and so have incompatible views about what kinds of research methods and claims count as evidence. Specifically, I show that, in the yield debate, proponents and opponents of GM crops cite two different sets of claims as evidence, which correspond to two rival epistemological frameworks, classical experimental epistemology and Nancy Cartwright's evidence for use. I go on to argue that, even if both sides of the debate accepted Cartwright's view, they might still disagree over what counts as evidence, because evidence for use ties standards of evidence to what is sometimes called the "context of application." Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

What Future for Educational Research in Europe? Political, Epistemological and Ethical Challenges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grimaldi, Emiliano

2015-01-01

This article reflects on the future of European educational research (EER) and its politics of knowledge. EER is interpreted as a field of power/knowledge, where a hegemonic epistemic framework is raised that assembles an evidence-based epistemology, a "what works" political rationality and a technocratic model of educational research.…

Best research practices in psychology: Illustrating epistemological and pragmatic considerations with the case of relationship science.

PubMed

Finkel, Eli J; Eastwick, Paul W; Reis, Harry T

2015-02-01

In recent years, a robust movement has emerged within psychology to increase the evidentiary value of our science. This movement, which has analogs throughout the empirical sciences, is broad and diverse, but its primary emphasis has been on the reduction of statistical false positives. The present article addresses epistemological and pragmatic issues that we, as a field, must consider as we seek to maximize the scientific value of this movement. Regarding epistemology, this article contrasts the false-positives-reduction (FPR) approach with an alternative, the error balance (EB) approach, which argues that any serious consideration of optimal scientific practice must contend simultaneously with both false-positive and false-negative errors. Regarding pragmatics, the movement has devoted a great deal of attention to issues that frequently arise in laboratory experiments and one-shot survey studies, but it has devoted less attention to issues that frequently arise in intensive and/or longitudinal studies. We illustrate these epistemological and pragmatic considerations with the case of relationship science, one of the many research domains that frequently employ intensive and/or longitudinal methods. Specifically, we examine 6 research prescriptions that can help to reduce false-positive rates: preregistration, prepublication sharing of materials, postpublication sharing of data, close replication, avoiding piecemeal publication, and increasing sample size. For each, we offer concrete guidance not only regarding how researchers can improve their research practices and balance the risk of false-positive and false-negative errors, but also how the movement can capitalize upon insights from research practices within relationship science to make the movement stronger and more inclusive. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

Changing epistemological beliefs: the unexpected impact of a short-term intervention.

PubMed

Kienhues, Dorothe; Bromme, Rainer; Stahl, Elmar

2008-12-01

Previous research has shown that sophisticated epistemological beliefs exert a positive influence on students' learning strategies and learning outcomes. This gives a clear educational relevance to studies on the development of methods for promoting a change in epistemological beliefs and making them more sophisticated. To investigate the potential for influencing domain-specific epistemological beliefs through a short instructional intervention. On the basis of their performance on a preliminary survey of epistemological beliefs, 58 students at a German university (87.7% females) with a mean age of 21.86 years (SD=2.88) were selected. Half of them had more naive beliefs and the other half had more sophisticated ones. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one whose epistemological beliefs were challenged through refutational epistemological instruction or another receiving non-challenging informational instruction. The treatment effect was assessed by comparing pre- and post-instructional scores on two instruments tapping different layers of epistemological beliefs (DEBQ and CAEB). Data were subjected to factor analyses and analyses of variance. According to the CAEB, the naive group receiving the refutational epistemological instruction changed towards a more sophisticated view, whereas the sophisticated students receiving the informational instruction changed towards an unintended, more naive standpoint. According to the DEBQ, all research groups except the naive refutational group revealed changes towards a more naive view. This study indicates the possibility of changing domain-specific epistemological beliefs through a short-term intervention. However, it questions the stability and elaborateness of domain-specific epistemological beliefs, particularly when domain knowledge is shallow.

Current Status of Research in Teaching and Learning Evolution: I. Philosophical/Epistemological Issues

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, Mike U.

2010-06-01

Scholarship that addresses teaching and learning about evolution has rapidly increased in recent years. This review of that scholarship first addresses the philosophical/epistemological issues that impinge on teaching and learning about evolution, including the proper philosophical goals of evolution instruction; the correlational and possibly causal relationships among knowing, understanding, accepting, and believing; and the factors that affect student understanding, acceptance, and/or belief. Second, I summarize the specific epistemological issues involved, including empiricism, naturalism, philosophical vs methodological materialism, science vs religion as non-overlapping magisteria, and science as a way of knowing. Third, the paper critically reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the research tools available to measure the nature of science, epistemological beliefs, and especially the acceptance of evolution. Based on these findings, further research in these areas, especially study of the factors that cause lack of explanatory coherence as well as replications of studies that promise to explain current confusing findings about the interrelationships among student understanding, acceptance, and belief in evolution, are called for. In addition, this review calls for more longitudinal studies to delineate causal connections as well as improved measurement tools.

The Philosophy of Personal Epistemology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holma, Katariina; Hyytinen, Heidi

2015-01-01

In higher education, "personal epistemology" is today a significant research area. Personal epistemology has been seen as promising particularly because it focuses on one of the general learning aims of many contemporary universities, namely, the development of students' creative and critical thinking. The article identifies serious…

Artifact-based reflective interviews for identifying pragmatic epistemological resources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shubert, Christopher Walden

Physics Education Research studies the science of teaching and learning physics. The process of student learning is complex, and the factors that affect it are numerous. Describing students' understanding of physics knowledge and reasoning is the basis for much productive research; however, such research fails to account for certain types of student learning difficulties. In this dissertation, I explore one source of student difficulty: personal epistemology, students' ideas about knowledge and knowing. Epistemology traditionally answers three questions: What is knowledge? How is knowledge created? And, how do we know what we know? An individual's responses to these questions can affect learning in terms of how they approach tasks involving the construction and application of knowledge. The key issue addressed in this dissertation is the effect of methodological choices on the validity and reliability of claims concerning personal epistemology. My central concern is contextual validity, how what is said about one's epistemology is not identical to how one behaves epistemologically. In response to these issues, I present here a new methodology for research on student epistemology: video artifact-based reflective interview protocols. These protocols begin with video taping students in their natural classroom activities, and then asking the participants epistemological questions immediately after watching selected scenes from their activity, contextually anchoring them in their actual learning experience. The data from these interviews is viewed in the framework of Epistemological Resource Theory, a framework of small bits of knowledge whose coordination in a given context is used to describe personal epistemology. I claim that the privileged data from these interviews allows detailed epistemological resources to be identified, and that these resources can provide greater insight into how student epistemologies are applied in learning activities. This research

Students' General and Physics Epistemological Beliefs: A Twofold Phenomenon

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ogan-Bekiroglu, Feral; Sengul-Turgut, Gulsen

2011-01-01

Background: Although research on epistemological beliefs has expanded over the past two decades, there are still some issues that need to be explored, such as whether epistemological beliefs are domain general or domain specific. Purpose: One of the purposes of this research was to determine if high school students' general epistemological beliefs…

Re-Authoring Research Conversations: Beyond Epistemological Differences and toward Transformative Experience for Researchers and Educators

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rowe, Shawn M.

2016-01-01

Common sense and published literature both assert that education research is often dismissed by practitioners on the grounds that it is irrelevant to their work. Some have argued that this is due primarily to a mismatch of professional epistemologies. While agreeing in principle, this work draws on work in sociology (Erving Goffman) and literary…

Epistemological Development in Social Work Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson-Meger, Jennifer

2014-01-01

Epistemological development is an important factor in facilitating learner identity and developing critical thinking aptitudes. This qualitative action research study explored undergraduate social work students' epistemological beliefs about knowledge, how knowledge is constructed, and implications for social work education. Data collection…

Epistemology in Qualitative Social Work Research: A Review of Published Articles, 2008-2010

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gringeri, Christina; Barusch, Amanda; Cambron, Christopher

2013-01-01

This study explores the epistemological foundations of qualitative social work research. A template-based review was completed on 100 articles from social work journals. Reviewers examined five things: (1) the purpose or aims of the research, (2) the rationale or justification for the work, (3) the populations studied, (4) the presence of four…

Postcolonial nursing scholarship: from epistemology to method.

PubMed

Kirkham, Sheryl Reiner; Anderson, Joan M

2002-09-01

Postcolonial theory, with its interpretations of race, racialization, and culture, offers nursing scholarship a set of powerful analytic tools unlike those offered by other nursing and social theories. Building on the foundation established by those who first pointed to the importance of incorporating cultural aspects into nursing care, nursing scholarship is in a position to move forward. Critical perspectives such as postcolonialism equip us to meet the epistemological imperative of giving voice to subjugated knowledges and the social mandates of uncovering existing inequities and addressing the social aspects of health and illness. This article makes a case for the integration of postcolonial perspectives into theorizing and sketches out a research methodology based on the postcolonial tradition.

On the Epistemological Crisis in Genomics

PubMed Central

Dougherty, Edward R

2008-01-01

There is an epistemological crisis in genomics. At issue is what constitutes scientific knowledge in genomic science, or systems biology in general. Does this crisis require a new perspective on knowledge heretofore absent from science or is it merely a matter of interpreting new scientific developments in an existing epistemological framework? This paper discusses the manner in which the experimental method, as developed and understood over recent centuries, leads naturally to a scientific epistemology grounded in an experimental-mathematical duality. It places genomics into this epistemological framework and examines the current situation in genomics. Meaning and the constitution of scientific knowledge are key concerns for genomics, and the nature of the epistemological crisis in genomics depends on how these are understood. PMID:19440447

Educational Research and Policy: Epistemological Considerations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bridges, David; Watts, Michael

2008-01-01

This article is centrally concerned with the sort of knowledge that can and should inform educational policy--and it treats this as an epistemological question. It distinguishes this question from the more extensively explored question of what sort of knowledge in what form policy-makers do in fact commonly take into account. The article examines…

Consistency of Practical and Formal Epistemologies of Science Held by Participants of a Research Apprenticeship

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burgin, Stephen R.; Sadler, Troy D.

2013-01-01

The purpose of this research was to examine the consistency between students' practical and formal understandings of scientific epistemologies (also known as nature of science (NOS) understandings) in the context of a research apprenticeship program. Six high school student participants of a residential summer research apprenticeship program at a…

Epistemology as Ethics in Research and Policy: The Use of Case Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Elliott, John; Lukes, Dominik

2008-01-01

This article examines the ethnographic case study in education in the context of policy making with particular emphasis on the practice of research and policy making. The central claim of the article is that it is impossible to establish a transcendental epistemology of the case study on instrumental rationality. Instead it argues for the notion…

Scholar-Craftsmanship: Question-Type, Epistemology, Culture of Inquiry, and Personality-Type in Dissertation Research Design

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Werner, Thomas P.; Rogers, Katrina S.

2013-01-01

"Scholar-Craftsmanship" (SC) is a quadrant methodological framework created to help social science doctoral students construct first-time dissertation research. The framework brackets and predicts how epistemological domains, cultures of inquiries, personality indicators, and research question--types can be correlated in dissertation…

Epistemology, Sociology, and Learning and Teaching in Physics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sin, Cristina

2014-01-01

This paper explores the relationship between epistemology, sociology, and learning and teaching in physics based on an examination of literature from research in science studies, history and philosophy of science, and physics pedagogic research. It reveals a mismatch between the positivist epistemological foundation which seems to underpin the…

College Student Epistemological Perspectives across Knowledge Domains: A Proposed Grounded Theory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Palmer, Betsy; Marra, Rose M.

2004-01-01

Scholars have studied epistemological development--or how one understands knowledge and knowing--of college students for many years. Research in this domain has included benchmarking studies of epistemological development, examinations of how curricular innovations impact epistemology, and some studies of differences in epistemological development…

Conflicting Epistemologies and Inference in Coupled Human and Natural Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Garcia, M. E.

2017-12-01

Last year, I presented a model that projects per capita water consumption based on changes in price, population, building codes, and water stress salience. This model applied methods from hydrological science and engineering to relationships both within and beyond their traditional scope. Epistemologically, the development of mathematical models of natural or engineered systems is objectivist while research examining relationships between observations, perceptions and action is commonly constructivist or subjectivist. Drawing on multiple epistemologies is common in, and perhaps central to, the growing fields of coupled human and natural systems, and socio-hydrology. Critically, these philosophical perspectives vary in their view of the nature of the system as mechanistic, adaptive or constructed, and the split between aleatory and epistemic uncertainty. Interdisciplinary research is commonly cited as a way to address the critical and domain crossing challenge of sustainability as synthesis across perspectives can offer a more comprehensive view of system dynamics. However, combining methods and concepts from multiple ontologies and epistemologies can introduce contradictions into the logic of inference. These contractions challenge the evaluation of research products and the implications for practical application of research findings are not fully understood. Reflections on the evaluation, application, and generalization of the water consumption model described above are used to ground these broader questions and offer thoughts on the way forward.

Indonesian teachers' epistemological beliefs and inclusive education.

PubMed

Sheehy, Kieron; Budiyanto; Kaye, Helen; Rofiah, Khofidotur

2017-01-01

A growing number of children with intellectual disabilities attend inclusive schools in Indonesia. Previous research has suggested that teachers' type of school and experience influences their beliefs about inclusive education. This research collected questionnaire data from 267 Indonesian teachers and compared the responses from those working in inclusive, special and regular schools regarding their epistemological and pedagogical beliefs. The results showed that teachers in inclusive schools expressed stronger social constructivist beliefs than those in other schools. However, it was teachers' epistemological beliefs, rather than their type of school or experience, which were the significant predictor of their beliefs about inclusive education. The findings suggest that international epistemological research needs to have a more nuanced view of constructivist models of learning to better understand and inform how inclusive pedagogy is being enacted in different contexts.

Multiple Epistemological Coherences in an Eighth-Grade Discussion of the Rock Cycle

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rosenberg, Seth; Hammer, David; Phelan, Jessica

2006-01-01

Research on personal epistemologies (Hofer & Pintrich, 2002) has mostly conceptualized them as stable beliefs or stages of development. On these views, researchers characterize individual students' epistemologies with single, coherent descriptions. Evidence of variability in student epistemologies, however, suggests the need for more complex…

The Epistemological Beliefs of Social Work Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson-Meger, Jennifer I.

2013-01-01

Research has shown that undergraduate students come into social work programs with an epistemological belief system that values personal experience over critical thinking processes. Epistemological development and self-efficacy are important factors to facilitating identity as a learner and developing critical thinking aptitudes. This qualitative,…

Ethics and Epistemology of Big Data.

PubMed

Lipworth, Wendy; Mason, Paul H; Kerridge, Ian

2017-12-01

In this Symposium on the Ethics and Epistemology of Big Data, we present four perspectives on the ways in which the rapid growth in size of research databanks-i.e. their shift into the realm of "big data"-has changed their moral, socio-political, and epistemic status. While there is clearly something different about "big data" databanks, we encourage readers to place the arguments presented in this Symposium in the context of longstanding debates about the ethics, politics, and epistemology of biobank, database, genetic, and epidemiological research.

Moving in Parallel Toward a Modern Modeling Epistemology: Bayes Factors and Frequentist Modeling Methods.

PubMed

Rodgers, Joseph Lee

2016-01-01

The Bayesian-frequentist debate typically portrays these statistical perspectives as opposing views. However, both Bayesian and frequentist statisticians have expanded their epistemological basis away from a singular focus on the null hypothesis, to a broader perspective involving the development and comparison of competing statistical/mathematical models. For frequentists, statistical developments such as structural equation modeling and multilevel modeling have facilitated this transition. For Bayesians, the Bayes factor has facilitated this transition. The Bayes factor is treated in articles within this issue of Multivariate Behavioral Research. The current presentation provides brief commentary on those articles and more extended discussion of the transition toward a modern modeling epistemology. In certain respects, Bayesians and frequentists share common goals.

Examining Epistemological Beliefs of Teacher Candidates According to Various Variables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aslan, Cengiz

2017-01-01

Purpose: Epistemological beliefs of teachers are important factors on their perceptions of subject area and their classroom practices. This research aims to define epistemological beliefs of teacher candidates and investigates whether or not epistemological beliefs change according to teacher candidates' gender, fields of study, year of study, and…

Children's Spirituality: Epistemology and Theory from Various Helping Professions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boynton, Heather Marie

2011-01-01

Children's spirituality is a rising area of importance in research within other helping disciplines, which social work should attend to. Epistemology is an important element of research that is often difficult to discern. This article discusses the different epistemological paradigms and identifies pertinent theories in relation to some of the…

Applied Epistemology and Understanding in Information Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gorichanaz, Tim

2017-01-01

Introduction: Applied epistemology allows information studies to benefit from developments in philosophy. In information studies, epistemic concepts are rarely considered in detail. This paper offers a review of several epistemic concepts, focusing on understanding, as a call for further work in applied epistemology in information studies. Method:…

The Experience of Doctoral Studies in the UK and France: Differences in Epistemology, Research Objects and Training

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chiang, Kuang-Hsu

2011-01-01

This article investigates how doctoral students perceive their research education in different disciplines in two higher education systems, the UK and France. It explores what underlies the diversity of doctoral students' experiences. Three theoretical positions are identified: the epistemological position, conceptualisation of research objects…

An Analysis of the Relationship between Scientific Epistemological Beliefs and Educational Philosophies: A Research on Formation Teacher Candidates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Terzi, Ali Riza; Uyangör, Nihat

2017-01-01

This research explores the relationship between scientific epistemological beliefs and educational philosophies of formation teacher candidates. The research was conducted in the summer pedagogical formation program at Balikesir University of Necatibey Education Faculty during the 2016-17 academic years. The research, conducted with 379 candidate…

The Comparative Studying of Rumi and Bonaventura Mystical Epistemology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aliyari, Farshad; Elmi, Qorban; Alizamani, Amirabbas

2016-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to consider most critical issues of mystical epistemology in Rumi and Bonaventura once the views on subject, reality of the world, and the possibility of knowledge were expressed. This research referring works of Rumi and Bonaventura studies this issue through a descriptive-analytical method. Rumi and Bonaventura…

Introduction: Toward an Understanding of Epistemology and Deafness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paul, Peter V.; Moores, Donald F.

2010-01-01

The major concept of epistemology--or epistemologies--is discussed, as well as related terms such as "paradigm" and "science". Also covered are two broad paradigms, the clinical and the cultural, that seem to drive theorizing, research, and practice regarding individuals who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing. The two paradigms emanate from different…

Understanding Epistemological Development in First- and Second-Year Chemistry Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mazzarone, Kristina M.; Grove, Nathaniel P.

2013-01-01

Epistemological beliefs--a learner's perspective about knowledge and the nature of learning--have been found to play a vital role in learning. Much research has been conducted, both in general and in specific fields, to explore epistemological development in college-aged students; however, little of that research has been done specifically in…

Positioning oneself within an epistemology: refining our thinking about integrative approaches.

PubMed

Dickerson, Victoria C

2010-09-01

Integrative approaches seem to be paramount in the current climate of family therapy and other psychotherapies. However, integration between and among theories and practices can only occur within a specific epistemology. This article makes a distinction between three different epistemologies: individualizing, systems, and poststructural. It then makes the argument that one can integrate theories within epistemologies and one can adopt practices and some theoretical concepts across theories and across epistemologies, but that it is impossible to integrate theories across epistemologies. It further states that although social constructionism has influenced much of contemporary psychological thinking, because of the divergence between a structural and a poststructural approach, constructionism looks different depending upon one's epistemological stance. Examples of integration within epistemologies and of what looks like integration across epistemologies (but is not) further illustrate these important distinctions. The conclusions reached here are crucial to our philosophical considerations, our pedagogical assumptions, and implications for both research and a reflexive clinical practice. 2010 © FPI, Inc.

Feminist approaches to social science: epistemological and methodological tenets.

PubMed

Campbell, R; Wasco, S M

2000-12-01

This paper is a primer for community psychologists on feminist research. Much like the field of community psychology, feminist scholarship is defined by its values and process. Informed by the political ideologies of the 1970s women's movement (liberal, radical, socialist feminism, and womanism), feminist scholars reinterpreted classic concepts in philosophy of science to create feminist epistemologies and methodologies. Feminist epistemologies, such as feminist empiricism, standpoint theory, and postmodernism, recognize women's lived experiences as legitimate sources of knowledge. Feminist methodologies attempt to eradicate sexist bias in research and find ways to capture women's voices that are consistent with feminist ideals. Practically, the process of feminist research is characterized by four primary features: (1) expanding methodologies to include both quantitative and qualitative methods, (2) connecting women for group-level data collection, (3) reducing the hierarchical relationship between researchers and their participants to facilitate trust and disclosure, and (4) recognizing and reflecting upon the emotionality of women's lives. Recommendations for how community psychologists can integrate feminist scholarship into their practice are discussed.

Goal-orientation, epistemological beliefs towards intrinsic motivation among engineering students: A review

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Benlahcene, Abderrahim; Lashari, Sana Anwar; Lashari, Tahira Anwar

2017-08-01

An aspect that has been exhaustively researched in the motivation of the higher education discipline is the engineering students’ process of goal-orientation, epistemological beliefs towards intrinsic motivation. However, the focus of those researchers as commonly the influence of goal orientations and epistemological beliefs on intrinsic motivation; they have not combined the two factors and examined relationships among goal orientation, epistemological beliefs, and intrinsic motivation. Therefore, although there is a plethora of research on the matter in related disciplines, the researchers commonly do not have consensus on a term that could be used to discuss how engineering students are motivation. This paper identifies literature whose characteristics have focused on the concept of motivation. Attempts were made to retrieve related lietarure empirically examined motivation, extrinsic motivation, Goal orientation, Epistemological beliefs, and intrinsic motivation to gain insight information. It is believed that the present study may help educators in organizing content, preparing curriculum, and evaluate student tasks, so that students can begin to develop more mature and effective epistemological beliefs and design their proper goals for their learning process.

Exploring Epistemological Beliefs and Learning Approaches in Context: A Sociocultural Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Phan, Huy P.

2008-01-01

Background: Research investigation into epistemological beliefs and students' approaches to learning (SAL) from a qualitative perspective has been limited to a few studies. In particular, very research has attempted to explore the origin of personal epistemology and its relation with SAL, taking into account the sociocultural background and …

Personal Epistemologies of Statisticians in Academia: An Exploratory Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Diamond, Aurel H.; Stylianides, Andreas J.

2017-01-01

In this exploratory study, we investigated the personal epistemologies of statisticians in academia with the aim of offering some insight into what might be an availing epistemology for learning statistics. Findings from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with six academics in the UK currently researching within the field of statistics showed…

The perpetual search for parsimony: enhancing the epistemological and practical utility of qualitative research findings.

PubMed

Cutcliffe, John R; Harder, Henry G

2009-10-01

While it appears that the term parsimony has been used in the context of qualitative research and qualitative research methodology, there is a distinct absence of writing that actually explores, seeks to define, understand, critique, apply and/or evaluate the concept in qualitative research literature. This paper explores a number of issues pertaining to parsimony in qualitative research. It is the hope of the authors that this paper might raise awareness of the hitherto unexplored issues, stimulate some further interest in these and prompt other qualitative researchers to contribute to the ensuing debate. While there are currently no definitive criteria for determining the parsimony of qualitative research findings, it would be epistemologically inappropriate and philosophically incongruent to import and translate quantitative notions of parsimony. However, the ideas, principles and epistemological functions that parsimony serves can and should be applied to the qualitative paradigm. The authors suggest that more than one type of qualitative parsimony is required. The authors advance the argument that there is a relationship between the degree of parsimony and the elegance, ease of accessibility and straightforwardness (some might say - beauty) of the writing/findings; the level of expertise of the researcher; and the quality of the data collection interview. The authors also assert that there are a number of practices which, when adhered to, can enhance the parsimony of the findings and that here are a number of major implications arising from qualitative findings that lack parsimony.

Epistemological beliefs and epistemological practices in elementary science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kittleson, Julie M.

In this study, I examined the reciprocal relationship between third graders' epistemological beliefs and practices in the context of science instruction. Epistemological beliefs describe students' ideas about the nature of knowledge. Epistemological practices describe how students interact with dimensions of scientific knowledge. Examining the intersection between beliefs and practices involves describing how participating in science learning activities influences and is influenced by ideas about science. To examine beliefs and practices, I used interviews and classroom observations. Interview data were analyzed to ascertain students' ideas about the purpose of science and the justification, certainty, and structure/coherence of scientific knowledge. Additionally, lessons in the FOSS Human Body unit and the STC Chemical Tests unit were video taped. These data were analyzed to examine epistemological practices. Interview and classroom data were used in combination to explore the intersection between beliefs and practices. Students held multifaceted ideas about science. They indicated that science involves description, but they also indicated that science involves generating evidence and drawing conclusions. Students indicated that ideas can change in relation to new evidence. Epistemological practices, in contrast, revealed that the investigation strategies invoked in these units underestimated students' ideas about science. Students used matching strategies to complete investigations. In the Chemical Tests unit, the teacher helped students move beyond matching by introducing the idea of molecules. Students discussed molecules in relation to their empirical investigations, indicating that when elementary students are provided with appropriate scaffolds they can expand their range of practices which also potentially expands their beliefs. Students approached science as a repertoire of tests. They recalled ideas about the purpose of a test in one context and applied

Epistemological Issues in Astronomy Education Research: How Big of a Sample is "Big Enough"?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Slater, Stephanie; Slater, T. F.; Souri, Z.

2012-01-01

As astronomy education research (AER) continues to evolve into a sophisticated enterprise, we must begin to grapple with defining our epistemological parameters. Moreover, as we attempt to make pragmatic use of our findings, we must make a concerted effort to communicate those parameters in a sensible way to the larger astronomical community. One area of much current discussion involves a basic discussion of methodologies, and subsequent sample sizes, that should be considered appropriate for generating knowledge in the field. To address this question, we completed a meta-analysis of nearly 1,000 peer-reviewed studies published in top tier professional journals. Data related to methodologies and sample sizes were collected from "hard science” and "human science” journals to compare the epistemological systems of these two bodies of knowledge. Working back in time from August 2011, the 100 most recent studies reported in each journal were used as a data source: Icarus, ApJ and AJ, NARST, IJSE and SciEd. In addition, data was collected from the 10 most recent AER dissertations, a set of articles determined by the science education community to be the most influential in the field, and the nearly 400 articles used as reference materials for the NRC's Taking Science to School. Analysis indicates these bodies of knowledge have a great deal in common; each relying on a large variety of methodologies, and each building its knowledge through studies that proceed from surprisingly low sample sizes. While both fields publish a small percentage of studies with large sample sizes, the vast majority of top tier publications consist of rich studies of a small number of objects. We conclude that rigor in each field is determined not by a circumscription of methodologies and sample sizes, but by peer judgments that the methods and sample sizes are appropriate to the research question.

Johnny Can Write: Identifying the Epistemological Language of Undergraduate Writers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frye, Matthew Jay

2017-01-01

This dissertation examines the epistemological moves made by Washington State University undergraduates in their general education course writing and during two impromptu writing assessment exams administered by the WSU writing program. It builds from previous interview-based research on epistemological change (Perry, 1998; diSessa, 1993;…

Action-Oriented Research: Models and Methods.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Small, Stephen A.

1995-01-01

Four models of action-oriented research, a research approach that can inform policy and practice, are described: action, participatory, empowerment, and feminism research. Discusses historical roots, epistemological assumptions, agendas, and methodological strategies of each, and presents implications for family researchers. (JPS)

Investigating learners' epistemological framings of quantum mechanics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dini, Vesal

Classical mechanics challenges students to use their intuitions and experiences as a basis for understanding, in effect to approach learning as "a refinement of everyday thinking'' (Einstein, 1936). Moving on to quantum mechanics (QM), students, like physicists, need to adjust this approach, in particular with respect to the roles that intuitive knowledge and mathematics play in the pursuit of coherent understanding (these are adjustments to aspects of their epistemologies). In this dissertation, I explore how some students manage the epistemological transition. I began this work by recruiting both graduate and undergraduate students, interviewing each subject several times as they moved through coursework in QM. The interviews featured, among other things, how students tried to fit ideas together in mutually consistent ways, including with respect to intuitive knowledge, mathematics and experiment, if at all. I modeled these dynamic cognitive processes as different epistemological framings (i.e., tacit, in-the-moment responses to the question "How should I approach knowledge?''). Through detailed qualitative analyses of students' reasoning and a systematic coding of their interviews, I explored how these coherence seeking related framings impacted their learning. The dissertation supports three main findings: (1) students' patterns of epistemological framing are mostly stable within a given course; (2) students who profess epistemologies aligned with the coordination of coherence seeking framings tend to be more stable in demonstrating them; and (3) students aware that their understanding of QM ultimately anchors in its mathematics tend to produce more coherent explanations and perform better in their courses. These findings are consistent with existing research on student epistemologies in QM and imply that epistemologies, in particular whether and how students seek coherence, require greater attention and emphasis in instruction.

Preservice Teachers' Reconciliation of an Epistemological Issue in an Integrated Mathematics/Science Methods Course

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cormas, Peter C.

2017-01-01

Preservice teachers in six sections (n = 87) of a sequenced, methodological and process-integrated elementary mathematics/science methods course were able to reconcile an issue centered on a similar area of epistemology. Preservice teachers participated in a science inquiry lesson on biological classification and a mathematics problem-solving…

Building qualitative study design using nursing's disciplinary epistemology.

PubMed

Thorne, Sally; Stephens, Jennifer; Truant, Tracy

2016-02-01

To discuss the implications of drawing on core nursing knowledge as theoretical scaffolding for qualitative nursing enquiry. Although nurse scholars have been using qualitative methods for decades, much of their methodological direction derives from conventional approaches developed for answering questions in the social sciences. The quality of available knowledge to inform practice can be enhanced through the selection of study design options informed by an appreciation for the nature of nursing knowledge. Discussion paper. Drawing on the body of extant literature dealing with nursing's theoretical and qualitative research traditions, we consider contextual factors that have shaped the application of qualitative research approaches in nursing, including prior attempts to align method with the structure and form of disciplinary knowledge. On this basis, we critically reflect on design considerations that would follow logically from core features associated with a nursing epistemology. The substantive knowledge used by nurses to inform their practice includes both aspects developed at the level of the general and also that which pertains to application in the unique context of the particular. It must be contextually relevant to a fluid and dynamic healthcare environment and adaptable to distinctive patient conditions. Finally, it must align with nursing's moral mandate and action imperative. Qualitative research design components informed by nursing's disciplinary epistemology will help ensure a logical line of reasoning in our enquiries that remains true to the nature and structure of practice knowledge. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Epistemologies, Deafness, Learning, and Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moores, Donald F.

2010-01-01

The study of Deaf epistemologies is in a nascent stage relative to, e.g., the study of feminist or African American epistemologies. It has only recently begun attracting the widespread attention it deserves. The present article addresses Deaf epistemologies as they relate to the sometimes conflicting trends in American society and education. In a…

Introductory Physics Students' Physics and Mathematics Epistemologies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Scanlon, Erin M.

The purpose of this three study dissertation is to investigate why students are enrolled in introductory physics courses experience difficulties in being successful; one possible source of their difficulties is related to their epistemology. In order to investigate students' epistemologies about mathematics and physics, students were observed solving physics problems in groups during a laboratory course (study 1) and while solving physics and mathematics problems individually during office-hour sessions (study 2). The Epistemological Resources theoretical framework was employed (Hammer & Elby, 2002). Using emergent and a priori epistemological resource operationalizations (Jones, 2015), 25 distinct epistemological resources were identified in study 1. Differences in physics epistemological resource usage between students of varying academic background (as measured by their number of previously completed mathematics and science classes were identified. By employing an external (Jones, 2015) and internal (Scanlon, 2016) a priori epistemological resource coding scheme, a total of 17 distinct epistemological resources were identified in study 2. The data were sampled to compare the mathematics and physics epistemological resource usage of participants with consistent and inconsistent sign usage in an energy conservation physics problem in order to provide a meaningful context for discussion. Participants of the same sign usage group employed epistemological resources similarly. Conversely, participants in different groups had significantly different physics epistemological resource usage patterns. Finally, student epistemological resource usage patterns from the first two studies were compared to course outcomes in order to determine implications for practice (study 3). Educators must be aware of and address the epistemological underpinnings of students' difficulties in introductory physics courses.

Epistemological Agency in the Workplace

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Raymond

2006-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report and discuss research that sought to explore how the individually purposeful nature of new employee workplace learning might be understood through its conception as epistemological agency, that is, the personally mediated construction of knowledge. Design/methodology/approach: Using a sociocultural…

Historizing epistemology in psychology.

PubMed

Jovanović, Gordana

2010-12-01

The conflict between the psychometric methodological framework and the particularities of human experiences reported in psychotherapeutic context led Michael Schwarz to raise the question whether psychology is based on a methodological error. I take this conflict as a heuristic tool for the reconstruction of the early history of psychology, which bears witness to similar epistemological conflicts, though the dominant historiography of psychology has largely forgotten alternative conceptions and their valuable insights into complexities of psychic phenomena. In order to work against the historical amnesia in psychology I suggest to look at cultural-historical contexts which decisively shaped epistemological choices in psychology. Instead of keeping epistemology and history of psychology separate, which nurtures individualism and naturalism in psychology, I argue for historizing epistemology and for historical psychology. From such a historically reflected perspective psychology in contemporary world can be approached more critically.

An epistemology of patient safety research: a framework for study design and interpretation. Part 1. Conceptualising and developing interventions.

PubMed

Brown, C; Hofer, T; Johal, A; Thomson, R; Nicholl, J; Franklin, B D; Lilford, R J

2008-06-01

This is the first of a four-part series of articles examining the epistemology of patient safety research. Parts 2 and 3 will describe different study designs and methods of measuring outcomes in the evaluation of patient safety interventions, before Part 4 suggests that "one size does not fit all". Part 1 sets the scene by defining patient safety research as a challenging form of service delivery and organisational research that has to deal (although not exclusively) with some very rare events. It then considers two inter-related ideas: a causal chain that can be used to identify where in an organisation's structure and/or processes an intervention may impact; and the need for preimplementation evaluation of proposed interventions. Finally, the paper outlines the authors' pragmatist ontological stance to patient safety research, which sets the philosophical basis for the remaining three articles.

A Structural and Correlational Analysis of Two Common Measures of Personal Epistemology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laster, Bonnie Bost

2010-01-01

Scope and Method of Study: The current inquiry is a factor analytic study which utilizes first and second order factor analytic methods to examine the internal structures of two measurements of personal epistemological beliefs: the Schommer Epistemological Questionnaire (SEQ) and Epistemic Belief Inventory (EBI). The study also examines the…

Epistemological Beliefs across Cultures: Critique and Analysis of Beliefs Structure Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chan, Kwok-wai; Elliott, Robert G.

2004-01-01

The findings of epistemological beliefs studies in North America, Hong Kong and Taiwan were compared and interpreted in terms of the different cultural contexts and methodologies used in the research studies. Based on cross culture analysis a hypothesis for the structure of epistemological beliefs was proposed. Implications were also drawn for…

Secondary science teachers' use of laboratory activities: Linking epistemological beliefs, goals, and practices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kang, Nam-Hwa; Wallace, Carolyn S.

2005-01-01

The purpose of this study was to explore how science teachers' epistemological beliefs and teaching goals are related to their use of lab activities. Research questions include (a) What are the teachers' epistemological beliefs pertaining to lab activities? (b) Why do the science teachers use lab activities? (c) How are the teachers' epistemological beliefs and instructional goals related to teaching actions? Two major aspects of epistemologies guided this study: ontological aspect (certainty/diversity of truth) and relational aspect (relationship between the knower and the known). The ontological aspect addresses whether one views knowledge as one certain truth or as tentative multiple truths. The relational aspect addresses whether one views him/herself as a receiver of prescribed knowledge separating self from knowledge construction or as an active meaning maker connecting self to the knowledge construction processes. More sophisticated epistemological beliefs include the acknowledgement of multiple interpretations of the same phenomena and active role of the knower in knowledge construction. Three experienced secondary science teachers were interviewed and observed throughout an academic course. The findings illustrate that a teacher's naïve epistemological beliefs are clearly reflected in the teacher's teaching practices. However, a teacher's sophisticated epistemological beliefs are not always clearly connected to the practice. This seems to be related to the necessary negotiation among their epistemological beliefs, teaching contexts, and instructional goals. Ontological and relational beliefs seem to be connected to different facets of teaching practices. Findings indicate that various syntheses of different aspects of epistemological beliefs and instructional goals are linked to teachers' diverse ways of using lab activities. Implications for research and teacher education are discussed.

Predicting change in epistemological beliefs, reflective thinking and learning styles: a longitudinal study.

PubMed

Phan, Huy P

2008-03-01

Although extensive research has examined epistemological beliefs, reflective thinking and learning approaches, very few studies have looked at these three theoretical frameworks in their totality. This research tested two separate structural models of epistemological beliefs, learning approaches, reflective thinking and academic performance among tertiary students over a period of 12 months. Participants were first-year Arts (N=616; 271 females, 345 males) and second-year Mathematics (N=581; 241 females, 341 males) university students. Students' epistemological beliefs were measured with the Schommer epistemological questionnaire (EQ, Schommer, 1990). Reflective thinking was measured with the reflective thinking questionnaire (RTQ, Kember et al., 2000). Student learning approaches were measured with the revised study process questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F, Biggs, Kember, & Leung, 2001). LISREL 8 was used to test two structural equation models - the cross-lag model and the causal-mediating model. In the cross-lag model involving Arts students, structural equation modelling showed that epistemological beliefs influenced student learning approaches rather than the contrary. In the causal-mediating model involving Mathematics students, the results indicate that both epistemological beliefs and learning approaches predicted reflective thinking and academic performance. Furthermore, learning approaches mediated the effect of epistemological beliefs on reflective thinking and academic performance. Results of this study are significant as they integrated the three theoretical frameworks within the one study.

Primary Pre-Service Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs and Their Teaching and Learning Experiences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Çam, Aylin

2015-01-01

The epistemological beliefs of pre-service teachers influence both their teaching experiences and their students' content understanding. Little research has been devoted to the interaction between teachers' epistemological beliefs and teaching practices (Schraw & Olafson, 2002). To address this gap, this study investigated primary pre-service…

Epistemological Trade-Offs: Accounting for Context When Evaluating Epistemological Sophistication of Student Engagement in Scientific Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berland, Leema; Crucet, Kathleen

2016-01-01

Science education has long seen an emphasis on supporting students' epistemological understandings of how scientific knowledge is constructed and evaluated with the expectation that these understandings will support the students' own construction and evaluation of scientific knowledge. However, research has shown that this connection does not…

Re-authoring research conversations: beyond epistemological differences and toward transformative experience for researchers and educators

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rowe, Shawn M.

2016-03-01

Common sense and published literature both assert that education research is often dismissed by practitioners on the grounds that it is irrelevant to their work. Some have argued that this is due primarily to a mismatch of professional epistemologies. While agreeing in principle, this work draws on work in sociology (Erving Goffman) and literary theory (Mikhail Bakhtin) to argue that practitioner mistrust of research may be primarily related to differences in the presentation of self in the teaching (and research) profession and a history of research used as a tool of transgression in the authorship of the practitioner professional self. Goffman's account of frontstage and backstage settings in the everyday presentation of self is combined with Bakhtin's account of the ways research erases the voice of practitioners by reducing their fundamentally dialogic experiences to monologic narratives dominated by the voice of the researcher. As an alternative, I draw on the work of the research psychologist Jerome Bruner and the practicing clinical psychologist Michael White to explore ways in which practitioners might be more meaningfully engaged in the research enterprise through a process of re-narrativizing their own experiences captured as part of research. Narrative techniques that help share responsibility for authoring accounts of practice among researchers and practitioners as research participants are described leading to conclusions about the potential transformative nature of such work for both researchers and practitioners.

On the substance of a sophisticated epistemology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Elby, Andrew; Hammer, David

2001-09-01

Among researchers who study students' epistemologies, a consensus has emerged about what constitutes a sophisticated stance toward scientific knowledge. According to this community consensus, students should understand scientific knowledge as tentative and evolving, rather than certain and unchanging; subjectively tied to scientists' perspectives, rather than objectively inherent in nature; and individually or socially constructed, rather than discovered. Surveys, interview protocols, and other methods used to probe students' beliefs about scientific knowledge broadly reflect this outlook. This article questions the community consensus about epistemological sophistication. We do not suggest that scientific knowledge is objective and fixed; if forced to choose whether knowledge is certain or tentative, with no opportunity to elaborate, we would choose tentative. Instead, our critique consists of two lines of argument. First, the literature fails to distinguish between the correctness and productivity of an epistemological belief. For instance, elementary school students who believe that science is about discovering objective truths to questions, such as whether the earth is round or flat, or whether an asteroid led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, may be more likely to succeed in science than students who believe science is about telling stories that vary with one's perspective. Naïve realism, although incorrect (according to a broad consensus of philosophers and social scientists), may nonetheless be productive for helping those students learn. Second, according to the consensus view as reflected in commonly used surveys, epistemological sophistication consists of believing certain blanket generalizations about the nature of knowledge and learning, generalizations that do not attend to context. These generalizations are neither correct nor productive. For example, it would be unsophisticated for students to view as tentative the idea that the earth is round

Making of epistemologically sophisticated physics teachers: A cross-sequential study of epistemological progression from preservice to in-service teachers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ding, Lin; Zhang, Ping

2016-12-01

Previous literature on learners' epistemological beliefs about physics has almost exclusively focused on analysis of university classroom instruction and its effects on students' views. However, little is known about other populations or factors other than classroom instruction on learners' epistemologies. In this study, we used a cross-sequential method, combining both longitudinal and cross-sectional designs, to investigate an epistemological progression trend from preservice to in-service teachers. Six cohorts of participants were studied, who either were then attending or had completed an undergraduate teacher preparation program in physics at a major Chinese university. These cohorts were incoming freshmen, end-of-year freshmen, end-of-year sophomores, end-of-year juniors, end-of-year seniors, and 1st-year high school physics teachers who were about to enter the 2nd year of teaching. We used the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) as both a pretest and a post-test to gauge the changes in the participants' epistemological views over an entire academic year. Follow-up interviews were also conducted to explore factors responsible for such changes. Results showed that the epistemological trend as measured by CLASS did not increase monotonically. Instead, there was a decrease in the epistemological trend among the incoming freshmen in their first year undergraduate studies, followed by a long stasis until the end of the senior year. Then, there was a rebound for the end-of-year seniors in their 1st year of teaching, followed by another plateau. Interviews revealed that the competitive learning environment, increased content difficulty, and unfamiliar pedagogies in college were major factors that negatively influenced incoming freshmen's views about physics. Conversely, a role change from student to teacher and relatively easy content in high school positively impacted end-of-year seniors' views about physics and learning.

A Relationship Between Hemisphericity and Psycho-Epistemology.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rancourt, Richard; Dionne, Jean-Paul

This review of two distinct areas of research--brain research and psycho-epistemology--indicates a possible link between the two which may potentially help to identify an as yet unknown molar trait which could be responsible for divergent opinions regarding teaching and learning theories, and may help to explain differential achievement when these…

Education and "Thick" Epistemology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kotzee, Ben

2011-01-01

In this essay Ben Kotzee addresses the implications of Bernard Williams's distinction between "thick" and "thin" concepts in ethics for epistemology and for education. Kotzee holds that, as in the case of ethics, one may distinguish between "thick" and "thin" concepts of epistemology and, further, that this distinction points to the importance of…

Organizational Epistemology, Education and Social Theory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hartley, David

2007-01-01

Organizational learning or epistemology has emerged in order to manage the creation of knowledge and innovation within contemporary capitalism. Its insights are being applied also to the public sector. Much of the research in organizational learning has drawn upon the discipline of psychology, particularly constructivist theory. Two approaches in…

Personal Epistemology and Mathematics: A Critical Review and Synthesis of Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Muis, Krista R.

2004-01-01

This review critically examines 33 studies on students' epistemological beliefs about mathematics. Five categories were identified: beliefs about mathematics, development of beliefs, effects of beliefs on behavior, domain differences, and changing beliefs. Studies examining beliefs about mathematics revealed consistent patterns of nonavailing…

Applications of interpretive and constructionist research methods in adolescent research: philosophy, principles and examples.

PubMed

Chen, Yan-Yan; Shek, Daniel T L; Bu, Fei-Fei

2011-01-01

This paper attempts to give a brief introduction to interpretivism, constructionism and constructivism. Similarities and differences between interpretivism and constructionism in terms of their histories and branches, ontological and epistemological stances, as well as research applications are highlighted. This review shows that whereas interpretivism can be viewed as a relatively mature orientation that contains various traditions, constructionism is a looser trend in adolescent research, and in the narrow sense denotes the "pure" relativist position, which refers to a discursive approach of theory and research. Both positions call for the importance of clearly identifying what type of knowledge and knowledge process the researcher is going to create, and correctly choosing methodology matching with the epistemological stance. Examples of adolescent research adopting interpretivist and constructionist orientations are presented.

Epistemological Beliefs of Apprentices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zinn, Bernd

2013-01-01

Whereas the epistemological beliefs of learners of general subjects has been the focus of many studies in the past, so far, little is known about the beliefs of apprentices on knowledge and the acquiring of knowledge. The present study analysed the first level of epistemological beliefs of students in industrial and technical professions and their…

Co-­Teaching Social Research Methods in a Joint Sociology/Anthropology Department

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Manthei, Jennifer; Isler, Jonathan

2011-01-01

In the course of developing and co-­teaching Social Research Methods (SRM), an interdisciplinary, upper-­division undergraduate course at the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS), the authors discovered that this type of partnership is ripe ground for exploring integration of anthropology and sociology on epistemological and methodological…

Understanding students' epistemologies: Examining practice and meaning in community contexts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bang, Megan Elisabeth

There is a great need to raise the levels of science achievement for those groups of children who have traditionally underperformed. Prior cognitive research with Native people suggests that problems with achievement for Native students may be more complicated then simple problems with knowing or not knowing content knowledge. This dissertation hypothesizes that Native Americans engage in practices and have funds of knowledge that facilitate sophisticated reasoning in the domain of science. However, the knowledge and patterns of reasoning are not elicited, acceptable, or recognized in classroom science, or perhaps are in conflict with classroom science. Furthermore the divergence is not simply in the details of what is known; there is discord at the level of epistemology, in the fundamental ways in which Native people conceptualize knowledge of the natural world. This work proposes a new framework, Micro-practice epistemology, for understanding epistemology. I propose that epistemology should be understood as implicitly and explicitly imbedded in the worldviews, values, beliefs and practices of our everyday lives. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods this work investigates the everyday practices related to nature, the epistemological stances and biological knowledge embedded in those practices in a 3X3 model (age cohort: child, adult, elder X community). The three communities involved in this work include: Chicago urban Indian community, Menominee reservation community, and a rural working poor white community. I find significant differences in all three areas across communities. Native communities tend to participate in practices in which some aspect of nature is fore-grounded while non-Native participants tended to participate in practices in which nature is the back-grounded. These findings are extended to explore the ways in which worldviews and values are connected to practice and knowledge about the natural world. I find significant differences in

Intersecting Epistemologies: First-Year Students' Knowledge Discourses in a Political Science Module

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Niven, Penelope

2011-01-01

This paper identifies the epistemological values of novice students and their lecturers in terms of a "farming" metaphor. It argues that each occupy essentially different kinds of epistemological "farms", involving different "crops" and "methods", and lecturers often fail to provide effective access to their…

Conceptual and epistemological undercurrents of learning as a process of change

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Montfort, Devlin B.

2011-12-01

In the preparation and education of civil engineers it is essential to both increase student knowledge of the world (conceptual understanding), but also to establish and develop new ways of thinking (epistemology). Both of these processes of change can be considered learning, but they are vastly different in the time, energy and resources they require to accomplish. The second type of learning (conceptual change) is more difficult, and is only rarely accomplished in traditional university education. The purpose of this research is to apply existing research approaches from cognitive science and educational psychology to explain why by investigating conceptual change in the contexts of student learning and faculty adoption of new pedagogies. In each context, the difficulty with conceptual change was associated with the ways in which people categorize fundamental phenomena in the world around them, and with epistemological expectations of how those categorizations should be applied in new contexts. While attempts to encourage change often focus on "educating" people by providing them with more knowledge, the change processes seem to be primarily limited by people's existing knowledge and how it is structured. Because civil engineers interact closely with societal goals and processes (such as human safety and environmental policies), they adopt epistemological stances that are as-yet unaccounted for in most research on the subject, which assumes a strong distinction between epistemological stances toward the physical world compared to the social world. These differences suggest that civil engineers' conceptual change could be enhanced by more directly addressing their particular epistemological stances---which incorporate high needs for certainty in guaranteeing human safety, as well as high flexibility when being applied to human systems.

Phenomenology and qualitative research: Amedeo Giorgi's hermetic epistemology.

PubMed

Paley, John

2018-04-11

Amedeo Giorgi has published a review article devoted to Phenomenology as Qualitative Research: A Critical Analysis of Meaning Attribution. However, anyone reading this article, but unfamiliar with the book, will get a distorted view of what it is about, whom it is addressed to, what it seeks to achieve and how it goes about presenting its arguments. Not mildly distorted, in need of the odd correction here and there, but systematically misrepresented. The article is a study in misreading. Giorgi misreads the book's mise en scène; he misreads its narrative arc; he misreads individual arguments; he misreads short, simple passages; he misreads the philosophy of the science literature; he misreads his own data; he misreads the title; he misreads the blurb; he misreads the acknowledgements. In addition, there are serious failures of scholarship (ironically, he demonstrates how unacquainted he is with the relevant literature at the very moment he is accusing me of being ill-informed). In this reply, I provide several examples of these errors, but my primary aim is to understand why Giorgi's misreading is as ubiquitous as it is. To this end, I explain his mistakes by reference to the hermetic epistemology within which he is confined. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Kantian epistemology as an alternative to heroic astronomy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McLaughlin, W. I.

Theoretical and observational methods in astronomy have advanced to a point where certain of their outcomes are difficult to comprehend with the traditional categories of human knowledge. The philosophical discipline of epistemology, the theory of knowledge, is used here to address four current problems in observational astronomy, exobiology, cosmology, and quantum mechanics. The problems are united by an epistemological content which, when unrecognized, has resulted in some heroic solutions of an ad hoc nature. Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy is employed because his work is consistent with basic attitudes in present-day physics and biology.

Kantian epistemology as an alternative to heroic astronomy

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mclaughlin, W. I.

1985-01-01

Theoretical and observational methods in astronomy have advanced to a point where certain of their outcomes are difficult to comprehend with the traditional categories of human knowledge. The philosophical discipline of epistemology, the theory of knowledge, is used here to address four current problems in observational astronomy, exobiology, cosmology, and quantum mechanics. The problems are united by an epistemological content which, when unrecognized, has resulted in some heroic solutions of an ad hoc nature. Kant's critical philosophy is employed because his work is consistent with basic attitudes in present-day physics and biology.

Technology, Pedagogy, and Epistemology: Opportunities and Challenges of Using Computer Modeling and Simulation Tools in Elementary Science Methods

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schwarz, Christina V.; Meyer, Jason; Sharma, Ajay

2007-01-01

This study infused computer modeling and simulation tools in a 1-semester undergraduate elementary science methods course to advance preservice teachers' understandings of computer software use in science teaching and to help them learn important aspects of pedagogy and epistemology. Preservice teachers used computer modeling and simulation tools…

Epistemological beliefs in introductory biology: Addressing measurement concerns and exploring the relationship with strategy use

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Holschuh, Jodi Lynn

This study had two main purposes: to address measurement concerns about assessing students' epistemological beliefs and to explore the relationship between epistemological beliefs and deep and surface strategy use in an introductory biology classroom. The following research questions guided the study: (a) Are epistemological beliefs multidimensional? (b) Are the measures of epistemological beliefs correlated? (c) Are the measures of strategy use correlated? (d) Are epistemological beliefs correlated with deep and surface strategy use? (e) How much of the unique variance in Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores, grade point average (GPA), and course grade is accounted for by epistemological beliefs and strategy use? (f) To what extent does the content analysis of the open-ended questionnaire data support or refute the role of mature epistemological beliefs? and (g) To what extent does the content analysis of the open-ended questionnaire data support or refute the role of deep strategies? Participants (N = 518) were recruited from two sections of an introductory biology course. All participants completed five assessments including the Epistemological Questionnaire, the Epistemological Scenario, the Self-Regulated Learning Inventory, two strategy checklists, and an open-ended questionnaire. The factor analysis, which was used to answer the first question, indicated no clear loading of the hypothesized dimensions underlying epistemological beliefs as measured by the Epistemological Questionnaire. However, the factor analysis of the Epistemological Scenario indicated four factors underlying epistemological beliefs (i.e., certain knowledge, innate ability, quick learning, and simple knowledge). In addition, the correlation analyses, which were used to answer the second, third, and fourth questions, indicated a significant relationship between epistemological beliefs and strategy use. The multiple regression commonality analysis, which was used to answer the fifth

Epistemological Dialogue of Validity: Building Validity in Educational and Social Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cakir, Mustafa

2012-01-01

The notion of validity in the social sciences is evolving and is influenced by philosophy of science, critiques of objectivity, and epistemological debates. Methodology for validation of the knowledge claims is diverse across different philosophies of science. In other words, definition and the way to establish of validity have evolved as…

Epistemologies of Ignorance in Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Malewski, Erik; Jaramillo, Nathalia

2011-01-01

Epistemologies of Ignorance provide educators a distinct epistemological view on questions of marginalization, oppression, relations of power and dominance, difference, philosophy, and even death among our youth. The authors of this edited collection challenge the ambivalence--ignorance--found in the construction of curriculum, teaching practices,…

Epistemology as Education: Know Thyself

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tubbs, Nigel

2016-01-01

In his Introduction to this Special Edition of "Education Sciences," Andrew Stables points out that often, epistemological questions in education have been pursued in isolation from ethics and other social concerns. In part, this problem has been addressed by "local" epistemologies--feminist, queer, post-colonial, postmodern…

What's Epistemology Got to Do with It?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Caputo, Richard K.

2017-01-01

Feminist standpoint epistemology is neither a necessary nor a sufficient starting point for social work intervention research. Contemporary social scientists readily grapple with cultural, political, and/or structural aspects of social problems either in the absence of or in conjunction with an explicitly formulated feminist standpoint…

Graduate Teaching Assistants' Epistemological and Metacognitive Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sandi-Urena, Santiago; Cooper, Melanie M.; Gatlin, Todd A.

2011-01-01

Research in general chemistry laboratory instruction has rarely focused on the impact of the learning environment on the graduate teaching assistants (GTAs). We decided to investigate the effect that facilitating a well established cooperative problem-based chemistry laboratory has on GTAs' epistemological and metacognitive development, and how…

Epistemological Beliefs and Academic Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arslantas, Halis Adnan

2016-01-01

This study aimed to identify the relationship between teacher candidates' epistemological beliefs and academic achievement. The participants of the study were 353 teacher candidates studying their fourth year at the Education Faculty. The Epistemological Belief Scale was used which adapted to Turkish through reliability and validity work by…

Anthropology and Epidemiology: learning epistemological lessons through a collaborative venture

PubMed Central

Béhague, Dominique Pareja; Gonçalves, Helen; Victora, Cesar Gomes

2009-01-01

Collaboration between anthropology and epidemiology has a long and tumultuous history. Based on empirical examples, this paper describes a number of epistemological lessons we have learned through our experience of cross-disciplinary collaboration. Although critical of both mainstream epidemiology and medical anthropology, our analysis focuses on the implications of addressing each discipline’s main epistemological differences, while addressing the goal of adopting a broader social approach to health improvement. We believe it is important to push the boundaries of research collaborations from the more standard forms of “multidisciplinarity,” to the adoption of theoretically imbued “interdisciplinarity.” The more we challenge epistemological limitations and modify ways of knowing, the more we will be able to provide in-depth explanations for the emergence of disease-patterns and thus, to problem-solve. In our experience, both institutional support and the adoption of a relativistic attitude are necessary conditions for sustained theoretical interdisciplinarity. Until researchers acknowledge that methodology is merely a human-designed tool to interpret reality, unnecessary methodological hyper-specialization will continue to alienate one field of knowledge from the other. PMID:18833344

Typology reconfigured: from the metaphysics of essentialism to the epistemology of representation.

PubMed

Love, Alan C

2009-06-01

The goal of this paper is to encourage a reconfiguration of the discussion about typology in biology away from the metaphysics of essentialism and toward the epistemology of classifying natural phenomena for the purposes of empirical inquiry. First, I briefly review arguments concerning 'typological thinking', essentialism, species, and natural kinds, highlighting their predominantly metaphysical nature. Second, I use a distinction between the aims, strategies, and tactics of science to suggest how a shift from metaphysics to epistemology might be accomplished. Typological thinking can be understood as a scientific tactic that involves representing natural phenomena using idealizations and approximations, which facilitates explanation, investigation, and theorizing via abstraction and generalization. Third, a variety of typologies from different areas of biology are introduced to emphasize the diversity of this representational reasoning. One particular example is used to examine how there can be epistemological conflict between typology and evolutionary analysis. This demonstrates that alternative strategies of typological thinking arise due to the divergent explanatory goals of researchers working in different disciplines with disparate methodologies. I conclude with several research questions that emerge from an epistemological reconfiguration of typology.

Formalized Epistemology, Logic, and Grammar

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bitbol, Michel

The task of a formal epistemology is defined. It appears that a formal epistemology must be a generalization of "logic" in the sense of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. The generalization is required because, whereas logic presupposes a strict relation between activity and language, this relation may be broken in some domains of experimental enquiry (e.g., in microscopic physics). However, a formal epistemology should also retain a major feature of Wittgenstein's "logic": It must not be a discourse about scientific knowledge, but rather a way of making manifest the structures usually implicit in knowledge-gaining activity. This strategy is applied to the formalism of quantum mechanics.

Epistemologies and scientific reasoning skills among undergraduate science students

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mollohan, Katherine N.

Non-cognitive factors such as students' attitudes and beliefs toward a subject and their proficiency in scientific reasoning are important aspects of learning within science disciplines. Both factors have been studied in relation to science education in various discplines. This dissertation presents three studies that investigate student epistemologies and scientific reasoning in the domain of biology education. The first study investigated students' epistemic viewpoints in two introductory biology courses, one for science majors and one for non-science majors. This quantitative investigation revealed that the majors exhibited a negative shift in their attitudes and beliefs about biology and learning biology during a semester of introductory instruction. However, the non-science majors did not exhibit a similar shift. If fact, the non-science majors improved in their attitudes and beliefs during a semester of instruction, though not significantly so. The second study expands epistemological research to a population that has often been left out of this work, that is, intermediate-level biology majors. Quantitative and qualitative data was collected to reveal that junior and senior ranked students for the most part were able to characterize their views about biology and learning biology, and were able to associate factors with their epistemic improvement. Finally, the third study expands epistemology research further to determine if scientific reasoning and student attitudes and beliefs about learning science (specifically biology) are related. After a description of how various science and engineering majors compare in their scientific reasoning skills, this study indicated that among intermediate level biology majors there is no relationship between scientific reasoning skills and epistemologies, nor is there a relationship with other educational factors, including the number of courses taken during an undergraduate career, cumulative GPA, and standardized test

Innovative Mixed-Methods Research: Moving beyond Design Technicalities to Epistemological and Methodological Realizations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Riazi, A. Mehdi

2016-01-01

Mixed-methods research (MMR), as an inter-discourse (quantitative and qualitative) methodology, can provide applied linguistics researchers the opportunity to draw on and integrate the strengths of the two research methodological approaches in favour of making more rigorous inferences about research problems. In this article, the argument is made…

Relations between Epistemological Beliefs and Culture Classifications

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sulimma, Maren

2009-01-01

Purpose: Epistemological beliefs, defined as individuals' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and the process of knowing, are assumed to serve an important function in regulating the application of individuals' learning behaviour. Previous research has mainly been shaped by the framework of results of white, well-educated people from North…

Epistemological Development and Attachment in European College Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Faria, Carla; Soares, Isabel; Silva, Carolina; Bastos, Alice

2015-01-01

Epistemological development and attachment theory have been independent frameworks for understanding psychological development. This study examined the association between epistemological development (using the Measure of Epistemological Reflection) and attachment (using the Adult Attachment Interview) in a sample of 60 pre- and postgraduated…

Psychometric Properties of the Epistemological Development in Teaching Learning Questionnaire (EDTLQ): An Inventory to Measure Higher Order Epistemological Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kjellström, Sofia; Golino, Hudson; Hamer, Rebecca; Van Rossum, Erik Jan; Almers, Ellen

2016-01-01

Qualitative research supports a developmental dimension in views on teaching and learning, but there are currently no quantitative tools to measure the full range of this development. To address this, we developed the Epistemological Development in Teaching and Learning Questionnaire (EDTLQ). In the current study the psychometric properties of the…

Can patents prohibit research? On the social epistemology of patenting and licensing in science.

PubMed

Biddle, Justin B

2014-03-01

A topic of growing importance within philosophy of science is the epistemic implications of the organization of research. This paper identifies a promising approach to social epistemology--nonideal systems design--and uses it to examine one important aspect of the organization of research, namely the system of patenting and licensing and its role in structuring the production and dissemination of knowledge. The primary justification of patenting in science and technology is consequentialist in nature. Patenting should incentivize research and thereby promote the development of knowledge, which in turn facilitates social progress. Some have disputed this argument, maintaining that patenting actually inhibits knowledge production. In this paper, I make a stronger argument; in some areas of research in the US--in particular, research on GM seeds--patents and patent licenses can be, and are in fact being, used to prohibit some research. I discuss three potential solutions to this problem: voluntary agreements, eliminating patents, and a research exemption. I argue against eliminating patents, and I show that while voluntary agreements and a research exemption could be helpful, they do not sufficiently address the problems of access that are discussed here. More extensive changes in the organization of research are necessary.

Understanding the Experience of Stroke: A Mixed-Method Research Agenda

PubMed Central

Clarke, Philippa

2009-01-01

The use of both quantitative and qualitative strategies to examine a single research question has been a subject of considerable controversy and still remains a largely uncommon practice in the sociology of health and illness. Yet, when seeking to understand the meaning of a chronic disabling condition in later life from a social psychological perspective, a mixed-method approach is likely to provide the most comprehensive picture. This article provides an overview of the usefulness and appropriateness of a mixed-method approach to understanding the stroke experience. I comment on the current state of research on the experience of stroke, including epistemological and ontological orientations. Using real data examples, I address paradigmatic assumptions, methods of integration, as well as challenges and pitfalls in integrating methods. I conclude by considering future directions in this field of research. PMID:19386828

Research on Relationships between Two Kinds of Scientific Epistemology Held by High School Science Teachers from Beijing and New York

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Jingying; An, Guiqing; Ma, Yongjun; Cai, Chun

2017-01-01

Scientific epistemology is important issues in the International science education, of which teachers' views of nature of science and scientific inquiry as the two core topics, become the principal part of research, also have an important influence on the theory and practice of science curriculum. The purpose of this study was to investigate and…

Case study of a successful learner's epistemological framings of quantum mechanics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dini, Vesal; Hammer, David

2017-06-01

Research on student epistemologies in introductory courses has highlighted the importance of understanding physics as "a refinement of everyday thinking" [A. Einstein, J. Franklin Inst. 221, 349 (1936), 10.1016/S0016-0032(36)91047-5]. That view is difficult to sustain in quantum mechanics, for students as for physicists. How might students manage the transition? In this article, we present a case study of a graduate student's approaches and reflections on learning over two semesters of quantum mechanics, based on a series of nine interviews. We recount his explicit grappling with the shift in epistemology from classical to quantum, and we argue that his success in learning largely involved his framing mathematics as expressing physical meaning. At the same time, we show he was not entirely stable in these framings, shifting away from them in particular during his study of scattering. The case speaks to literature on students' epistemologies, with respect to the roles of everyday thinking and mathematics. We discuss what this case suggests for further research, with possible implications for instruction.

High school students' scientific epistemological beliefs, self-efficacy in learning physics and attitudes toward physics: a structural equation model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kapucu, Serkan; Bahçivan, Eralp

2015-05-01

Background: There are some theoretical evidences that explain the relationships between core beliefs (i.e., epistemological beliefs) and peripheral beliefs (self-efficacy in learning) in the literature. The close relationships of such type of beliefs with attitudes are also discussed by some researchers. Constructing a model that investigates these relationships by considering theoretical and empirical evidences can empower researchers to discuss these relationships more comprehensively. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the relationships among Turkish high school students' scientific epistemological beliefs, self-efficacy in learning physics and their attitudes toward physics. Sample: A total of 632 high school students participated in this study; however, 269 female and 229 male (a total of 498) high school students' data were used. Design and methods: Three distinct instruments that measure scientific epistemological beliefs, self-efficacy in learning physics and attitudes toward physics were combined into a unique questionnaire form and it was distributed to high school students. To explore the relationships among these variables, structural equation modeling was used. Results: The results showed that scientific epistemological belief dimensions uncovered by the nature of knowing (source and justification) significantly and positively related to both self-efficacy in learning physics and attitudes toward other important physics dimensions. Additionally, self-efficacy in learning physics significantly and positively predicted attitudes toward multiple physics dimensions (importance, comprehension and requirement). However, epistemological belief dimensions related to the nature of knowledge (certainty and development) did not have significant impact on self-efficacy in learning physics or attitudes toward physics. Conclusions: This study concludes that there are positive and significant relationships among Turkish high school students' scientific

Information Literacy: A Positivist Epistemology and a Politics of Outformation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kapitzke, Cushla

2003-01-01

Asserts that a positivist philosophical orientation makes the information literacy framework for school library research incompatible with emergent concepts of knowledge and epistemology for digital and online environments, reviewing government policy documents and research promoting information literacy as an antidote to information overload and…

Knowing how we know: an epistemological rationale for the medical humanities.

PubMed

Chiavaroli, Neville

2017-01-01

Although their inclusion in medical curricula internationally is increasing, the medical humanities still face challenges to their role and place in the curriculum. Justifications supporting the inclusion of humanities content, methods and perspectives in medical curricula have generally been proposed along instrumental, intrinsic and critical lines. However, recent literature in the field has turned to 'ways of knowing' as representing an alternative, essentially epistemological, perspective on the matter. This involves the claim that the medical humanities align with and promote characteristic ways of understanding and practising medicine, which are not adequately represented in traditional disciplinary frameworks. Such epistemological arguments aim to move beyond generic claims of medicine as both an 'art' and a 'science' to explore the way in which the humanities support the ultimate objectives of a medical education, particularly in relation to claims about requisite knowledge and typical reasoning. Not only can this help focus attempts to identify and document relevant learning or clinical outcomes, but it can potentially uncover evidence from education outcomes research which may not have been the focus of previous inquiry in the medical humanities and which may in fact be associated, at least in part, with curricular activities formally associated with humanities disciplines. An epistemological view of the humanities in medical education offers a significant new way of conceptualising and communicating the potential role of the humanities in medical training. If clinical practice can be characterised as rational but interpretive, partly predictable yet fundamentally uncertain, and logical but also intuitive, it follows that educational training should facilitate such ways of knowing and thinking. An epistemological perspective enables the argument that the medical humanities are valuable not because they are more 'humane', but because they help constitute

Symbolic interactionism as a theoretical perspective for multiple method research.

PubMed

Benzies, K M; Allen, M N

2001-02-01

Qualitative and quantitative research rely on different epistemological assumptions about the nature of knowledge. However, the majority of nurse researchers who use multiple method designs do not address the problem of differing theoretical perspectives. Traditionally, symbolic interactionism has been viewed as one perspective underpinning qualitative research, but it is also the basis for quantitative studies. Rooted in social psychology, symbolic interactionism has a rich intellectual heritage that spans more than a century. Underlying symbolic interactionism is the major assumption that individuals act on the basis of the meaning that things have for them. The purpose of this paper is to present symbolic interactionism as a theoretical perspective for multiple method designs with the aim of expanding the dialogue about new methodologies. Symbolic interactionism can serve as a theoretical perspective for conceptually clear and soundly implemented multiple method research that will expand the understanding of human health behaviour.

Teaching and Learning in the Science Classroom: The Interplay between Teachers' Epistemological Moves and Students' Practical Epistemology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lidar, Malena; Lundqvist, Eva; Ostman, Leif

2006-01-01

The practical epistemology used by students and the epistemological moves delivered by teachers in conversations with students are analyzed in order to understand how teaching activities interplay with the "how" and the "what" of students' learning. The purpose is to develop an approach for analyzing the process of privileging…

Translational Science: Epistemology and the Investigative Process

PubMed Central

Dougherty, Edward R

2009-01-01

The term “translational science” has recently become very popular with its usage appearing to be almost exclusively related to medicine, in particular, the “translation” of biological knowledge into medical practice. Taking the perspective that translational science is somehow different than science and that sound science is grounded in an epistemology developed over millennia, it seems imperative that the meaning of translational science be carefully examined, especially how the scientific epistemology manifests itself in translational science. This paper examines epistemological issues relating mainly to modeling in translational science, with a focus on optimal operator synthesis. It goes on to discuss the implications of epistemology on the nature of collaborations conducive to the translational investigative process. The philosophical concepts are illustrated by considering intervention in gene regulatory networks. PMID:19794882

Practical Epistemologies in Physical Education Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Quennerstedt, Mikael

2013-01-01

With a point of departure in a transactional understanding of epistemology, the purpose of this paper is to explore practical epistemologies in physical education (PE) by investigating how knowledge is produced and reproduced in students' and teachers' actions in PE practices posted as clips on the user-generated video-sharing website…

Lean and Agile: An Epistemological Reflection

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Browaeys, Marie-Joelle; Fisser, Sandra

2012-01-01

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to contribute to the discussion of treating the concepts of lean and agile in isolation or combination by presenting an alternative view from complexity thinking on these concepts, considering an epistemological approach to this topic. Design/methodology/approach: The paper adopts an epistemological approach, using…

Verification of causal influences of reasoning skills and epistemology on physics conceptual learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ding, Lin

2014-12-01

This study seeks to test the causal influences of reasoning skills and epistemologies on student conceptual learning in physics. A causal model, integrating multiple variables that were investigated separately in the prior literature, is proposed and tested through path analysis. These variables include student preinstructional reasoning skills measured by the Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning, pre- and postepistemological views measured by the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey, and pre- and postperformance on Newtonian concepts measured by the Force Concept Inventory. Students from a traditionally taught calculus-based introductory mechanics course at a research university participated in the study. Results largely support the postulated causal model and reveal strong influences of reasoning skills and preinstructional epistemology on student conceptual learning gains. Interestingly enough, postinstructional epistemology does not appear to have a significant influence on student learning gains. Moreover, pre- and postinstructional epistemology, although barely different from each other on average, have little causal connection between them.

Current Status of Research in Teaching and Learning Evolution: I. Philosophical/Epistemological Issues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Mike U.

2010-01-01

Scholarship that addresses teaching and learning about evolution has rapidly increased in recent years. This review of that scholarship first addresses the philosophical/epistemological issues that impinge on teaching and learning about evolution, including the proper philosophical goals of evolution instruction; the correlational and possibly…

Initial Validation of an Instrument Measuring Psychology-Specific Epistemological Beliefs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Renken, Maggie D.; McMahan, Ethan A.; Nitkova, Martina

2015-01-01

Psychology-specific epistemological beliefs (EBs) are believed to influence students' approach to and performance in psychology courses. However, empirical research on this topic is limited due in part to a lack of well-validated instruments measuring this construct. The primary objective of this research was to develop and validate the…

Bringing Creativity into Being: Underlying Assumptions That Influence Methods of Studying Organizational Creativity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taylor, Mark; Callahan, Jamie L.

2005-01-01

We compare different epistemological frameworks for the effective collection of creativity data. We suggest that researchers' epistemological approaches can significantly influence collection methods and subsequent outcomes. Classic sociological epistemological approaches--functionalism, interpretivism, radical humanism, and radical structuralism…

Epistemological Belief Congruency in Mathematics between Vocational Technology Students and Their Instructors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schommer-Aikins, Marlene; Unruh, Susan; Morphew, Jason

2015-01-01

Three questions were addressed in this study. Is there evidence of epistemological beliefs congruency between students and their instructor? Do students' epistemological beliefs, students' epistemological congruence, or both predict mathematical anxiety? Do students' epistemological beliefs, students' epistemological congruence, or both predict…

Psychotherapy research needs theory. Outline for an epistemology of the clinical exchange.

PubMed

Salvatore, Sergio

2011-09-01

This paper provides an analysis of a basic assumption grounding the clinical research: the ontological autonomy of psychotherapy-based on the idea that the clinical exchange is sufficiently distinguished from other social objects (i.e. exchange between teacher and pupils, or between buyer and seller, or interaction during dinner, and so forth). A criticism of such an assumption is discussed together with the proposal of a different epistemological interpretation, based on the distinction between communicative dynamics and the process of psychotherapy-psychotherapy is a goal-oriented process based on the general dynamics of human communication. Theoretical and methodological implications are drawn from such a view: It allows further sources of knowledge to be integrated within clinical research (i.e. those coming from other domains of analysis of human communication); it also enables a more abstract definition of the psychotherapy process to be developed, leading to innovative views of classical critical issues, like the specific-nonspecific debate. The final part of the paper is devoted to presenting a model of human communication--the Semiotic Dialogical Dialectic Theory--which is meant as the framework for the analysis of psychotherapy.

Epistemologies, deafness, learning, and teaching.

PubMed

Moores, Donald F

2010-01-01

The study of Deaf epistemologies is in a nascent stage relative to, e.g., the study of feminist or African American epistemologies. It has only recently begun attracting the widespread attention it deserves. The present article addresses Deaf epistemologies as they relate to the sometimes conflicting trends in American society and education. In a relatively short period, the education of deaf students has gone from an independent enterprise under the aegis of special education to heavy influence by No Child Left Behind legislation that applies to virtually all American students. American education at one and the same time embraces and celebrates diversity, imposes uniform, rigid learning standards for all children, and mandates that all children be tested in the same way. An oxymoron exists of individualized educational planning and one-size-fits-all curricula and assessment of academic achievement. Implications for teaching and learning of deaf students are explored.

Combining the power of stories and the power of numbers: mixed methods research and mixed studies reviews.

PubMed

Pluye, Pierre; Hong, Quan Nha

2014-01-01

This article provides an overview of mixed methods research and mixed studies reviews. These two approaches are used to combine the strengths of quantitative and qualitative methods and to compensate for their respective limitations. This article is structured in three main parts. First, the epistemological background for mixed methods will be presented. Afterward, we present the main types of mixed methods research designs and techniques as well as guidance for planning, conducting, and appraising mixed methods research. In the last part, we describe the main types of mixed studies reviews and provide a tool kit and examples. Future research needs to offer guidance for assessing mixed methods research and reporting mixed studies reviews, among other challenges.

Virtue Epistemology and the Philosophy of Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Macallister, James

2012-01-01

This article initially provides a brief overview of virtue epistemology; it thereafter considers some possible ramifications of this branch of the theory of knowledge for the philosophy of education. The main features of three different manifestations of virtue epistemology are first explained. Importantly, it is then maintained that developments…

Epistemic Sensibility: Third Dimension of Virtue Epistemology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Belbase, Shashidhar

2012-01-01

The author tries to argue how epistemic sensibility as virtue sensibility can complement virtue epistemology. Many philosophers interrelated virtue reliabilism (e.g., Brogaard, 2006) and virtue responsibilism (e.g., Code, 1987) to virtue epistemology as two dimensions with many diverging and a few converging characters. The possible new dimension…

Epistemology and Expectations Survey about Experimental Physics: Development and Initial Results

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zwickl, Benjamin M.; Hirokawa, Takako; Finkelstein, Noah; Lewandowski, H. J.

2014-01-01

In response to national calls to better align physics laboratory courses with the way physicists engage in research, we have developed an epistemology and expectations survey to assess how students perceive the nature of physics experiments in the contexts of laboratory courses and the professional research laboratory. The Colorado Learning…

Making of Epistemologically Sophisticated Physics Teachers: A Cross-Sequential Study of Epistemological Progression from Preservice to In-Service Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ding, Lin; Zhang, Ping

2016-01-01

Previous literature on learners' epistemological beliefs about physics has almost exclusively focused on analysis of university classroom instruction and its effects on students' views. However, little is known about other populations or factors other than classroom instruction on learners' epistemologies. In this study, we used a cross-sequential…

Without Boundaries: An Inquiry into Deaf Epistemologies through a Metaparadigm

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Ye

2010-01-01

The ongoing debate on Deaf epistemologies reflects two major paradigms in deaf education: positivism and constructivism. The present article investigates Deaf epistemologies through a metaparadigm, which should blur the boundaries among different paradigms and connect the epistemological inquiry to instructional practice for d/Deaf students. The…

Effectiveness of Case-Based Learning Instruction on Epistemological Beliefs and Attitudes Toward Chemistry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Çam, Aylin; Geban, Ömer

2011-02-01

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of case-based learning instruction over traditionally designed chemistry instruction on eleventh grade students' epistemological beliefs and their attitudes toward chemistry as a school subject. The subjects of this study consisted of 63 eleventh grade students from two intact classes of an urban high school instructed with same teacher. Each teaching method was randomly assigned to one class. The experimental group received case-based learning and the control group received traditional instruction. At the experimental group, life cases were presented with small group format; at the control group, lecturing and discussion was carried out. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control group with respect to their epistemological beliefs and attitudes toward chemistry as a school subject in favor of case-based learning method group. Thus, case base learning is helpful for development of students' epistemological beliefs and attitudes toward chemistry.

Epistemological Obstacles on the Topic of Ratio and Proportion among Junior High School Students

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wahyuningrum, A. S.; Suryadi, D.; Turmudi

2017-09-01

This study intends to investigate how students’ understanding of ratio and proportion concept indicates epistemological obstacles. It was part of Didactical Design Research which was conducted to 72 students of 8th grade who ever learned about ratio and proportion. Data were collected through the students’ answers and interview in solving ratio and proportion problems. The results show that students’ conception, the ways of applying other mathematical concepts, the ways of using the rules, and variety of contexts are factors influencing epistemological obstacles in teaching and learning of ratio and proportion. These conditions can affect the students’ understanding o f related mathematics topics. Based on analysis of the results, this study is expected to overcome or minimize the epistemological obstacles.

The Epistemological Chain: Practical Applications in Sports

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grecic, David; Collins, Dave

2013-01-01

This article highlights the role of personal epistemology in decision-making and proposes the construct of an epistemological chain (EC) to support this process in the domain of sports coaching. First, the EC is outlined using examples from education and other parallel disciplines. What it looks like to sports coaches is then described, and its…

Exploring the Development of Fifth Graders' Practical Epistemologies and Explanation Skills in Inquiry-Based Learning Classrooms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Hsin-Kai; Wu, Chia-Lien

2011-05-01

The purposes of this study are to explore fifth graders' epistemological views regarding their own experiences of constructing scientific knowledge through inquiry activities (i.e., practical epistemologies) and to investigate possible interactions between students' practical epistemologies and their inquiry skills to construct scientific explanations (i.e., explanation skills). Quantitative and qualitative data including interview transcripts, classroom video recordings, and pre- and post-tests of explanation skills were collected from 68 fifth graders in two science classes. Analyses of data show that after engaging in 5-week inquiry activities, students developed better inquiry skills to construct scientific explanations. More students realized the existence of experimental errors, viewed experimental data as evidence to support their claims, and had richer understanding about the nature of scientific questions. However, most students' epistemological beliefs were still naïve (the beginning level); they could not differentiate between experimental results and scientific knowledge and believed that the purpose of science is doing experiments or research. The results also show that students who held a more sophisticated epistemology (the intermediate level) tended to develop better inquiry skills than those with naïve beliefs. Analyses of classroom observations suggest possible explanations for how students reflected their epistemological views in their inquiry practices.

Software Epistemology

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-03-01

in-vitro decision to incubate a startup, Lexumo [7], which is developing a commercial Software as a Service ( SaaS ) vulnerability assessment...LTS Label Transition System MUSE Mining and Understanding Software Enclaves RTEMS Real-Time Executive for Multi-processor Systems SaaS Software ...as a Service SSA Static Single Assignment SWE Software Epistemology UD/DU Def-Use/Use-Def Chains (Dataflow Graph)

Epistemological Beliefs and Knowledge Sharing in Work Teams: A New Model and Research Questions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weinberg, Frankie J.

2015-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a knowledge-sharing model that explains individual members' motivation to share knowledge (knowledge donation and knowledge collection). Design/methodology/approach: The model is based on social-constructivist theories of epistemological beliefs, learning and distributed cognition, and is organized…

"Abuelita" Epistemologies: Counteracting Subtractive Schools in American Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gonzales, Sandra M.

2015-01-01

This autoethnographic inquiry examines the intersection of elder epistemology and subtractive education, exploring how one "abuelita" countered her granddaughter's divestment of Mexican-ness. I demonstrate how the grandmother used "abuelita" epistemologies to navigate this tension and resist the assimilative pressures felt…

Untraining Educational Researchers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

St. Pierre, Elizabeth Adams

2016-01-01

The author argues that educational research curriculum that repeats formalized, scientized, pre-existing, methods-driven social science research methodologies stifle the present and future of educational research. Because such methodologies are too often disconnected from their onto-epistemological commitments, she argues for a reconnection with…

Epistemological Development in First-Year Nursing Students Undertaking Cultural Safety Education.

PubMed

Greenwood, Sallie; Fyers, Katrina

2018-04-01

The process of teaching cultural safety is emancipatory, focused on wider social relations and the context in which they arise. As teachers of cultural safety, we are interested in the way that ideas are formed, held, and changed. The aim of this research was to examine whether epistemological shifts were demonstrated by nursing students over one semester of cultural safety teaching-learning. NVivo software was used to analyze 34 nursing students' reflective journals, applying a cognitive-developmental framework. The framework comprised three epistemological positions-dualism, relativism, and propositional-and two in-between locations, referred to as stretching. The results showed student movement between early epistemological positions and students' efforts to stretch to new, yet untried, ways of thinking. In the classroom, these shifts may be subtle; thus, paying careful attention to evidence that students are trying out new ways of thinking is essential. Appreciating that these small but significant shifts are perhaps more important than 'aha' moments is crucial. [J Nurs Educ. 2018;57(4):229-232.]. Copyright 2018, SLACK Incorporated.

Epistemological Anarchy and the Many Forms of Constructivism

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Geelan, David R.

Constructivism has become an important referent for research and practice in science education. A variety of more or less divergent forms of constructivism have developed: discussion between these is occasionally heated. Six such forms are briefly described in order to provide an overview of the field of constructivist theory. A scheme for characterising constructivist writing on the basis of its relative emphasis on (a) personal versus social construction of knowledge and (b) objectivist versus relativist views of the nature of science is suggested. Issues of theory creation and reflexivity, central to constructivist practice, are discussed. It is suggested that debate about the "best" form of constructivism is counterproductive. A more powerful approach to epistemology is that described by Feyerabend, the holding in dialectical tension of a variety of incompatible perspectives: The following essay is written in the conviction that anarchism, while perhaps not the most attractive political philosophy, is certainly excellent medicine for epistemology, and for the philosophy of science (Feyerabend, 1975, 17, italics in original).

Teaching and learning in the science classroom: The interplay between teachers' epistemological moves and students' practical epistemology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lidar, Malena; Lundqvist, Eva; Östman, Leif

2006-01-01

The practical epistemology used by students and the epistemological moves delivered by teachers in conversations with students are analyzed in order to understand how teaching activities interplay with the how and the what of students' learning. The purpose is to develop an approach for analyzing the process of privileging in students' meaning making and how individual and situational aspects of classroom discourse interact in this process. Here we especially focus on the experiences of students and the encounter with the teacher. The analyses also demonstrate that a study of teaching and learning activities can shed light on which role epistemology has for students' meaning making, for teaching and for the interplay between these activities. The methodological approach used is an elaboration a sociocultural perspective on learning, pragmatism, and the work of Wittgenstein. The empirical material consists of recordings made in science classes in two Swedish compulsory schools.

Teaching for Change: Learning Partnerships and Epistemological Growth

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Olsen, Deborah; Bekken, Barbara M.; McConnell, Kathryne Drezek; Walter, Charles T.

2011-01-01

Baxter Magolda's Learning Partnerships model was used to create a program designed to foster student epistemological development. To assess its effectiveness, the Measure of Epistemological Reflection was administered to the experimental cohort and a comparable group in the traditional general education program. Results indicate that the model…

Introductory Physics Students' Physics and Mathematics Epistemologies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scanlon, Erin M.

2017-01-01

The purpose of this three study dissertation is to investigate why students are enrolled in introductory physics courses experience difficulties in being successful; one possible source of their difficulties is related to their epistemology. In order to investigate students' epistemologies about mathematics and physics, students were observed…

"That's Not Quite the Way We See It": The Epistemological Challenge of Visual Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wall, Kate; Higgins, Steve; Hall, Elaine; Woolner, Pam

2013-01-01

In research textbooks, and much of the research practice, they describe, qualitative processes and interpretivist epistemologies tend to dominate visual methodology. This article challenges the assumptions behind this dominance. Using exemplification from three existing visual data sets produced through one large education research project, this…

Explicating formal epistemology: Carnap's legacy as Jeffrey's radical probabilism.

PubMed

French, Christopher F

2015-10-01

Quine's "naturalized epistemology" presents a challenge to Carnapian explication: why try to rationally reconstruct probabilistic concepts instead of just doing psychology? This paper tracks the historical development of Richard C. Jeffrey who, on the one hand, voiced worries similar to Quine's about Carnapian explication but, on the other hand, claims that his own work in formal epistemology—what he calls "radical probabilism"—is somehow continuous with both Carnap's method of explication and logical empiricism. By examining how Jeffrey's claim could possibly be accurate, the paper suggests that Jeffrey's radical probabilism can be seen as a sort of alternative explication project to Carnap's own inductive logic. In so doing, it deflates both Quine's worries about Carnapian explication and so also, by extension, similar worries about formal epistemology. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

High School Physics Students' Personal Epistemologies and School Science Practice

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alpaslan, Muhammet Mustafa; Yalvac, Bugrahan; Loving, Cathleen

2017-11-01

This case study explores students' physics-related personal epistemologies in school science practices. The school science practices of nine eleventh grade students in a physics class were audio-taped over 6 weeks. The students were also interviewed to find out their ideas on the nature of scientific knowledge after each activity. Analysis of transcripts yielded several epistemological resources that students activated in their school science practice. The findings show that there is inconsistency between students' definitions of scientific theories and their epistemological judgments. Analysis revealed that students used several epistemological resources to decide on the accuracy of their data including accuracy via following the right procedure and accuracy via what the others find. Traditional, formulation-based, physics instruction might have led students to activate naive epistemological resources that prevent them to participate in the practice of science in ways that are more meaningful. Implications for future studies are presented.

Epistemologies of Silence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dénommé-Welch, Spy; Rowsell, Jennifer

2017-01-01

This paper engages some of the philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of silence, and its implications for teaching and learning both within and beyond educational settings. In this exploration, the authors draw on self-reflexive observations, woven throughout the paper as a series of vignettes, to explore questions of silence and its…

Inferring Teacher Epistemological Framing from Local Patterns in Teacher Noticing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Russ, Rosemary S.; Luna, Melissa J.

2013-01-01

In this work we use research from science education on teacher framing and work from mathematics education on teacher noticing to develop new approaches to modeling teacher cognition. The framing literature proposes a dynamic cognitive model of teaching in which teacher epistemological framing, or moment-to-moment understanding of what is going on…

The Effect of Assessment Style on Student Epistemologies in Introductory Physics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bowen, Mark Ryan

2011-01-01

Epistemologies were measured across two separate lecture sections of introductory algebra-based physics at UC Davis. Remarkable differences in epistemologies, as measured by the MPEX II survey were noted with one section's students (section A) showing significantly better gains in almost all epistemological categories than the other (section…

Current trends in feminist nursing research.

PubMed

Im, Eun-Ok

2010-01-01

Despite an increasing number of feminist studies in nursing, few reviews on current trends in feminist nursing research have been published. This article aims to explore the current trends in feminist nursing research and provide recommendations for future feminist studies in nursing. In multiple database searches, 207 articles were retrieved. These were reviewed based on 5 criteria: (1) epistemological background, (2) research questions, (3) research participants, (4) research methods, and (5) implications for changes. The review indicated that feminist nurse researchers with diverse epistemological backgrounds adopted new research methods to ask new questions; expanded their focus to include differences in ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and disability; and incorporated these diversities among women in a global context in their research. Based on these findings, recommendations for future feminist research in nursing are outlined. Copyright 2010 Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Consistency and Development of Teachers' Epistemological and Ontological World Views

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Olafson, Lori; Schraw, Gregory; Vander Veldt, Michelle

2010-01-01

We examined epistemological and ontological world views using self-report surveys, brief written reflections, and an extended written action research project for a sample of 16 graduate students enrolled in an education class at a large university on the West coast of the USA. We made two predictions. We anticipated that the majority of students…

What Does (E)pistemology Have To Offer Feminists?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thayer-Bacon, Barbara J.

Since traditional epistemology has not been able to present a generality but rather has represented a male perspective as if it is general, neutral, and inclusive of women, then there is the possibility of offering a feminist epistemology. Thus, the critique of the tradition has to come first, to create a space where feminists can begin to…

Epistemology and Adolescents' Conceptions of Procedural Justice in School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thorkildsen, Theresa A.; Sodonis, Algis; White-McNulty, Lisa

2004-01-01

When evaluating instructional practices, adolescents (n = 128, ages 14-19) coordinated knowledge of epistemology, fairness, and motivation in their conceptions of procedural justice. Adolescents ranked the fairness and effectiveness of instructional practices differently for controversial and noncontroversial topics. They raised epistemological,…

Case Study of a Successful Learner's Epistemological Framings of Quantum Mechanics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dini, Vesal; Hammer, David

2017-01-01

Research on student epistemologies in introductory courses has highlighted the importance of understanding physics as "a refinement of everyday thinking" [A. Einstein, J. Franklin Inst. 221, 349 (1936)]. That view is difficult to sustain in quantum mechanics, for students as for physicists. How might students manage the transition? In…

Applying Beliefs and Resources Frameworks to the Psychometric Analyses of an Epistemology Survey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda; Elby, Andrew; Eryilmaz, Ali

2012-01-01

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'…

Relationship-centred care: antidote, guidepost or blind alley? The epistemology of 21st century health care.

PubMed

Wyer, Peter C; Alves Silva, Suzana; Post, Stephen G; Quinlan, Patricia

2014-12-01

Contemporary health care is increasing in complexity and lacks a unifying understanding of epistemology, methodology and goals. Lack of conceptual consistency in concepts such as 'patient-centred care' (PCC) typifies system-wide discordance. We contrast the fragmented descriptions of PCC and related tools to its own origins in the writings of Balint and to a subsequent construct, relationship-centred care (RCC). We identify the explicit and elaborated connection between RCC and a defined epistemological foundation as a distinguishing feature of the construct and we demonstrate that this makes possible the recognition of alignments between RCC and independently developed constructs. Among these, we emphasize Schon's reflective practice, Nonaka's theory of organizational knowledge creation and the research methodology of realist synthesis. We highlight the relational principles common to these domains and to their common epistemologies and illustrate unsatisfying consequences of adherence to less adequate epistemological frameworks such as positivism. We offer RCC not as an 'antidote' to the dilemmas identified at the outset but as an example that illuminates the value and importance of explicit identification of the premises and assumptions underlying approaches to improvement of the health care system. We stress the potential value of identifying epistemological affinities across otherwise disparate fields and disciplines. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Pre-Service Science Teachers' Epistemologies in the Physical Sciences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Örnek, Funda

2015-01-01

Students' epistemologies play a crucial role in helping them construct knowledge. In addition, studying epistemological beliefs is important because they influence students' motivation and affect students' selection of learning strategies (Schommer, Crouse, & Rhodes, 1992; Hofer & Pintrich, 1997). The purpose of this study is to…

Using a Modeling Approach To Explore Scientific Epistemology with High School Biology Students. Research Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cartier, Jennifer

This paper describes a study of high school students' participation in the construction and revision of explanatory models as they attempted to account for a variety of inheritance phenomena observed in computer-generated "fruit flies". Throughout the course students were encouraged to explore epistemological issues related to the assessment and…

Epistemological Beliefs and Epistemic Strategies in Self-Regulated Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Richter, Tobias; Schmid, Sebastian

2010-01-01

How do epistemological attitudes and beliefs influence learning from text? We conceptualize epistemological attitudes and beliefs as components of metacognitive knowledge. As such, they serve an important function in regulating the use of epistemic strategies such as knowledge-based validation of information and checking arguments for internal…

Epistemology, Ethics, and Progress in Precision Medicine.

PubMed

Hey, Spencer Phillips; Barsanti-Innes, Brianna

2016-01-01

The emerging paradigm of precision medicine strives to leverage the tools of molecular biology to prospectively tailor treatments to the individual patient. Fundamental to the success of this movement is the discovery and validation of "predictive biomarkers," which are properties of a patient's biological specimens that can be assayed in advance of therapy to inform the treatment decision. Unfortunately, research into biomarkers and diagnostics for precision medicine has fallen well short of expectations. In this essay, we examine the portfolio of research activities into the excision repair cross complement group 1 (ERCC1) gene as a predictive biomarker for precision lung cancer therapy as a case study in elucidating the epistemological and ethical obstacles to developing new precision medicines.

How Epistemological Beliefs Relate to Values and Gender Orientation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kessels, Ursula

2013-01-01

In response to the current literature on possible systematic differences in the epistemological beliefs of men and women and between members of different cultures, this paper examines the way psychological constructs associated with gender (i.e. gender orientation) and culture (i.e. values) are related to individual's epistemological beliefs.…

The Influence of Hindu Epistemology on Ranganathan's Colon Classification.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maurer, Bradley Gerald

This study attempted to determine the influence of Hindu epistemology on Ranganathan's Colon Classification. Only the epistemological schools of Hindu philosophy and the Idea Plane element of Colon Classification were included. A literature search revealed that, although there is significant literature on each side of the problem, no bridges exist…

Positioning Design Epistemology and Its Applications in Education Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsai, Chin-Chung; Chai, Ching Sing; Wong, Benjamin Koon Siak; Hong, Huang-Yao; Tan, Seng Chee

2013-01-01

This position paper proposes to broaden the conception of personal epistemology to include design epistemology that foregrounds the importance of creativity, collaboration, and design thinking. Knowledge creation process, we argue, can be explicated using Popper's ontology of three worlds of objects. In short, conceptual artifacts (World 3)…

Developing resident learning profiles: Do scientific evidence epistemology beliefs, EBM self-efficacy beliefs and EBM skills matter?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Robert, Nancy J.

This study investigated resident scientific evidence epistemology beliefs, evidence based medicine (EBM) self-efficacy beliefs, and EBM skills. A convenience sample of fifty-one residents located in six U.S. based residency programs completed an online instrument. Hofer's epistemology survey questionnaire was modified to test responses based on four types of scientific evidence encountered in medical practice (Clinical Trial Phase 1, Clinical Trial Phase 3, Meta-analysis and Qualitative). It was hypothesized that epistemology beliefs would differ based on the type of scientific evidence considered. A principal components analysis produced a two factor solution that was significant across type of scientific evidence suggesting that when evaluating epistemology beliefs context does matter. Factor 1 is related to the certainty of research methods and the certainty of medical conclusions and factor 2 denotes medical justification. For each type of scientific evidence, both factors differed on questions comprising the factor structure with significant differences found for the factor 1 and 2 questions. A justification belief case problem using checklist format was triangulated with the survey results, and as predicted the survey and checklist justification z scores indicated no significant differences, and two new justification themes emerged. Modified versions of Finney and Schraw's statistical self-efficacy and skill instruments produced expected significant EBM score correlations with unexpected results indicating that the number of EBM and statistics courses are not significant for EBM self-efficacy and skill scores. The study results were applied to the construction of a learning profile that provided residents belief and skill feedback specific to individual learning needs. The learning profile design incorporated core values related to 'Believer' populations that focus on art, harmony, tact and diplomacy. Future research recommendations include testing context

Combination of interventions can change students' epistemological beliefs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kalman, Calvin S.; Sobhanzadeh, Mandana; Thompson, Robert; Ibrahim, Ahmed; Wang, Xihui

2015-12-01

This study was based on the hypothesis that students' epistemological beliefs could become more expertlike with a combination of appropriate instructional activities: (i) preclass reading with metacognitive reflection, and (ii) in-class active learning that produces cognitive dissonance. This hypothesis was tested through a five-year study involving close to 1000 students at two institutions, in four physics courses. Using an experimental design, data from student interviews, writing product assessments, and the Discipline-Focused Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire (DFEBQ) we demonstrate that the beliefs of novice science learners became more expertlike on 2 of the 4 DFEBQ factors. We conclude that a combination of an activity that gets students to examine textual material metacognitively (Reflective Writing) with one or more types of in-class active learning interventions can promote positive change in students' epistemological beliefs.

Exploring the entanglement of personal epistemologies and emotions in students' thinking

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gupta, Ayush; Elby, Andrew; Danielak, Brian A.

2018-06-01

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 learning sciences and physics and science education research has not attended to the role of learners' emotions in describing or modeling the fine timescale dynamics of their conceptual reasoning. The few studies that integrate emotions into models of learners' cognition have mostly done so at a coarse grain size. In this study, toward the long-term goal of incorporating emotions into models of in-the-moment cognitive dynamics, we present a case study of Judy, an undergraduate electrical engineering and physics major. We show that shifts in the intensity of a fine-grained aspect of Judy's emotions, her annoyance at conceptual homework problems, co-occur with shifts in her epistemological stance toward differentiating knowledge about and the practical utility of real circuits and idealized circuit models. We then argue for the plausibility of a cognitive model in which Judy's emotions and epistemological stances mutually affect each other. We end with discussions on how models of learners' cognition that incorporate their emotions are generative for instructional purposes and research on learning.

Epistemology and expectations survey about experimental physics: Development and initial results

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zwickl, Benjamin M.; Hirokawa, Takako; Finkelstein, Noah; Lewandowski, H. J.

2014-06-01

In response to national calls to better align physics laboratory courses with the way physicists engage in research, we have developed an epistemology and expectations survey to assess how students perceive the nature of physics experiments in the contexts of laboratory courses and the professional research laboratory. The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS) evaluates students' epistemology at the beginning and end of a semester. Students respond to paired questions about how they personally perceive doing experiments in laboratory courses and how they perceive an experimental physicist might respond regarding their research. Also, at the end of the semester, the E-CLASS assesses a third dimension of laboratory instruction, students' reflections on their course's expectations for earning a good grade. By basing survey statements on widely embraced learning goals and common critiques of teaching labs, the E-CLASS serves as an assessment tool for lab courses across the undergraduate curriculum and as a tool for physics education research. We present the development, evidence of validation, and initial formative assessment results from a sample that includes 45 classes at 20 institutions. We also discuss feedback from instructors and reflect on the challenges of large-scale online administration and distribution of results.

Scholarly Holds Lead over Popular and Instructional: Text Type Influences Epistemological Reading Outcomes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Braun, Isabel; Nuckles, Matthias

2014-01-01

Scholarly scientific literature conveys epistemological assumptions scientists operate on. Popular scientific literature and instructional science texts deviate in their portrayal of science from these epistemological assumptions. Thus, scholarly scientific literature holds more potential for improving students' epistemological understanding…

Feminist Research in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ropers-Huilman, Rebecca; Winters, Kelly T.

2011-01-01

This essay provides an overview of feminist methodology and its potential to enhance the study of higher education. Foregrounding the multiple purposes and research relationships developed through feminist research, the essay urges higher education scholars to engage feminist theories, epistemologies, and methods to inform policy, research, and…

How College-Level Introductory Instruction Can Impact Student Epistemological Beliefs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ding, Lin; Mollohan, Katherine N.

2015-01-01

This article describes a survey study of college students' epistemologies about biology and learning biology. Specifically, the authors examined the differences between science and nonscience majors and their changes in epistemologies over the course of a semester of instruction.

An exploration of fifth-grade students' epistemological beliefs in science and an investigation of their relation to science learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Elder, Anastasia Danos

Elementary students' beliefs about the nature of knowledge---epistemological beliefs---are an emerging concern for science education and research. Composed of a critique of research literature and two studies, this dissertation investigated the epistemological beliefs of fifth-grade students who participated in inquiry-based, hands-on science program. The goals were to characterize their beliefs about the nature of knowledge in science and to investigate the relation between these beliefs and their learning of scientific process skills. In the first study, fifth-grade students (N = 211) were surveyed about their beliefs regarding the (1) purpose of science, (2) sources of scientific knowledge, (3) roles of evidence and experiments, (4) changing nature of knowledge in science, and (5) coherence of a scientific knowledge base. Descriptive statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were conducted to assess the interrelations among various epistemological belief constructs. Fifth-graders' epistemological beliefs in science were found to reflect a mixture of naive and sophisticated understanding. Few differences in beliefs were found according to gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic status. Students' understanding of the purpose of science and the changing nature of science seemed to act as two important constructs in their beliefs. Furthermore, students' epistemological beliefs was characterized as an emerging system in which beliefs were related to each other in consistent ways. In the second study, fifth-grade students (N = 194) responded to questionnaire items about their epistemological beliefs in science and completed performance assessments testing their science process skills in two units---one which embedded learning of process skills with conceptual knowledge and another in which process skills were learned with minimal reference to conceptual knowledge. Based on correlational and ANOVA analyses, modest links were found between students' epistemological

Faculty Epistemological Beliefs as a Mediator to Attitudes toward Persons with Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barnard, Lucy; Stevens, Tara; Siwatu, Kamau O.; Lan, William Y.

2007-01-01

Previous research has indicated that university faculty members' attitudes towards students with disabilities varies depending on specific background qualities of those faculty, including gender, type of field (soft or hard science), and type of study (pure or applied). We examined epistemological beliefs as a possible mediator between faculty…

The role of mixed methods in improved cookstove research.

PubMed

Stanistreet, Debbi; Hyseni, Lirije; Bashin, Michelle; Sadumah, Ibrahim; Pope, Daniel; Sage, Michael; Bruce, Nigel

2015-01-01

The challenge of promoting access to clean and efficient household energy for cooking and heating is a critical issue facing low- and middle-income countries today. Along with clean fuels, improved cookstoves (ICSs) continue to play an important part in efforts to reduce the 4 million annual premature deaths attributed to household air pollution. Although a range of ICSs are available, there is little empirical evidence on appropriate behavior change approaches to inform adoption and sustained used at scale. Specifically, evaluations using either quantitative or qualitative methods provide an incomplete picture of the challenges in facilitating ICS adoption. This article examines how studies that use the strengths of both these approaches can offer important insights into behavior change in relation to ICS uptake and scale-up. Epistemological approaches, study design frameworks, methods of data collection, analytical approaches, and issues of validity and reliability in the context of mixed methods ICS research are examined, and the article presents an example study design from an evaluation study in Kenya incorporating a nested approach and a convergent case oriented design. The authors discuss the benefits and methodological challenges of mixed-methods approaches in the context of researching behavior change and ICS use recognizing that such methods represent relatively uncharted territory. The authors propose that more published examples are needed to provide frameworks for other researchers seeking to apply mixed methods in this context and suggest a comprehensive research agenda is required that incorporates integrated mixed-methods approaches, to provide best evidence for future scale-up.

Relations among Epistemological Beliefs, Academic Achievement, and Task Performance in Secondary School Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lodewyk, Ken R.

2007-01-01

Students with differing profiles of epistemological beliefs--their beliefs about personal epistemology, intelligence, and learning--vary in thinking, reasoning, motivation, and use of strategies while working on academic tasks, each of which affect learning. This study examined students' epistemological beliefs according to gender, school…

The practical epistemologies of the classroom: A study of laboratory work

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wickman, Per-Olof

2004-05-01

The practical epistemologies of university students during laboratory work in chemistry are analyzed to enhance understanding of how teaching practices interact with learners. The purpose is to develop a theoretical framework of learning as action that can be used by educational researchers to examine meaning-making, but also by teachers in close association with their daily work to understand the course learning takes in their own classrooms. Here this framework is adopted to demonstrate how the sequence of learning may affect the subject content learnt. It is also demonstrated how learning can be understood in terms of habits, and how observations of such habits could be used by a teacher to inform her/his teaching. The theory of practical epistemologies is based on the later Wittgenstein, pragmatics, and sociocultural approaches identifying learning with talk, action, and habits situated in practices.

The Conceptualization and Development of the Practical Epistemology in Science Survey (PESS)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Villanueva, Mary Grace; Hand, Brian; Shelley, Mack; Therrien, William

2017-08-01

Various inquiry approaches have been promoted in science classrooms as a way for students to engage in, and have a deeper understanding of scientific discourse. However, there is a paucity of empirical evidence to suggest how children's actions and engagement in these approaches, or practical epistemologies (Sandoval, Science Education 89(4): 634-656, 2005), may contribute to the development of their personal epistemologies, or their views about the nature of knowledge and knowing and the nature of learning. This paper puts forth the conceptualization and development of the Practical Epistemology in Science Survey (PESS) instrument, a 26-item Likert-scale self-assessment which measures how students view their individual and social participation in the classroom scientific community. Data were collected from 4th-6th-grade students (n = 1019) in the USA and a psychometric evaluation of the reliability, validity, and dimensionality of the instrument was conducted. The Cronbach's alpha value indices for all subsets of items of the PESS suggest a strong reliability of the instrument (α ≥ .80). The development of the PESS may be useful in science education research to (a) detect changes to students' beliefs about knowledge and knowledge development; (b) identify dispositions and beliefs which may or may not be in line with the aims and values of various pedagogical approaches; (c) monitor the process of change, e.g., time it takes for students to change their approaches and beliefs with respect to teacher practice; and, (d) overall, to provide an understanding of how students' formal epistemologies are developed and informed by the affordances in science classrooms.

Activity Theory, Complexity and Sports Coaching: An Epistemology for a Discipline

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jones, Robyn L.; Edwards, Christian; Filho, I. A. Tuim Viotto

2016-01-01

The aim of this article is twofold. First, it is to advance the case for activity theory (AT) as a credible and alternative lens to view and research sports coaching. Second, it is to position this assertion within the wider debate about the epistemology of coaching. Following a framing introduction, a more comprehensive review of the development…

The relationship between medical students' epistemological beliefs and achievement on a clinical performance examination.

PubMed

Oh, Sun-A; Chung, Eun-Kyung; Han, Eui-Ryoung; Woo, Young-Jong; Kevin, Deiter

2016-03-01

This study was to explore the relationship between clinical performance examination (CPX) achievement and epistemological beliefs to investigate the potentials of epistemological beliefs in ill-structured medical problem solving tasks. We administered the epistemological beliefs questionnaire (EBQ) to fourth-year medical students and correlated the results with their CPX scores. The EBQ comprised 61 items reflecting five belief systems: certainty of knowledge, source of knowledge, rigidity of learning, ability to learn, and speed of knowledge acquisition. The CPX included scores for history taking, physical examination, and patient-physician interaction. The higher epistemological beliefs group obtained significantly higher scores on the CPX with regard to history taking and patient-physician interaction. The epistemological beliefs scores on certainty of knowledge and source of knowledge were significantly positively correlated with patient-physician interaction. The epistemological beliefs scores for ability to learn were significantly positively correlated with those for history taking, physical examination, and patient-physician interaction. Students with more sophisticated and advanced epistemological beliefs stances used more comprehensive and varied approaches in the patient-physician interaction. Therefore, educational efforts that encourage discussions pertaining to epistemological views should be considered to improve clinical reasoning and problem-solving competence in the clinic setting.

Effects of Student-Written Wiki-Based Textbooks on Pre-Service Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ren, Zhongtang; Baker, Peter; Zhang, Shaoan

2009-01-01

Use of web technology in student construction of knowledge through writing their own textbooks via the Wikibooks platform may affect their epistemological beliefs. By using Epistemological Beliefs Inventory, this article investigates whether two groups (n = 229) of pre-service teachers' epistemological beliefs change in different learning…

Narrative and epistemology: Georges Canguilhem's concept of scientific ideology.

PubMed

Chimisso, Cristina

2015-12-01

In the late 1960s, Georges Canguilhem introduced the concept of 'scientific ideology'. This concept had not played any role in his previous work, so why introduce it at all? This is the central question of my paper. Although it may seem a rather modest question, its answer in fact uncovers hidden tensions in the tradition of historical epistemology, in particular between its normative and descriptive aspects. The term ideology suggests the influence of Althusser's and Foucault's philosophies. However, I show the differences between Canguilhem's concept of scientific ideology and Althusser's and Foucault's respective concepts of ideology. I argue that Canguilhem was in fact attempting to solve long-standing problems in the tradition of historical epistemology, rather than following the lead of his younger colleagues. I argue that Canguilhem's 'refurbishment without rejection' of Bachelard's epistemology, which the concept of scientific ideology was aimed to implement, was necessary to justify the historical narratives that Canguilhem had constructed in his own work as a historian of concepts. A strict acceptance of Bachelard's epistemology would have made it impossible to justify them. Canguilhem's concept of scientific ideology therefore served as a theoretical justification of his practice as a historian. I maintain that the concept of scientific ideology was needed to reconcile Bachelard's normative epistemology with Canguilhem's view of the history of science and its aims, which differed from Bachelard's more than it is generally acknowledged. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Epistemological Role of Language Use in Children's Explanations of Physical Phenomena

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderberg, Elsie; Akerblom, Annika

2011-01-01

The article investigates the interplay between the meaning given to certain key expressions and pupils' understanding of science subject matter, in a qualitative study of learning.The intentional-expressive approach to the epistemological role of language use served as a theoretical frame, within the wider context of phenomenographic research on…

The Non-Theoretical View on Educational Theory: Scientific, Epistemological and Methodological Assumptions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Penalva, José

2014-01-01

This article examines the underlying problems of one particular perspective in educational theory that has recently gained momentum: the Wilfred Carr approach, which puts forward the premise that there is no theory in educational research and, consequently, it is a form of practice. The article highlights the scientific, epistemological and…

Beyond Epistemological Deficits: Dynamic Explanations of Engineering Students' Difficulties with Mathematical Sense-Making

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gupta, Ayush; Elby, Andrew

2011-01-01

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…

Ethnic Identity, Epistemological Development, and Academic Achievement in Underrepresented Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pizzolato, Jane Elizabeth; Chaudhari, Prema; Murrell, Ennad Dyana; Podobnik, Sharon; Schaeffer, Zachary

2008-01-01

Through 2 related studies, we investigated the relation between ethnic identity, epistemological development, and achievement among students of color. Findings suggest that the three variables are related, with ethnic identity and epistemological development together contributing to explaining variance in college GPA almost as well as a…

An Examination of the Epistemological Views and Learning Styles of Pre-Service Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Günes, Gökhan; Bati, Kaan; Katranci, Mehmet

2017-01-01

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that investigates human knowledge, in particular its source, nature, limitations, system, and accuracy. The most critical issues in epistemology are considered to be belief in the nature of knowledge and belief in the nature of knowing. Since epistemology involves the structuring processes of knowledge, it…

The Form and Flow of Teaching Ethnographic Knowledge: Hands-On Approaches for Learning Epistemology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Corte, Ugo; Irwin, Katherine

2017-01-01

A glance across ethnographic methods terrain reveals multiple controversies and divisive critiques. When training graduate students, these debates and controversies can be consequential. We offer suggestions for teaching graduate ethnographic methods courses that, first, help students understand some of the common epistemological debates in the…

Personal epistemological growth in a college chemistry laboratory environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Keen-Rocha, Linda S.

The nature of this study was to explore changes in beliefs and lay a foundation for focusing on more specific features of reasoning related to personal epistemological and NOS beliefs in light of specific science laboratory instructional pedagogical practices (e.g., pre- and post-laboratory activities, laboratory work) for future research. This research employed a mixed methodology, foregrounding qualitative data. The total population consisted of 56 students enrolled in several sections of a general chemistry laboratory course, with the qualitative analysis focusing on the in-depth interviews. A quantitative NOS and epistemological beliefs measure was administered pre- and post-instruction. These measures were triangulated with pre-post interviews to assure the rigor of the descriptions generated. Although little quantitative change in NOS was observed from the pre-post NSKS assessment a more noticeable qualitative change was reflected by the participants during their final interviews. The NSKS results: the mean gain scores for the overall score and all dimensions, except for amoral were found to be significant at p ≤ .05. However there was a more moderate change in the populations' broader epistemological beliefs (EBAPS) which was supported during the final interviews. The EBAPS results: the mean gain scores for the overall score and all dimensions, except for the source of ability to learn were found to be significant at p ≤ .05. The participants' identified the laboratory work as the most effective instructional feature followed by the post-laboratory activities. The pre-laboratory was identified as being the least effective feature. The participants suggested the laboratory work offered real-life experiences, group discussions, and teamwork which added understanding and meaning to their learning. The post-laboratory was viewed as necessary in tying all the information together and being able to see the bigger picture. What one cannot infer at this point is

Epistemological Predictors of Prospective Biology Teachers' Nature of Science Understandings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Köseoglu, Pinar; Köksal, Mustafa Serdar

2015-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate epistemological predictors of nature of science understandings of 281 prospective biology teachers surveyed using the Epistemological Beliefs Scale Regarding Science and the Nature of Science Scale. The findings on multiple linear regression showed that understandings about definition of science and…

Understanding the Epistemological Development of Substance Abusing College Students: A Construct Exploration Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miller, Lisa A.

2009-01-01

The purpose of this study was to delve into the epistemological constructs of substance abusing college students and explore whether consistencies with Baxter Magolda's (1992) epistemic constructs were indicated. The study utilized a qualitative, narrative inquiry research design framed by Baxter Magolda's interview outline. Interviews were…

Epistemology, development, and integrity in a science education professional development program

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hancock, Elizabeth St. Petery

This research involved interpretive inquiry to understand changes in the notion of "self" as expressed by teachers recently enrolled as graduate students in an advanced degree program in science education at Florida State University. Teachers work in a context that integrates behavior, social structure, culture, and intention. Within this context, this study focused on the intentional realm that involves interior understandings, including self-epistemology, professional self-identity, and integrity. Scholarship in adult and teacher development, especially ways of knowing theory, guided my efforts to understand change in these notions of self. The five participants in this study were interviewed in depth to explore their "self"-related understandings in detail. The other primary data sources were portfolios and work the participants submitted as part of the program. Guided by a constructivist methodology, I used narrative inquiry and grounded theory to conduct data analysis. As learners and teachers, these individuals drew upon epistemological orientations emphasizing a procedural orientation to knowledge. They experienced varying degrees of interior and exterior development in self and epistemology. They created integrity in their efforts to align their intentions with their actions with a dynamic relationship to context. This study suggests that professional development experiences in science education include consideration of the personal and the professional, recognize and honor differing perspectives, facilitate development, and assist individuals to recognize and articulate their integrity.

Protagorean Epistemology and Dialectic.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Donovan, Brian R.

Contemporary dispute among teachers of rhetoric between those who prefer the classical tradition of rhetoric and those who champion an epistemic view of rhetoric has antecedents among the disputes of the ancient Greek scholars. Some of the vital themes of epistemology can be traced back to Protagoras of Abdera, one of the two great leaders of the…

Methodological and Epistemological Considerations in Utilizing Qualitative Inquiry to Develop Interventions.

PubMed

Duggleby, Wendy; Williams, Allison

2016-01-01

The purpose of this article is to discuss methodological and epistemological considerations involved in using qualitative inquiry to develop interventions. These considerations included (a) using diverse methodological approaches and (b) epistemological considerations such as generalization, de-contextualization, and subjective reality. Diverse methodological approaches have the potential to inform different stages of intervention development. Using the development of a psychosocial hope intervention for advanced cancer patients as an example, the authors utilized a thematic study to assess current theories/frameworks and interventions. However, to understand the processes that the intervention needed to target to affect change, grounded theory was used. Epistemological considerations provided a framework to understand and, further, critique the intervention. Using diverse qualitative methodological approaches and examining epistemological considerations were useful in developing an intervention that appears to foster hope in patients with advanced cancer. © The Author(s) 2015.

Speaking for ourselves: feminist methods and community psychology.

PubMed

Cosgrove, L; McHugh, M C

2000-12-01

Although feminist and community psychology share a number of epistemological and methodological perspectives that guide their respective theories and research practices, it has been argued that community psychology has not fully integrated a feminist perspective into the discipline. This paper examines how community psychology and feminist research methods might combine to help us better understand women's experiences without essentializing or universalizing those experiences. The authors offer a series of suggested directions for feminist research that may also prove promising for community psychology. Particular attention is paid to feminist social constructionist approaches insofar as they address the complex relationship between epistemology and methodology.

Epistemologies of Situated Knowledges: "Troubling" Knowledge in Philosophy of Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lang, James C.

2011-01-01

Epistemologies of situated knowledges, advanced by scholars such as Donna Haraway, Lorraine Code, and Maureen Ford, challenge mainstream epistemology's claim to be the gold standard in determining what counts as knowledge. In this essay, James Lang uses the work of these and other feminist theorists to explicate the notion of situated knowledges…

Issues and Research in Special Education. Volume 2.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gaylord-Ross, Robert, Ed.

This compilation presents five papers on issues and research in special education. "Qualitative Research in Special Education: An Evaluative Review" (Charles A. Peck and Gail C. Furman) explicates some of the epistemological assumptions underlying qualitative research methods, reviews examples of qualitative research, evaluates the contributions…

Does Constructivist Teaching Help Students Move Their Epistemological Beliefs in Physics through Uppers Levels?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ogan-Bekiroglu, Feral; Sengul-Turgut, Gulsen

2008-01-01

The examination of the development of students' epistemological beliefs is important. There is little empirical evidence for precisely how epistemological beliefs are altered. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of constructivist teaching on students' epistemological beliefs in physics. One-group pretest-posttest…

Narrative methods in quality improvement research

PubMed Central

Greenhalgh, T; Russell, J; Swinglehurst, D

2005-01-01



 This paper reviews and critiques the different approaches to the use of narrative in quality improvement research. The defining characteristics of narrative are chronology (unfolding over time); emplotment (the literary juxtaposing of actions and events in an implicitly causal sequence); trouble (that is, harm or the risk of harm); and embeddedness (the personal story nests within a particular social, historical and organisational context). Stories are about purposeful action unfolding in the face of trouble and, as such, have much to offer quality improvement researchers. But the quality improvement report (a story about efforts to implement change), which is common, must be distinguished carefully from narrative based quality improvement research (focused systematic enquiry that uses narrative methods to generate new knowledge), which is currently none. We distinguish four approaches to the use of narrative in quality improvement research—narrative interview; naturalistic story gathering; organisational case study; and collective sense-making—and offer a rationale, describe how data can be collected and analysed, and discuss the strengths and limitations of each using examples from the quality improvement literature. Narrative research raises epistemological questions about the nature of narrative truth (characterised by sense-making and emotional impact rather than scientific objectivity), which has implications for how rigour should be defined (and how it might be achieved) in this type of research. We offer some provisional guidance for distinguishing high quality narrative research in a quality improvement setting from other forms of narrative account such as report, anecdote, and journalism. PMID:16326792

Object-Based Epistemology at a Creationist Museum

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wendel, Paul J.

2011-01-01

In a regional young-earth creationist museum, objects are presented as if they speak for themselves, purportedly embodying proof that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, that humans have lived on earth throughout its history, and that dinosaurs and humans lived simultaneously. In public lectures, tours, and displays, museum associates emphasize direct observation over inference or theory. These emphases resonate closely with the "object-based epistemology" of the late nineteenth century described in Steven Conn's Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876- 1926. In Conn's description, museum objects, artfully arranged and displayed, were intended to speak for themselves, and observation and categorization were valued over experiment and theory. The regional young-earth creationist museum is observed to partly succeed and partly fail in implementing an object-based epistemology. Although object-based epistemology represents a nineteenth-century approach to knowledge and museum display, it is compatible with an inductive approach to biblical interpretation and it confers various rhetorical advantages to creationist arguments. It is concluded that a focus on the theory-laden nature of data would likely strengthen nature-of-science education efforts to increase public acceptance of evolution.

Social Epistemology and Its Politically Correct Words: Avoiding Absolutism, Relativism, Consensualism, and Vulgar Pragmatism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Price, Leigh

2005-01-01

Where social epistemology has been applied in environmental education research, certain words have come to be associated with it, such as, "social," "contextualized," "strategic," "political," "pragmatic," "democratic," and "participatory." In this paper, I first suggest interpretations of these words that potentially avoid absolutism, relativism,…

Epistemological Grounds for Cybernetic Models.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Khawam, Yves J.

1991-01-01

Addresses philosophical grounds for artificial intelligence (AI) and cybernetic models by investigating three epistemological views--realism, a priorism, and phenomenology--to determine the problems in information transfer between a model and the real world. It is suggested that phenomenology demonstrates the most promise for opening up…

The Effects of Gender and Type of Inquiry Curriculum on Sixth Grade Students' Science Process Skills and Epistemological Beliefs in Science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zaleta, Kristy L.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of gender and type of inquiry curriculum (open or structured) on science process skills and epistemological beliefs in science of sixth grade students. The current study took place in an urban northeastern middle school. The researcher utilized a sample of convenience comprised of 303 sixth grade students taught by four science teachers on separate teams. The study employed mixed methods with a quasi-experimental design, pretest-posttest comparison group with 17 intact classrooms of students. Students' science process skills and epistemological beliefs in science (source, certainty, development, and justification) were measured before and after the intervention, which exposed different groups of students to different types of inquiry (structured or open). Differences between comparison and treatment groups and between male and female students were analyzed after the intervention, on science process skills, using a two-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and, on epistemological beliefs in science, using a two-way multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). Responses from two focus groups of open inquiry students were cycle coded and examined for themes and patterns. Quantitative measurements indicated that girls scored significantly higher on science process skills than boys, regardless of type of inquiry instruction. Neither gender nor type of inquiry instruction predicted students' epistemological beliefs in science after accounting for students' pretest scores. The dimension Development accounted for 10.6% of the variance in students' science process skills. Qualitative results indicated that students with sophisticated epistemological beliefs expressed engagement with the open-inquiry curriculum. Students in both the sophisticated and naive beliefs groups identified challenges with the curriculum and improvement in learning as major themes. The types of challenges identified differed between the groups

Significance of Epistemological Beliefs for Teaching and Learning Psychology: A Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Green, Heather J.; Hood, Michelle

2013-01-01

Beliefs about the nature of knowledge, termed "epistemological beliefs", are relevant to understanding educational strategies of both learners and teachers. Epistemological beliefs arguably have particular relevance in the discipline and profession of psychology, due to an emphasis on integration of knowledge from multiple theoretical…

Social network analysis: Presenting an underused method for nursing research.

PubMed

Parnell, James Michael; Robinson, Jennifer C

2018-06-01

This paper introduces social network analysis as a versatile method with many applications in nursing research. Social networks have been studied for years in many social science fields. The methods continue to advance but remain unknown to most nursing scholars. Discussion paper. English language and interpreted literature was searched from Ovid Healthstar, CINAHL, PubMed Central, Scopus and hard copy texts from 1965 - 2017. Social network analysis first emerged in nursing literature in 1995 and appears minimally through present day. To convey the versatility and applicability of social network analysis in nursing, hypothetical scenarios are presented. The scenarios are illustrative of three approaches to social network analysis and include key elements of social network research design. The methods of social network analysis are underused in nursing research, primarily because they are unknown to most scholars. However, there is methodological flexibility and epistemological versatility capable of supporting quantitative and qualitative research. The analytic techniques of social network analysis can add new insight into many areas of nursing inquiry, especially those influenced by cultural norms. Furthermore, visualization techniques associated with social network analysis can be used to generate new hypotheses. Social network analysis can potentially uncover findings not accessible through methods commonly used in nursing research. Social networks can be analysed based on individual-level attributes, whole networks and subgroups within networks. Computations derived from social network analysis may stand alone to answer a research question or incorporated as variables into robust statistical models. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

An Essay for Educators: Epistemological Realism Really is Common Sense

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cobern, William W.; Loving, Cathleen C.

2008-04-01

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilot asked Jesus of Nazareth. For many educators today this question seems quaintly passé. Rejection of “truth” goes hand-in-hand with the rejection of epistemological realism. Educational thought over the last decade has instead been dominated by empiricist, anti-realist, instrumentalist epistemologies of two types: first by psychological constructivism and later by social constructivism. Social constructivism subsequently has been pressed to its logical conclusion in the form of relativistic multiculturalism. Proponents of both psychological constructivism and social constructivism value knowledge for its utility and eschew as irrelevant speculation any notion that knowledge is actually about reality. The arguments are largely grounded in the discourse of science and science education where science is “western” science; neither universal nor about what is really real. The authors defended the notion of science as universal in a previous article. The present purpose is to offer a commonsense argument in defense of critical realism as an epistemology and the epistemically distinguished position of science (rather than privileged) within a framework of epistemological pluralism. The paper begins with a brief cultural survey of events during the thirty-year period from 1960-1990 that brought many educators to break with epistemological realism and concludes with comments on the pedagogical importance of realism. Understanding the cultural milieu of the past forty years is critical to understanding why traditional philosophical attacks on social constructivist ideas have proved impotent defenders of scientific realism.

The Epistemology behind the Educational Philosophy of Montessori: Senses, Concepts, and Choice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Colgan, Andrew D.

2016-01-01

This article seeks to re-introduce Dr. Maria Montessori's educational philosophy, which has been absent from modern philosophy of education literature. It describes and analyzes crucial aspects of her epistemology, as best known through her "Method." Discussed are the need for early education, the development of the senses, and the…

Analyzing Storytelling in TESOL Interview Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kasper, Gabriele; Prior, Matthew T.

2015-01-01

Autobiographic research interviews have become an accepted and valued method of qualitative inquiry in TESOL and applied linguistics more broadly. In recent discussions surrounding the epistemological treatment of autobiographic stories, TESOL researchers have increasingly called for more attention to the ways in which stories are embedded in…

A Chinese young adult non-scientist's epistemologies and her understandings of the concept of speed

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cao, Ying; Brizuela, Barbara M.

2015-08-01

Past research has investigated students' epistemologies while they were taking courses that required an integrated understanding of mathematical and scientific concepts. However, past studies have not investigated students who are not currently enrolled in such classes. Additionally, past studies have primarily focused on individuals who are native English speakers from Western cultures. In this paper, we aim to investigate whether Hammer and his colleagues' claims concerning learners' epistemologies could be extended to individuals who lack advanced mathematics and science training, have had different cultural and learning experiences, and have grown up speaking and learning in another language. To this end, we interviewed a participant with these characteristics about her understandings of the concept of speed. Our findings show that previous theoretical frameworks can be used to explain the epistemologies of the individual examined in this study. The case suggests that these theories may be relevant regardless of the learner's mathematics and science background, language, educational experience, and cultural background. In the future, more cases should be examined with learners from different academic backgrounds and cultures to further support this finding.

Exploring the Relationship between Physics-Related Epistemological Beliefs and Physics Understanding

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stathopoulou, Christina; Vosniadou, Stella

2007-01-01

Three studies are reported that investigated the relationship between secondary school students' physics-related epistemological beliefs and physics conceptual understanding. Study 1 involved the development of a Greek Epistemological Beliefs Evaluation Instrument for Physics (GEBEP) which was administered to 394 students (10th graders). Study 2…

The Epistemological Framing of a Discipline: Writing Science in University Oceanography.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kelly, Gregory J.; Chen, Catherine; Prothero, William

2000-01-01

Examines how instruction in scientific writing in a university oceanography course communicated epistemological positions of the discipline. Uses an ethnographic perspective to explore how teachers and students came to define particular views of disciplinary knowledge. Identifies epistemological issues such as uses of evidence, role of expertise,…

Investigating the Relationships among PSTs' Teaching Beliefs: Are Epistemological Beliefs Central?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bahçivan, Eralp

2016-01-01

The present case study explored the teaching belief systems of pre-service science teachers (PSTs), including epistemological beliefs, self-efficacy beliefs, conceptions of science learning and teaching and pedagogical content knowledge. Based on their epistemological scores, three PSTs who were categorised as exhibiting naïve, moderately…

Piaget's epistemic subject and science education: Epistemological vs. psychological issues

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kitchener, Richard F.

1993-06-01

Many individuals claim that Piaget's theory of cognitive development is empirically false or substantially disconfirmed by empirical research. Although there is substance to such a claim, any such conclusion must address three increasingly problematic issues about the possibility of providing an empirical test of Piaget's genetic epistemology: (1) the empirical underdetermination of theory by empirical evidence, (2) the empirical difficulty of testing competence-type explanations, and (3) the difficulty of empirically testing epistemic norms. This is especially true of a central epistemic construct in Piaget's theory — the epistemic subject. To illustrate how similar problems of empirical testability arise in the physical sciences, I briefly examine the case of Galileo and the correlative difficulty of empirically testing Galileo's laws. I then point out some important epistemological similarities between Galileo and Piaget together with correlative changes needed in science studies methodology. I conclude that many psychologists and science educators have failed to appreciate the difficulty of falsifying Piaget's theory because they have tacitly adopted a philosophy of science at odds with the paradigm-case of Galileo.

Personal Epistemologies and Older Workers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Billett, Stephen; van Woerkom, Marianne

2008-01-01

This paper evaluates the need and prospects for older workers to develop and deploy effective and critical personal epistemologies in order to maintain workplace competence, successfully negotiate work transitions and secure ontological security in their working life. Furthermore, it addresses different ways of reflecting by workers, which types…

Tracing fifth-grade students' epistemologies in modeling through their participation in a model-based curriculum unit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baek, Hamin

In the past decade, there has been a growing interest in scientific practices as a reform focus in K--12 science education of the United States. In this context, scientific practices refer to practices that have family resemblance to scientists' professional practices and simultaneously are pedagogically accessible and useful to students. In this study, I propose development of students' epistemic agency as an overarching goal for this practice-based approach to science learning. In particular, I argue that students' epistemologies, one dimension of epistemic agency, should be developed as a result of participating in practice-based science learning. The research within this dissertation focuses on studying the practice of scientific modeling. There is a body of prior studies on students' epistemological understandings about models and modeling. None have examined how students' epistemologies about modeling changes over time and why they change the way they do. This research aims to contribute to this body of work by investigating how three elementary students' epistemologies as deployed in their modeling practice, or, their epistemologies in modeling (EIMs) changed over time as a class of 5th-grade students (N=24) and their teacher, Mrs. M, and an intern teacher, Ms. H, enacted a model-based curriculum unit about evaporation and condensation and ways in which some of the curriculum events influenced the changes of their EIMs. To achieve these goals, I conducted a microgenetic analysis of the three focus students' EIMs from the models, utterances, and notes they made in nine modeling activities as part of their curriculum enactment, and analyzed ideas about modeling from some modeling-related curriculum events that preceded each modeling activity using a coding scheme I developed based on prior analytical frameworks and the data. Analysis indicates that the students attended to three main model features such as communicative features (e.g., labels, sentences, key

The Evaluation of Conceptual Learning and Epistemological Beliefs on Physics Learning by Think-Pair-Share

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gok, Tolga

2018-01-01

The purpose of the research was to investigate the effects of think pair share (TPS) instructional strategy on students' conceptual learning and epistemological beliefs on physics and physics learning. The research was conducted with two groups. One of the groups was the experimental group (EG) and the other group was the control group (CG). 35…

Ontological and Epistemological Issues Regarding Climate Models and Computer Experiments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vezer, M. A.

2010-12-01

Recent philosophical discussions (Parker 2009; Frigg and Reiss 2009; Winsberg, 2009; Morgon 2002, 2003, 2005; Gula 2002) about the ontology of computer simulation experiments and the epistemology of inferences drawn from them are of particular relevance to climate science as computer modeling and analysis are instrumental in understanding climatic systems. How do computer simulation experiments compare with traditional experiments? Is there an ontological difference between these two methods of inquiry? Are there epistemological considerations that result in one type of inference being more reliable than the other? What are the implications of these questions with respect to climate studies that rely on computer simulation analysis? In this paper, I examine these philosophical questions within the context of climate science, instantiating concerns in the philosophical literature with examples found in analysis of global climate change. I concentrate on Wendy Parker’s (2009) account of computer simulation studies, which offers a treatment of these and other questions relevant to investigations of climate change involving such modelling. Two theses at the center of Parker’s account will be the focus of this paper. The first is that computer simulation experiments ought to be regarded as straightforward material experiments; which is to say, there is no significant ontological difference between computer and traditional experimentation. Parker’s second thesis is that some of the emphasis on the epistemological importance of materiality has been misplaced. I examine both of these claims. First, I inquire as to whether viewing computer and traditional experiments as ontologically similar in the way she does implies that there is no proper distinction between abstract experiments (such as ‘thought experiments’ as well as computer experiments) and traditional ‘concrete’ ones. Second, I examine the notion of materiality (i.e., the material commonality between

Preservice Science Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs and Informal Reasoning Regarding Socioscientific Issues

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ozturk, Nilay; Yilmaz-Tuzun, Ozgul

2017-12-01

This study investigated preservice elementary science teachers' (PSTs) informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues (SSI), their epistemological beliefs, and the relationship between informal reasoning and epistemological beliefs. From several SSIs, nuclear power usage was selected for this study. A total of 647 Turkish PSTs enrolled in three large universities in Turkey completed the open-ended questionnaire, which assessed the participants' informal reasoning about the target SSI, and Schommer's (1990) Epistemological Questionnaire. The participants' epistemological beliefs were assessed quantitatively and their informal reasoning was assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The findings revealed that PSTs preferred to generate evidence-based arguments rather than intuitive-based arguments; however, they failed to generate quality evidence and present different types of evidence to support their claims. Furthermore, among the reasoning quality indicators, PSTs mostly generated supportive argument construction. Regarding the use of reasoning modes, types of risk arguments and political-oriented arguments emerged as the new reasoning modes. The study demonstrated that the PSTs had different epistemological beliefs in terms of innate ability, omniscient authority, certain knowledge, and quick learning. Correlational analyses revealed that there was a strong negative correlation between the PSTs' certain knowledge and counterargument construction, and there were negative correlations between the PSTs' innate ability, certain knowledge, and quick learning dimensions of epistemological beliefs and their total argument construction. This study has implications for both science teacher education and the practice of science education. For example, PST teacher education programs should give sufficient importance to training teachers that are skillful and knowledgeable regarding SSIs. To achieve this, specific SSI-related courses should form part of science

Amalgamation of Future Time Orientation, Epistemological Beliefs, Achievement Goals and Study Strategies: Empirical Evidence Established

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Phan, Huy P.

2009-01-01

Background: Recently research evidence emphasizes two main lines of inquiry, namely the relations between future time perspective (FTP), achievement goals (mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance) and study processing strategies, and the relations between epistemological beliefs, achievement goals and study processing strategies.…

Deaf Epistemology: Deafhood and Deafness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hauser, Peter C.; O'Hearn, Amanda; McKee, Michael; Steider, Anne; Thew, Denise

2010-01-01

Deaf epistemology constitutes the nature and extent of the knowledge that deaf individuals acquire growing up in a society that relies primarily on audition to navigate life. Deafness creates beings who are more visually oriented compared to their auditorily oriented peers. How hearing individuals interact with deaf individuals shapes how deaf…

'No one agrees except for those of us who have it': endometriosis patients as an epistemological community.

PubMed

Whelan, Emma

2007-11-01

This paper contributes to the literature on patients' claims-making work by analysing the epistemological strategies and standards used by members of an endometriosis patient community. It draws upon focus group research with members of a support group for endometriosis sufferers, and an open-ended survey of an e-mail list for women with the disease. Lynn Hankinson Nelson's (1993) concept of epistemological community is used to examine standards and practices for developing and evaluating knowledge used by women with endometriosis. Particular attention is paid to the use and centrality of the notion of experience within this community.

An Investigation of the Epistemological Predictors of Self-Regulated Learning of Advanced Science Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koksal, Mustafa Serdar; Yaman, Suleyman

2012-01-01

Recent research in educational psychology has shown that beliefs about knowing and learning have an effect on learning. These epistemological beliefs, which are categorized as certainty, simplicity of knowledge, existence of quick learning, and the fixed ability to learn, are related to educationally important cognitive and affective factors, such…

[Thought Experiments of Economic Surplus: Science and Economy in Ernst Mach's Epistemology].

PubMed

Wulz, Monika

2015-03-01

Thought Experiments of Economic Surplus: Science and Economy in Ernst Mach's Epistemology. Thought experiments are an important element in Ernst Mach's epistemology: They facilitate amplifying our knowledge by experimenting with thoughts; they thus exceed the empirical experience and suspend the quest for immediate utility. In an economical perspective, Mach suggested that thought experiments depended on the production of an economic surplus based on the division of labor relieving the struggle for survival of the individual. Thus, as frequently emphasized, in Mach's epistemology, not only the 'economy of thought' is an important feature; instead, also the socioeconomic conditions of science play a decisive role. The paper discusses the mental and social economic aspects of experimental thinking in Mach's epistemology and examines those within the contemporary evolutionary, physiological, and economic contexts. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Measurement of Epistemological Beliefs: Psychometric Properties of the EQEBI Test Scores

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ordonez, Xavier G.; Ponsoda, Vicente; Abad, Francisco J.; Romero, Sonia J.

2009-01-01

This article proposes a new test (called the EQEBI) for the measurement of epistemological beliefs, integrating and extending the Epistemological Questionnaire (EQ) and the Epistemic Beliefs Inventory (EBI). In Study 1, the two tests were translated and applied to a Spanish-speaking sample. A detailed dimensionality exploration, by means of the…

Teacher Education Students' Epistemological Beliefs: Developing a Relational Model of Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brownlee, Joanne

2004-01-01

A teaching programme based on relational pedagogy (Baxter Magolda, 1993a) was implemented to foster the development of epistemological beliefs in twenty-nine pre-service teacher education students at a large metropolitan university in Australia. Epistemological beliefs are those personally held beliefs about the nature and structure of knowing.…

The Related Effects of Item Characteristics in Measures of Epistemological Beliefs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pope, Kathryn J.; Mooney, Gillian A.

2016-01-01

Personal epistemology is concerned with people's beliefs or assumptions about the nature of knowledge and knowing. Whilst contributions in this field can be traced back to the 1970s, fundamental questions about the ontology and epistemology of the construct still remain. The current study explored the effects of three characteristics of questions…

Mixed Methods in Emerging Academic Subdisciplines: The Case of Sport Management

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van der Roest, Jan-Willem; Spaaij, Ramón; van Bottenburg, Maarten

2015-01-01

This article examines the prevalence and characteristics of mixed methods research in the relatively new subdiscipline of sport management. A mixed methods study is undertaken to evaluate the epistemological/philosophical, methodological, and technical levels of mixed methods design in sport management research. The results indicate that mixed…

Scientific thinking in elementary school: Children's social cognition and their epistemological understanding promote experimentation skills.

PubMed

Osterhaus, Christopher; Koerber, Susanne; Sodian, Beate

2017-03-01

Do social cognition and epistemological understanding promote elementary school children's experimentation skills? To investigate this question, 402 children (ages 8, 9, and 10) in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades were assessed for their experimentation skills, social cognition (advanced theory of mind [AToM]), epistemological understanding (understanding the nature of science), and general information-processing skills (inhibition, intelligence, and language abilities) in a whole-class testing procedure. A multiple indicators multiple causes model revealed a significant influence of social cognition (AToM) on epistemological understanding, and a McNemar test suggested that children's development of AToM is an important precursor for the emergence of an advanced, mature epistemological understanding. Children's epistemological understanding, in turn, predicted their experimentation skills. Importantly, this relation was independent of the common influences of general information processing. Significant relations between experimentation skills and inhibition, and between epistemological understanding, intelligence, and language abilities emerged, suggesting that general information processing contributes to the conceptual development that is involved in scientific thinking. The model of scientific thinking that was tested in this study (social cognition and epistemological understanding promote experimentation skills) fitted the data significantly better than 2 alternative models, which assumed nonspecific, equally strong relations between all constructs under investigation. Our results support the conclusion that social cognition plays a foundational role in the emergence of children's epistemological understanding, which in turn is closely related to the development of experimentation skills. Our findings have significant implications for the teaching of scientific thinking in elementary school and they stress the importance of children's epistemological understanding in

Images, Words, and Narrative Epistemology.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fleckenstein, Kristie S.

1996-01-01

Reviews work suggesting that imagery and language function in tandem to constitute a sense of being, and that metaphors of sight hold as much formative power as metaphors of word. Describes the limitations of language and the ways in which imagery compensates for that limitation. Discusses narrative of epistemology as a fusion of image and…

Learning Opportunities for Pre-Service Science Teachers in a Core Course on Educational Psychology: Changing Epistemological View

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Azam, Saiqa

2016-01-01

This paper describes an action research study aimed at challenging and changing the epistemological views of pre-service science teachers (PSTs) during a core course on educational psychology in a teacher education programme. The researcher, as an instructor, used this course to provide learning opportunities for PSTs to change their existing…

Seeking the "Truth" in the Stories We Tell: The Role of Critical Race Epistemology in Higher Education Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Espino, Michelle M.

2012-01-01

This article focuses on how critical race theory informed the author's epistemological perspective and methodological approach as she analyzed Mexican American educational narratives and formulated her identity as a scholar. Using a storytelling technique employed in CRT, the author weaves together her position as the translator of participants'…

An Epistemological Analysis of the Application of an Online Inquiry-Based Program in Tourism Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hsu, Liwei

2014-01-01

This paper was designed to investigate the application of an online inquiry-based program to European tourism from an epistemological perspective. Fifty tourism students (n = 50) participated in this study and their epistemological beliefs were measured with the Epistemological Belief Scale. A set of pre-, post-, and delayed tests were utilised to…

The Effect of Candidate Teachers' Educational and Epistemological Beliefs on Professional Attitudes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Onen, Aysem Seda

2011-01-01

While teacher's cognitive skills are described with epistemological beliefs, the attitudes towards their profession, teaching styles and disciplinary actions are mainly associated with their educational beliefs. This study aiming to determine the effect of relation between candidate teachers' educational and epistemological beliefs on their…

Preservice Science Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs and Informal Reasoning Regarding Socioscientific Issues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ozturk, Nilay; Yilmaz-Tuzun, Ozgul

2017-01-01

This study investigated preservice elementary science teachers' (PSTs) informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues (SSI), their epistemological beliefs, and the relationship between informal reasoning and epistemological beliefs. From several SSIs, nuclear power usage was selected for this study. A total of 647 Turkish PSTs enrolled in…

What Is Qualitative Research?

PubMed

Otani, Takashi

2017-01-01

The article is an in-depth explanation of qualitative research, an approach increasingly prevalent among today's research communities. After discussing its present spread within the health sciences, the author addresses: 1. Its definition. 2. Its characteristics, as well as its theoretical and procedural background. 3. Its procedures. 4. Differences between qualitative and quantitative approaches. 5. Mixed methods incorporating quantitative research. And in conclusion: 6. The importance of establishing an epistemological perspective in qualitative research.

Adult Learning, Transformative Education, and Indigenous Epistemology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McEachern, Diane

2016-01-01

This chapter describes an innovative program that weaves together adult learning, transformative education, and indigenous epistemology in order to prepare Alaskan rural indigenous social service providers to better serve their communities.

A Meta Analytical Review of the Relationship between Personal Epistemology and Self-Regulated Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alpaslan, Muhammet Mustafa; Yalvac, Bugrahan; Willson, Victor

2017-01-01

Recently, researchers have begun associating personal epistemology with self-regulated learning. Therefore, in the literature there is a need to examine what degree the studies have supported the relationship between the two. The purpose of this meta-analysis is two folds: a) to compute the mean effect size for the relations between personal…

Exploring the Development of Fifth Graders' Practical Epistemologies and Explanation Skills in Inquiry-Based Learning Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Hsin-Kai; Wu, Chia-Lien

2011-01-01

The purposes of this study are to explore fifth graders' epistemological views regarding their own experiences of constructing scientific knowledge through inquiry activities (i.e., practical epistemologies) and to investigate possible interactions between students' practical epistemologies and their inquiry skills to construct scientific…

The Feminist Critique in Epistemological Perspective: Questions of Context in Family Therapy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taggart, Morris

1985-01-01

Presents the feminist critique of systems-based family therapy. Discusses the functions of "punctuation,""boundary," and "closure" in systemic epistemology. Explores implications of a new context for family therapy with respect to women's issues, clinical epistemology, and the challenge to raise novel questions in family therapy. (BH)

Enabling Gender-Inclusivity in LIS Education through Epistemology, Ethics, and Essential Questions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fox, Melodie J.

2014-01-01

Epistemology, or the study of knowledge and knowing, is foundational for Library and Information Science (LIS) programs, as the recognition of different conceptions of how people "know" can help LIS professions handle diversity, especially gender diversity. The incorporation of epistemology can provide LIS students with more…

Modeling the Relations among Students' Epistemological Beliefs, Motivation, Learning Approach, and Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kizilgunes, Berna; Tekkaya, Ceren; Sungur, Semra

2009-01-01

The authors proposed a model to explain how epistemological beliefs, achievement motivation, and learning approach related to achievement. The authors assumed that epistemological beliefs influence achievement indirectly through their effect on achievement motivation and learning approach. Participants were 1,041 6th-grade students. Results of the…

Epistemological and Reading Beliefs Profiles and Their Role in Multiple Text Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mateos, Mar; Solé, Isabel; Martín, Elena; Castells, Nuria; Cuevas, Isabel; González-Lamas, Jara

2016-01-01

Introduction: The aim of this study was to analyse the role of epistemological beliefs and reading beliefs in the comprehension of multiple texts which presented conflicting positions about a controversial topic (nuclear energy). More specifically, we investigated the influence of the multidimensional configuration of epistemological and reading…

"Having to Shift Everything We've Learned to the Side": Expanding Research Methods Taught in Psychology to Incorporate Qualitative Methods.

PubMed

Roberts, Lynne D; Castell, Emily

2016-01-01

In Australia the tradition of conducting quantitative psychological research within a positivist framework has been challenged, with calls made for the inclusion of the full range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies within the undergraduate psychology curriculum. Despite this, the undergraduate psychology curriculum in most Australian universities retains a strong focus on teaching quantitative research methods. Limited research has examined attitudes toward qualitative research held by undergraduate psychology students taught within a positivist framework, and whether these attitudes are malleable and can be changed through teaching qualitative methodologies. Previous research has suggested that students from strong quantitative backgrounds experience some cognitive dissonance and greater difficulties in learning qualitative methods. In this article we examine 3rd year undergraduate psychology students' attitudes to qualitative research prior to commencing and upon completion of a qualitative research unit. All students had previously completed two 13 weeks units of study in quantitative research methods. At Time 1, 63 students (84.1% female) completed online surveys comprising attitudinal measures. Key themes to emerge from student comments were that qualitative research was seen as an alternative approach, representing a paradigmatic shift that was construed by some students advantageous for meeting future professional and educative goals. Quantitative measures of attitudes to qualitative research were associated with general attitudes toward research, and psychology-specific epistemological beliefs. Changes in attitudes following completion of the qualitative research methods unit were in the hypothesized direction, but non-significant (small effect sizes). The findings increase our understanding of psychology students' attitudes toward qualitative research and inform our recommendations for teaching research methods within the undergraduate

Teachers' and Children's Personal Epistemologies for Moral Education: Case Studies in Early Years Elementary Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brownlee, Jo; Syu, Jia-Jia; Mascadri, Julia; Cobb-Moore, Charlotte; Walker, Sue; Johansson, Eva; Boulton-Lewis, Gillian; Ailwood, Jo

2012-01-01

While there is strong interest in teaching values in Australia and internationally there is little focus on young children's moral values learning in the classroom. Research shows that personal epistemology influences teaching and learning in a range of education contexts, including moral education. This study examines relationships between…

The relationship between epistemological beliefs, implicit theories of intelligence, and self-regulated learning among Norwegian postsecondary students.

PubMed

Bråten, Ivar; Strømsø, Helge I

2005-12-01

More empirical work is needed to examine the dimensionality of personal epistemology and relations between those dimensions and motivational and strategic components of self-regulated learning. In particular, there is great need to investigate personal epistemology and its relation to self-regulated learning across cultures and academic contexts. Because the demarcation between personal epistemology and implicit theories of intelligence has been questioned, dimensions of personal epistemology should also be studied in relation to implicit theories of intelligence. The primary aim was to examine the dimensionality of personal epistemology and the relation between those dimensions and implicit theories of intelligence in the cultural context of Norwegian postsecondary education. A secondary aim was to examine the relative contribution of epistemological beliefs and theories of intelligence to motivational and strategic components of self-regulated learning in different academic contexts within that culture. The first sample included 178 business administration students in a traditional transmission-oriented instructional context; the second, 108 student teachers in an innovative pedagogical context. The dimensionality of the Schommer Epistemological Questionnaire was examined through factor analyses, and the resulting dimensions were examined in relation to implicit theories of intelligence. We performed multiple regression analyses, separately for the two academic contexts, to try to predict motivational (i.e. self-efficacy beliefs, mastery goal orientation, and interest) and strategic (i.e. self-regulatory strategy use) components of self-regulated learning with epistemological beliefs and implicit theories of intelligence. Considerable cross-cultural generalizability was found for the dimensionality of personal epistemology. Moreover, the dimensions of personal epistemology seemed to represent constructs separate from the construct of implicit theories of

Exploring students' epistemological knowledge of models and modelling in science: results from a teaching/learning experience on climate change

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tasquier, Giulia; Levrini, Olivia; Dillon, Justin

2016-03-01

The scientific community has been debating climate change for over two decades. In the light of certain arguments put forward by the aforesaid community, the EU has recommended a set of innovative reforms to science teaching such as incorporating environmental issues into the scientific curriculum, thereby helping to make schools a place of civic education. However, despite these European recommendations, relatively little emphasis is still given to climate change within science curricula. Climate change, although potentially engaging for students, is a complex topic that poses conceptual difficulties and emotional barriers, as well as epistemological challenges. Whilst the conceptual and emotional barriers have already been the object of several studies, students' reactions to the epistemological issues raised by climate changes have so far been rarely explored in science education research and thus are the main focus of this paper. This paper describes a study concerning the implementation of teaching materials designed to focus on the epistemological role of 'models and the game of modelling' in science and particularly when dealing with climate change. The materials were implemented in a course of 15 hours (five 3-hour lessons) for a class of Italian secondary-school students (grade 11; 16-17 years old). The purpose of the study is to investigate students' reactions to the epistemological dimension of the materials, and to explore if and how the material enabled them to develop their epistemological knowledge on models.

Challenges and Promises of Overcoming Epistemological and Methodological Partiality: Advancing Engineering Education through Acceptance of Diverse Ways of Knowing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Douglas, Elliot P.; Koro-Ljungberg, Mirka; Borrego, Maura

2010-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to explore some challenges and promises when the epistemological diversity embedded in qualitative research traditions is introduced to research communities with one dominant research paradigm, such as engineering education. Literature is used from other fields and empirical data are used from engineering education,…

Gorgias' Rhetoric: Epistemology, Doxa, and Style.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lyons, Gregory T.

Gorgias' rhetoric can be explained in three parts: his sensory-based but non-empirical epistemology; his definitions of language as inherently deceptive and of "doxa" as the only "knowledge" communicable; and his antithetical style, which reproduces the necessary negotiation of understanding in the world. Gorgias' epistemology…

Justificationist Social Epistemology and Critical Thinking

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ritola, Juho

2011-01-01

In this essay Juho Ritola develops a justificationist approach to social epistemology, which holds that normatively satisfactory social processes pertaining to the acquisition, storage, dissemination, and use of knowledge must be evidence-based processes that include appropriate reflective attitudes by the relevant agents and, consequently, the…

[A historical-epistemological perspective of the ontological problem of Positivism. Positivism and psychiatry].

PubMed

Fantin, Juan Carlos

2005-01-01

The present article reviews epistemological problems related to the philosophical and scientific current known as Positivism. The revision begins with the study of the historical period during which the Logical Positivism emerges (early in the decade of 1920); and finishes with the analysis of its influence on psychiatry and its relation with other epistemological currents in the same period. The article reviews the historical and epistemological outlook at te beginning of the XX th century, when the problem of language became ontologically outstanding. The question of language remains important in the present discussions.

The Effect of Learning the History of Physics on the Scientific Epistemological Beliefs of Pre-Service Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tanel, Zafer

2013-01-01

This study examined the effect of learning the history of physics on the epistemological beliefs of pre-service physics teachers. The research was conducted with 25 pre-service physics teachers using a single-group pre-test/post-test experimental model. The quantitative data of the research were collected using the Turkish version of the…

Dewey's Epistemology: An Argument for Warranted Assertions, Knowing, and Meaningful Classroom Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boyles, Deron R.

2006-01-01

In an effort to navigate the treacherous path between professionalism and social relevancy, this essay takes up an area of professional philosophy--epistemology--with the intention of reclaiming the integrative role John Dewey held for philosophy and classroom practice. Deron Boyles asserts that epistemology can and should represent an area of…

Teaching about the Epistemology of Science in Upper Secondary Schools: An Analysis of Teachers' Classroom Talk

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ryder, Jim; Leach, John

2008-01-01

We begin by drawing upon the available literature to identify four characteristics of teacher talk likely to support student learning about the epistemology of science: making appropriate statements about the epistemology of science in the classroom, linking the epistemology of science with specific science concepts, stating and justifying…

The Moral Epistemology of First Nations Stories.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheney, Jim

2002-01-01

Proposes that one way to view storytelling in First Nations cultures is to look at the epistemology that informs it. Recommends that storytelling be central to environmental education, ethics, and practice. (Contains 19 references.) (DDR)

The many encounters of Thomas Kuhn and French epistemology.

PubMed

Simons, Massimiliano

2017-02-01

The work of Thomas Kuhn has been very influential in Anglo-American philosophy of science and it is claimed that it has initiated the historical turn. Although this might be the case for English speaking countries, in France an historical approach has always been the rule. This article aims to investigate the similarities and differences between Kuhn and French philosophy of science or 'French epistemology'. The first part will argue that he is influenced by French epistemologists, but by lesser known authors than often thought. The second part focuses on the reactions of French epistemologists on Kuhn's work, which were often very critical. It is argued that behind some superficial similarities there are deep disagreements between Kuhn and French epistemology. This is finally shown by a brief comparison with the reaction of more recent French philosophers of science, who distance themselves from French epistemology and are more positive about Kuhn. Based on these diverse appreciations of Kuhn, a typology of the different positions within the philosophy of science is suggested. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Feminism and qualitative nursing research].

PubMed

Yi, Myungsun; Yih, Bong-Sook

2004-06-01

The purpose of this article was to describe feminism and to propose the integration of a feminist method into qualitative nursing methodology in order to expand the body of nursing knowledge. The world view of feminism including philosophy, epistemology and methodology was outlined, and a feminist grounded theory and feminist ethnography were suggested as a way of strengthening nursing research methodology using literature review. Four different philosophical perspectives of feminism, that is, liberal feminism, radical feminism, Marxist feminism, and social feminism were described. Also epistemological perspectives including feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint, and postmodern feminism, were explained and were related to the methodology and methods of feminism. To enhance the strengths of nursing research within the feminist perspectives, feminist grounded theory and feminist ethnography were exemplified in the paradigm of qualitative nursing research. This paper suggested that incorporation of feminist approaches within nursing is a valuable attempt to expand the body of nursing knowledge and to enhance the quality of nursing care services by rectifying male-oriented knowledge and by empowering women in the care of other people as well as themselves.

Researching Pupil Well-Being in UK Secondary Schools: Community Psychology and the Politics of Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Duckett, Paul; Sixsmith, Judith; Kagan, Carolyn

2008-01-01

This study explores the relationships between a school, its staff and its pupils and the impact of these relationships on school pupils' well-being. The authors adopted a community psychological perspective and applied critical, social constructionist epistemologies and participatory, multi-method research tools. The article discusses the…

Professional knowledge and the epistemology of reflective practice.

PubMed

Kinsella, Elizabeth Anne

2010-01-01

Reflective practice is one of the most popular theories of professional knowledge in the last 20 years and has been widely adopted by nursing, health, and social care professions. The term was coined by Donald Schön in his influential books The Reflective Practitioner, and Educating the Reflective Practitioner, and has garnered the unprecedented attention of theorists and practitioners of professional education and practice. Reflective practice has been integrated into professional preparatory programmes, continuing education programmes, and by the regulatory bodies of a wide range of health and social care professions. Yet, despite its popularity and widespread adoption, a problem frequently raised in the literature concerns the lack of conceptual clarity surrounding the term reflective practice. This paper seeks to respond to this problem by offering an analysis of the epistemology of reflective practice as revealed through a critical examination of philosophical influences within the theory. The aim is to discern philosophical underpinnings of reflective practice in order to advance increasingly coherent interpretations, and to consider the implications for conceptions of professional knowledge in professional life. The paper briefly examines major philosophical underpinnings in reflective practice to explicate central themes that inform the epistemological assumptions of the theory. The study draws on the work of Donald Schön, and on texts from four philosophers: John Dewey, Nelson Goodman, Michael Polanyi, and Gilbert Ryle. Five central epistemological themes in reflective practice are illuminated: (1) a broad critique of technical rationality; (2) professional practice knowledge as artistry; (3) constructivist assumptions in the theory; (4) the significance of tacit knowledge for professional practice knowledge; and (5) overcoming mind body dualism to recognize the knowledge revealed in intelligent action. The paper reveals that the theory of reflective

Causality, randomness, intelligibility, and the epistemology of the cell.

PubMed

Dougherty, Edward R; Bittner, Michael L

2010-06-01

Because the basic unit of biology is the cell, biological knowledge is rooted in the epistemology of the cell, and because life is the salient characteristic of the cell, its epistemology must be centered on its livingness, not its constituent components. The organization and regulation of these components in the pursuit of life constitute the fundamental nature of the cell. Thus, regulation sits at the heart of biological knowledge of the cell and the extraordinary complexity of this regulation conditions the kind of knowledge that can be obtained, in particular, the representation and intelligibility of that knowledge. This paper is essentially split into two parts. The first part discusses the inadequacy of everyday intelligibility and intuition in science and the consequent need for scientific theories to be expressed mathematically without appeal to commonsense categories of understanding, such as causality. Having set the backdrop, the second part addresses biological knowledge. It briefly reviews modern scientific epistemology from a general perspective and then turns to the epistemology of the cell. In analogy with a multi-faceted factory, the cell utilizes a highly parallel distributed control system to maintain its organization and regulate its dynamical operation in the face of both internal and external changes. Hence, scientific knowledge is constituted by the mathematics of stochastic dynamical systems, which model the overall relational structure of the cell and how these structures evolve over time, stochasticity being a consequence of the need to ignore a large number of factors while modeling relatively few in an extremely complex environment.

Causality, Randomness, Intelligibility, and the Epistemology of the Cell

PubMed Central

Dougherty, Edward R; Bittner, Michael L

2010-01-01

Because the basic unit of biology is the cell, biological knowledge is rooted in the epistemology of the cell, and because life is the salient characteristic of the cell, its epistemology must be centered on its livingness, not its constituent components. The organization and regulation of these components in the pursuit of life constitute the fundamental nature of the cell. Thus, regulation sits at the heart of biological knowledge of the cell and the extraordinary complexity of this regulation conditions the kind of knowledge that can be obtained, in particular, the representation and intelligibility of that knowledge. This paper is essentially split into two parts. The first part discusses the inadequacy of everyday intelligibility and intuition in science and the consequent need for scientific theories to be expressed mathematically without appeal to commonsense categories of understanding, such as causality. Having set the backdrop, the second part addresses biological knowledge. It briefly reviews modern scientific epistemology from a general perspective and then turns to the epistemology of the cell. In analogy with a multi-faceted factory, the cell utilizes a highly parallel distributed control system to maintain its organization and regulate its dynamical operation in the face of both internal and external changes. Hence, scientific knowledge is constituted by the mathematics of stochastic dynamical systems, which model the overall relational structure of the cell and how these structures evolve over time, stochasticity being a consequence of the need to ignore a large number of factors while modeling relatively few in an extremely complex environment. PMID:21119887

Students' Epistemologies about Experimental Physics: Validating the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilcox, Bethany R.; Lewandowski, H. J.

2016-01-01

Student learning in instructional physics labs represents a growing area of research that includes investigations of students' beliefs and expectations about the nature of experimental physics. To directly probe students' epistemologies about experimental physics and support broader lab transformation efforts at the University of Colorado Boulder…

“Having to Shift Everything We’ve Learned to the Side”: Expanding Research Methods Taught in Psychology to Incorporate Qualitative Methods

PubMed Central

Roberts, Lynne D.; Castell, Emily

2016-01-01

In Australia the tradition of conducting quantitative psychological research within a positivist framework has been challenged, with calls made for the inclusion of the full range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies within the undergraduate psychology curriculum. Despite this, the undergraduate psychology curriculum in most Australian universities retains a strong focus on teaching quantitative research methods. Limited research has examined attitudes toward qualitative research held by undergraduate psychology students taught within a positivist framework, and whether these attitudes are malleable and can be changed through teaching qualitative methodologies. Previous research has suggested that students from strong quantitative backgrounds experience some cognitive dissonance and greater difficulties in learning qualitative methods. In this article we examine 3rd year undergraduate psychology students’ attitudes to qualitative research prior to commencing and upon completion of a qualitative research unit. All students had previously completed two 13 weeks units of study in quantitative research methods. At Time 1, 63 students (84.1% female) completed online surveys comprising attitudinal measures. Key themes to emerge from student comments were that qualitative research was seen as an alternative approach, representing a paradigmatic shift that was construed by some students advantageous for meeting future professional and educative goals. Quantitative measures of attitudes to qualitative research were associated with general attitudes toward research, and psychology-specific epistemological beliefs. Changes in attitudes following completion of the qualitative research methods unit were in the hypothesized direction, but non-significant (small effect sizes). The findings increase our understanding of psychology students’ attitudes toward qualitative research and inform our recommendations for teaching research methods within the undergraduate

Elementary Students' Scientific Epistemological Beliefs in Relation to Socio-Economic Status and Gender

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ozkal, Kudret; Tekkaya, Ceren; Sungur, Semra; Cakiroglu, Jale; Cakiroglu, Erdinc

2010-01-01

This study investigated students' scientific epistemological beliefs in relation to socio-economic status (SES) and gender. Data were obtained from 1,152 eight grade Turkish elementary school students using Scientific Epistemological Beliefs instrument. Canonical correlation analysis indicated that students with a working mother and educated…

Finding the Optimal Scaffoldings for Learners' Epistemological Beliefs during Ill-Structured Problem Solving

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shin, Suhkyung; Song, Hae-Deok

2016-01-01

This study investigates how scaffolding type and learners' epistemological beliefs influence ill-structured problem solving. The independent variables in this study include the type of scaffolding (task-supported, self-monitoring) and the student's epistemological belief level (more advanced, less advanced). The dependent variables include three…

An Epistemological Justification of the Place of Literary Art in the Curriculum.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Phillips, Ruth Ann

The purpose of this study was to epistemologically justify the place of literary art in the curriculum by showing that its aesthetic significance gives knowledge that can be communicated in no other terms than its own and that this knowledge is consistent with certain epistemological theories. Using theories of art proposed by Langer and Cassirer,…

Can Inferentialism Contribute to Social Epistemology?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Derry, Jan

2013-01-01

This article argues that Robert Brandom's work can be used to develop ideas in the area of social epistemology. It suggests that this work, precisely because it was influenced by Hegel, can make a significant contribution with philosophical anthropology at its centre. The argument is developed using illustrations from education: the first, from…

Epistemological and Treatment Implications of Nonlinear Dynamics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stein, A. H.

The treatment implications of understanding mind as solely epiphenomenal to nonlinearly founded neurobiology are discussed. G. Klimovsky's epistemological understanding of psychoanalysis as a science is rejected and treatment approaches integrating W. R. Bion's and D. W. Winnicott's work are supported.

Forms of presentism in the history of science. Rethinking the project of historical epistemology.

PubMed

Loison, Laurent

2016-12-01

Since the late 1980s, presentism has seen a resurgence among some historians of science. Most of them draw a line between a good form of presentism and typical anachronism, but where the line should be drawn remains an open question. The present article aims at resolving this problem. In the first part I define the four main distinct forms of presentism at work in the history of science and the different purposes they serve. Based on this typology, the second part reconsiders what counts as anachronism, Whiggism and positivist history. This clarification is used as a basis to rethink the research program of historical epistemology in the third section. Throughout this article, I examine the conceptual core of historical epistemology more than its actual history, from Bachelard to Foucault or others. Its project should be defined - as Canguilhem suggested - as an attempt to account for both the contingency and the rationality of science. As such, historical epistemology is based on a complex fifth form of presentism, which I call critical presentism. The critical relation at stake not only works from the present to the past, because of the acknowledged rationality of science, but also from the past to the present because of the contingency and historicity of scientific knowledge. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Poverty and Knowing: Exploring Epistemological Development in Welfare-to-Work Community College Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pizzolato, Jane Elizabeth; Olson, Avery B.

2016-01-01

Through a one year-long, qualitative study of welfare-to-work students, this study investigates the developing epistemologies of women enrolled in a community college CalWORKs program. We investigate how poverty as a macro-environment and the community college as a micro-environment influence participants' epistemological development. Findings…

Personal Epistemology across Different Judgement Domains: Effects of Grade Level and School Curriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Xinghua; Zhou, Ji; Shen, Jiliang

2016-01-01

This article reports a study that is based on the framework of personal epistemology proposed by Kuhn, Cheney, and Weinstock (2000). The instrument developed by Kuhn et al. (2000) for assessing the three positions (absolutist, multiplist and evaluativist) of epistemological understanding across five judgements' domains was translated and…

Epistemological Agency and the New Employee

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Raymond

2005-01-01

The necessary learning actions new employees must undertake to meet the performance requirements of their new job may be said to constitute a constructivist epistemology of necessity. This view forms a useful basis of inquiry into new employee workplace learning as it seeks to explicate the significance of what new employees "do" in and…

"Seeing Things in a New Light,": Conditions for Changes in the Epistemological Beliefs of University Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lahtinen, Aino-Maija; Pehkonen, Leila

2013-01-01

The study describes the advancement of the epistemological beliefs of university students. After obtaining interesting research results on changes in students' (N = 170) conceptions of learning from Jan Meyer's Reflections on Learning Inventory, we carried out a qualitative study using a focus group interview of seven students. The purpose was to…

The Relations between Scientific Epistemological Beliefs and Goal Orientations of Pre-Service Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaya, Gamze Inan

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations between pre-service teachers' scientific epistemological beliefs and goal orientations in 2X2 framework. Scientific epistemological beliefs are domain-specific views of people about nature and acquisition of scientific knowledge, how scientific knowledge is produced, how reliable and valid…

Diagnosing Conceptions about the Epistemology of Science: Contributions of a Quantitative Assessment Methodology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vázquez-Alonso, Ángel; Manassero-Mas, María-Antonia; García-Carmona, Antonio; Montesano de Talavera, Marisa

2016-01-01

This study applies a new quantitative methodological approach to diagnose epistemology conceptions in a large sample. The analyses use seven multiple-rating items on the epistemology of science drawn from the item pool Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS). The bases of the new methodological diagnostic approach are the empirical…

Integrating the Ontological, Epistemological, and Sociocultural Aspects: A Holistic View of Teacher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huang, Teng

2016-01-01

The three aspects of teacher change--ontological, epistemological, and sociocultural--are traditionally regarded as independent. Usually only the epistemological aspect is highlighted in formal teacher education. In this paper, I argue that a holistic and interdependent view of these aspects is needed. Thus, this paper aims to explore the process…

Engineering behaviour change in an epidemic: the epistemology of NIH-funded HIV prevention science.

PubMed

Green, Adam; Kolar, Kat

2015-05-01

Social scientific and public health literature on National Institutes of Health-funded HIV behavioural prevention science often assumes that this body of work has a strong biomedical epistemological orientation. We explore this assumption by conducting a systematic content analysis of all NIH-funded HIV behavioural prevention grants for men who have sex with men between 1989 and 2012. We find that while intervention research strongly favours a biomedical orientation, research into the antecedents of HIV risk practices favours a sociological, interpretive and structural orientation. Thus, with respect to NIH-funded HIV prevention science, there exists a major disjunct in the guiding epistemological orientations of how scientists understand HIV risk, on the one hand, and how they engineer behaviour change in behavioural interventions, on the other. Building on the extant literature, we suggest that the cause of this disjunct is probably attributable not to an NIH-wide positivist orientation, but to the specific standards of evidence used to adjudicate HIV intervention grant awards, including randomised controlled trials and other quantitative measures of intervention efficacy. © 2015 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2015 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

From "They" Science to "Our" Science: Hip Hop Epistemology in STEAM Education

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dolberry, Maurice E.

Hip hop has moved from being considered a type of music into being understood as a culture in which a prominent type of music originates. Hip hop culture has a philosophy and epistemological constructs as well. This study analyzed those constructs to determine how conceptions of science factor in hip hop worldviews. Pedagogical models in culturally responsive teaching and Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) education were also examined to discern their philosophical connections with hip hop culture. These connections were used to create two theoretical models. The first one, Hip Hop Science, described how scientific thought functions in hip hop culture. The second model, Hip Hop STEAM Pedagogy, proposes how hip hop culture can inform STEAM teaching practices. The study began by using Critical Race Theory to create a theoretical framework proposing how the two theoretical models could be derived from the philosophical and pedagogical concepts. Content analysis and narrative inquiry were used to analyze data collected from scholarly texts, hip hop songs, and interviews with hip hop-responsive educators. The data from these sources were used initially to assess the adequacy of the proposed theoretical framework, and subsequently to improve its viability. Four overlapping themes emerged from the data analyses, including hip hop-resistance to formal education; how hip hop culture informs pedagogical practice in hip hop-responsive classrooms; conceptions of knowledge and reality that shape how hip hoppers conduct scientific inquiry; and hip hop-based philosophies of effective teaching for hip hoppers as a marginalized cultural group. The findings indicate that there are unique connections between hip hop epistemology, sciencemindedness, and pedagogical practices in STEAM education. The revised theoretical framework clarified the nature of these connections, and supported claims from prior research that hip hop culture provides viable sites of

Veiled chameleons: Analyzing urban science teachers' epistemological and ontological beliefs on "caring" for urban students' science literacy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barrett, Channa Nicole

The present study investigated teachers' epistemological and ontological beliefs and how those beliefs influence "caring" for urban students' science literacy. The grounded theory research involved six teacher participants and 18 student participants and collected the data using the following methods: Teacher and student interviews and six weeks of classroom observations. Using critical race theory (CRT) as a lens, the analysis of the data occurred simultaneously with the data collection. The findings revealed seven categories and 16 themes, which emerged from the analysis on "caring" for students' science literacy. From the CRT model tested in the study, the data illustrated a plethora of evidence relating to the themes colorblindness, interest convergence, and microaggressions. A negative effect of teachers who practiced colorblindness in the classroom revealed an assignment of subordinate positions, meaning the teacher assumed the role of the ultimate-knowledge holder in the classroom and the students assumed an academic co-dependency role in the classroom. Such an environment, allowed the teachers to become epistemically privileged while the students became epistemically oppressed. Implications for teaching suggest that there are different "shades" of caring for students' science literacy and that teachers should acknowledge the vast critical race-gendered epistemologies that students bring into the classroom in an effort to move towards a just epistemic environment.

On the Epistemological Presuppositions of Reflective Activities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dohn, Nina Bonderup

2011-01-01

Reflection is an ambiguous buzzword in contemporary educational and professional settings. Work has been done to clarify the concept theoretically, but a gap remains between such clarifications and actual reflective activities in educational and work-related practices. Reflective activities embody epistemological presuppositions about the nature…

What Value Can Qualitative Research Add to Quantitative Research Design? An Example From an Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis Trial Feasibility Study.

PubMed

Toye, Francine; Williamson, Esther; Williams, Mark A; Fairbank, Jeremy; Lamb, Sarah E

2016-08-09

Using an example of qualitative research embedded in a non-surgical feasibility trial, we explore the benefits of including qualitative research in trial design and reflect on epistemological challenges. We interviewed 18 trial participants and used methods of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Our findings demonstrate that qualitative research can make a valuable contribution by allowing trial stakeholders to see things from alternative perspectives. Specifically, it can help to make specific recommendations for improved trial design, generate questions which contextualize findings, and also explore disease experience beyond the trial. To make the most out of qualitative research embedded in quantitative design it would be useful to (a) agree specific qualitative study aims that underpin research design, (b) understand the impact of differences in epistemological truth claims, (c) provide clear thematic interpretations for trial researchers to utilize, and (d) include qualitative findings that explore experience beyond the trial setting within the impact plan. © The Author(s) 2016.

[The relationship between qualitative research and positivism].

PubMed

Yang, Cheng-I; Lee, Li-Hung; Tzeng, Wen-Chii

2008-10-01

Historically, positivism has been the dominant approach in the philosophy of science. In nursing, most quantitative researchers tend to employ positivism as their epistemological underpinning, which could be why positivism has long been identified as the epistemology of quantitative research. It can be argued, however, that some of the procedures of qualitative research reflect the perspectives on which positivists insist. This article takes grounded theory and phenomenology as examples, in order to observe how positivism influences their methodologies, evidence obtained is then used to support the aruthors' arguments. The article, furthermore encourages beginning researchers to familiarize themselves with background knowledge of philosophy of social sciences, especially epistemologies and methodologies, in order to make clear the philosophical context in which their research is conducted.

Employing a Qualitative Description Approach in Health Care Research.

PubMed

Bradshaw, Carmel; Atkinson, Sandra; Doody, Owen

2017-01-01

A qualitative description design is particularly relevant where information is required directly from those experiencing the phenomenon under investigation and where time and resources are limited. Nurses and midwives often have clinical questions suitable to a qualitative approach but little time to develop an exhaustive comprehension of qualitative methodological approaches. Qualitative description research is sometimes considered a less sophisticated approach for epistemological reasons. Another challenge when considering qualitative description design is differentiating qualitative description from other qualitative approaches. This article provides a systematic and robust journey through the philosophical, ontological, and epistemological perspectives, which evidences the purpose of qualitative description research. Methods and rigor issues underpinning qualitative description research are also appraised to provide the researcher with a systematic approach to conduct research utilizing this approach. The key attributes and value of qualitative description research in the health care professions will be highlighted with the aim of extending its usage.

A Professor's Fortunate Suggestion: An Essay on the Transformational Power of Interpretive Epistemologies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Diversi, Marcelo

2007-01-01

This is an essay about the transformative power of interpretive epistemologies for those who come into the social sciences seeking meaning in the messiness of human experience. It is about how an epistemological exercise gave the author symbolic tools to become sentient of his father's subjective oppressive force in his life--with the man living…

Ethnographic/Qualitative Research: Theoretical Perspectives and Methodological Strategies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Butler, E. Dean

This paper examines the metatheoretical concepts associated with ethnographic/qualitative educational inquiry and overviews the more commonly utilized research designs, data collection methods, and analytical approaches. The epistemological and ontological assumptions of this newer approach differ greatly from those of the traditional educational…

The Relation between Students' Epistemological Understanding of Computer Models and Their Cognitive Processing on a Modelling Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sins, Patrick H. M.; Savelsbergh, Elwin R.; van Joolingen, Wouter R.; van Hout-Wolters, Bernadette H. A. M.

2009-01-01

While many researchers in science education have argued that students' epistemological understanding of models and of modelling processes would influence their cognitive processing on a modelling task, there has been little direct evidence for such an effect. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the relation between students' epistemological…

Promoting elementary students' epistemology of science through computer-supported knowledge-building discourse and epistemic reflection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lin, Feng; Chan, Carol K. K.

2018-04-01

This study examined the role of computer-supported knowledge-building discourse and epistemic reflection in promoting elementary-school students' scientific epistemology and science learning. The participants were 39 Grade 5 students who were collectively pursuing ideas and inquiry for knowledge advance using Knowledge Forum (KF) while studying a unit on electricity; they also reflected on the epistemic nature of their discourse. A comparison class of 22 students, taught by the same teacher, studied the same unit using the school's established scientific investigation method. We hypothesised that engaging students in idea-driven and theory-building discourse, as well as scaffolding them to reflect on the epistemic nature of their discourse, would help them understand their own scientific collaborative discourse as a theory-building process, and therefore understand scientific inquiry as an idea-driven and theory-building process. As hypothesised, we found that students engaged in knowledge-building discourse and reflection outperformed comparison students in scientific epistemology and science learning, and that students' understanding of collaborative discourse predicted their post-test scientific epistemology and science learning. To further understand the epistemic change process among knowledge-building students, we analysed their KF discourse to understand whether and how their epistemic practice had changed after epistemic reflection. The implications on ways of promoting epistemic change are discussed.

Examining the Epistemological Beliefs and Problem Solving Skills of Preservice Teachers during Teaching Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Erdamar, Gurcu; Alpan, Gulgun

2013-01-01

This study aims to examine the development of preservice teachers' epistemological beliefs and problem solving skills in the process of teaching practice. Participants of this descriptive study were senior students from Gazi University's Faculty of Vocational Education ("n" = 189). They completed the Epistemological Belief Scale and…

Social Epistemology and the Pragmatics of Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gergen, Kenneth J.; Dixon-Román, Ezekiel J.

2014-01-01

In the present offering we challenge the presumption that the educational testing of students provides objective information about such students. This presumption largely rests on an empiricist account of science. In light of mounting criticism, however, empiricist foundationalism has given way to a social epistemology. From this standpoint,…

Framing and Exposing Community Issues through Video Participatory Research: An Emerging Approach for Adult Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mathews, Sarah A.; Lovett, Maria K.

2017-01-01

Video participatory research (VPR) is an emergent methodology that bridges visual methods with the epistemology of participatory research. This approach is motivated by the "crisis of representation" or "reflective turn" (Gubrium & Harper, 2013) that promotes research conducted with or by participants, conceptualizing…

Case studies within a mixed methods paradigm: toward a resolution of the alienation between researcher and practitioner in psychotherapy research.

PubMed

Dattilio, Frank M; Edwards, David J A; Fishman, Daniel B

2010-12-01

This article addresses the long-standing divide between researchers and practitioners in the field of psychotherapy, regarding what really works in treatment and the extent to which interventions should be governed by outcomes generated in a "laboratory atmosphere." This alienation has its roots in a positivist paradigm, which is epistemologically incomplete because it fails to provide for context-based practical knowledge. In other fields of evaluation research, it has been superseded by a mixed methods paradigm, which embraces pragmatism and multiplicity. On the basis of this paradigm, we propose and illustrate new scientific standards for research on the evaluation of psychotherapeutic treatments. These include the requirement that projects should comprise several parallel studies that involve randomized controlled trials, qualitative examinations of the implementation of treatment programs, and systematic case studies. The uniqueness of this article is that it contributes a guideline for involving a set of complementary publications, including a review that offers an overall synthesis of the findings from different methodological approaches. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Changing epistemological beliefs with nature of science implementations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Johnson, Keith; Willoughby, Shannon

2018-06-01

This article discusses our investigation regarding nature of science (NOS) implementations and epistemological beliefs within an undergraduate introductory astronomy course. The five year study consists of two years of baseline data in which no explicit use of NOS material was implemented, then three years of subsequent data in which specific NOS material was integrated into the classroom. Our original study covered two years of baseline data and one year of treatment data. Two additional years of treatment course data have revealed intriguing new insights into our students' epistemic belief structure. To monitor the evolution of belief structures across each semester we used student pre-post data on the Epistemological Beliefs About the Physical Sciences (EBAPS) assessment. The collected data were also partitioned and analyzed according to the following variables: college (Letters of Science, Business, Education, etc.), degree (BA or BS), status (freshman, sophomore, etc.), and gender (male or female). We find that the treatment course no longer undergoes significant overall epistemic deterioration after a semester of instruction. We also acquire a more detailed analysis of these findings utilizing the aforementioned variables. Most notably, we see that this intervention had a pronounced positive impact on males and on students within the college of Education, Arts & Architecture, and those with no concentration. Lastly, whether or not students believe their ability to learn science is innate or malleable did not seem to change, remaining a rigid construct with student epistemologies.

How are learning physics and student beliefs about learning physics connected? Measuring epistemological self-reflection in an introductory course and investigating its relationship to conceptual learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

May, David B.

2002-11-01

the conceptual learning of physics students. Also, getting students to reflect meaningfully on their knowledge and learning is difficult and requires consistent feedback. Research into the epistemological beliefs of physics students in different contexts and from different populations can help us develop more complete models of epistemological beliefs, and ultimately improve the conceptual and epistemological knowledge of all students.

Toward an epistemology of clinical psychoanalysis.

PubMed

Ahumada, J L

1997-01-01

Epistemology emerges from the study of the ways knowledge is gained in the different fields of scientific endeavor. Current polemics on the nature of psychoanalytic knowledge involve counterposed misconceptions of the nature of mind. On one side clinical psychoanalysis is under siege from philosophical "hard science" stalwarts who, upholding as the unitary model of scientific knowledge of Galilean model of science built around the "well-behaved" variables of mechanics and cosmology, argue clinical psychoanalysis does not meet empirical criteria for the validation of its claims. On the other side, its empirical character is renounced by hermeneuticists who, agreeing with "hard science" advocates on what science is, dismiss the animal nature of human beings and hold that clinical psychoanalysis is not an empirical science but a "human" interpretive one. Taking Adolf Grünbaum's critique as its referent, this paper examines how, by ignoring the differences between "exact" and observational science, the "hard science" demand for well-behaved variables misconstrues the nature of events in the realm of mind. Criteria for an epistemology fit for the facts of clinical psychoanalysis as an empirical, observational science of mind are then proposed.

The Cognitive Developmental Approach to "Epistemology" and Its Relation to Logical and Moral Stages.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Broughton, John

This paper presents a cross-sectional investigation of adolescents' and young adults' reflective epistemological development. Three groups of 8 subjects (4 male and female) ages 10, 14, and 18 were given Piagetian tasks, the Kohlberg moral judgment questionnaire, and an epistemology interview covering such concepts as knowledge, thought, feeling,…

Learning through the Ages: An Epistemological Journey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reid, J. Courtney

2009-01-01

This paper explores how three nineteenth-century women writers guided my thinking about education, oppression and spirituality during different decades of my twentieth-century life. In order to re-collect my epistemological journey, a process that requires analysis and reflection, the paper combines the critical lens of feminist theory with the…

Physics Teaching: Mathematics as an Epistemological Tool

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kneubil, Fabiana B.; Robilotta, Manoel R.

2015-01-01

We study the interconnection between Physics and Mathematics in concrete instances, departing from the usual expression for the Coulomb electric field, produced by a point-like charge. It is scrutinized by means of six epistemology-intensive questions and radical answers are proposed, intended to widen one's understanding of the subject. Our…

Teaching About the Epistemology of Science in Upper Secondary Schools: An Analysis of Teachers' Classroom Talk

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ryder, Jim; Leach, John

2008-02-01

We begin by drawing upon the available literature to identify four characteristics of teacher talk likely to support student learning about the epistemology of science: making appropriate statements about the epistemology of science in the classroom, linking the epistemology of science with specific science concepts, stating and justifying learning aims, and working with students’ ideas. These characteristics are then used in an analysis of the classroom talk of seven teachers as they use published resources for teaching about the epistemology of science for the first time. By focusing on teachers’ initial classroom experiences of using these published resources we identify feasible starting points for professional development activities likely to support these teachers in developing their expertise in this challenging area of teaching. Lessons focused on a specific aspect of the epistemology of science (the development of theoretical models) contextualised within two content areas: electromagnetism and cell membrane structure. Our analysis shows that none of these teachers made clearly inappropriate statements about the epistemology of science in the classroom. However, expertise related to the remaining three characteristics of teacher talk varied between teachers. For example, some teachers used a range of approaches to working with students’ ideas during whole class talk (e.g. asking students to justify their ideas and challenging students’ views) whereas for other teachers students’ ideas were not a strong feature of classroom discourse.

Employing a Qualitative Description Approach in Health Care Research

PubMed Central

Bradshaw, Carmel; Atkinson, Sandra; Doody, Owen

2017-01-01

A qualitative description design is particularly relevant where information is required directly from those experiencing the phenomenon under investigation and where time and resources are limited. Nurses and midwives often have clinical questions suitable to a qualitative approach but little time to develop an exhaustive comprehension of qualitative methodological approaches. Qualitative description research is sometimes considered a less sophisticated approach for epistemological reasons. Another challenge when considering qualitative description design is differentiating qualitative description from other qualitative approaches. This article provides a systematic and robust journey through the philosophical, ontological, and epistemological perspectives, which evidences the purpose of qualitative description research. Methods and rigor issues underpinning qualitative description research are also appraised to provide the researcher with a systematic approach to conduct research utilizing this approach. The key attributes and value of qualitative description research in the health care professions will be highlighted with the aim of extending its usage. PMID:29204457

Using the numerical method in 1836, James Jackson bridged French therapeutic epistemology and American medical pragmatism.

PubMed

Kahn, Linda G; Morabia, Alfredo

2015-04-01

To review James Jackson's analysis of bloodletting among pneumonitis patients at the newly founded Massachusetts General Hospital, in which he implemented the numerical method advocated by Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis. The study sample included 34 cases of clinically diagnosed pneumonitis admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital between April 19, 1825, and May 10, 1835, and discharged alive. Patient data were extracted from meticulously kept case books. Jackson calculated mean number of venesections, ounces of blood taken, and days of convalescence within groups stratified by day of the disease when first bloodletting occurred. He also calculated average convalescence within groups stratified by age, sex, prior health, vesication, and day of the disease when the patients were admitted to the hospital. To Jackson's surprise, it "seemed to be of less importance, whether our patients were bled or not, than whether they entered the hospital early or late" after the onset of the pneumonitis. Bloodletting was ineffective. Our multivariate reanalysis of his data confirms his conclusion. Outstandingly for his time, Jackson ruled out unwarranted effects of covariates by tabulating their numerical relations to the duration of pneumonia. Using novel gathering of patient clinical data from hospital records and quantitative analytical methods, Jackson contributed results that challenged conventional wisdom and bridged French therapeutic epistemology and American medical pragmatism. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Geoscience Education Research Methods: Thinking About Sample Size

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Slater, S. J.; Slater, T. F.; CenterAstronomy; Physics Education Research

2011-12-01

Geoscience education research is at a critical point in which conditions are sufficient to propel our field forward toward meaningful improvements in geosciences education practices. Our field has now reached a point where the outcomes of our research is deemed important to endusers and funding agencies, and where we now have a large number of scientists who are either formally trained in geosciences education research, or who have dedicated themselves to excellence in this domain. At this point we now must collectively work through our epistemology, our rules of what methodologies will be considered sufficiently rigorous, and what data and analysis techniques will be acceptable for constructing evidence. In particular, we have to work out our answer to that most difficult of research questions: "How big should my 'N' be??" This paper presents a very brief answer to that question, addressing both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Research question/methodology alignment, effect size and statistical power will be discussed, in addition to a defense of the notion that bigger is not always better.

Epistemology in Excess? A Response to Williams

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Siegei, Harvey

2017-01-01

Emma Williams' "In Excess of Epistemology" admirably endeavours to open the way to an account of critical thinking that goes beyond the one I have defended ad nauseum in recent decades by developing, via the work of Charles Taylor and Martin Heidegger, "a radically different conception of thinking and the human being who…

Gender legacies of jung and freud as epistemology in emergent feminist research on late motherhood.

PubMed

Barone-Chapman, Maryann

2014-03-01

While conducting doctoral research in social science on late motherhood, two analytical engagements with the feminine came to my attention as evidence of a patriarchal bias toward the realm of womanhood. Jung's mythopoetic tension between symbolism and enactments with the feminine and Freud's supposition that a denial of the feminine was necessary for psychological and emotional development appeared to be perpetuating a social problem continuing in current times. Across affective behavior and narrative within stories of late procreative desire, dream journals and Word Association Tests of eight participants was the memory of a male sibling who had enjoyed primacy of place in the parental home over the daughter. The female body with a voice was missing in the one-sided perspectives of Analytical Psychology and Psychoanalysis on the subject of the feminine, until a whole view of psyche's discontents in Feminist inspired Psychoanalytic theories from both schools on the female body were included. Freud and Jung's views became evidence of patriarchy as background while extension of Feminist inspired psychoanalytical thinking, Queer theories and Creation Myth allowed new meanings of the embodied feminine to emerge through a recapitulation of a union of opposites as a union of epistemology and ethos. The essence of Jung's mid-life theories, altered by modernity and eclipsed by female advancement, remains replicatable and paradigmatic outside of essentialist gender performance.

Gender Legacies of Jung and Freud as Epistemology in Emergent Feminist Research on Late Motherhood

PubMed Central

Barone-Chapman, Maryann

2014-01-01

While conducting doctoral research in social science on late motherhood, two analytical engagements with the feminine came to my attention as evidence of a patriarchal bias toward the realm of womanhood. Jung’s mythopoetic tension between symbolism and enactments with the feminine and Freud’s supposition that a denial of the feminine was necessary for psychological and emotional development appeared to be perpetuating a social problem continuing in current times. Across affective behavior and narrative within stories of late procreative desire, dream journals and Word Association Tests of eight participants was the memory of a male sibling who had enjoyed primacy of place in the parental home over the daughter. The female body with a voice was missing in the one-sided perspectives of Analytical Psychology and Psychoanalysis on the subject of the feminine, until a whole view of psyche’s discontents in Feminist inspired Psychoanalytic theories from both schools on the female body were included. Freud and Jung’s views became evidence of patriarchy as background while extension of Feminist inspired psychoanalytical thinking, Queer theories and Creation Myth allowed new meanings of the embodied feminine to emerge through a recapitulation of a union of opposites as a union of epistemology and ethos. The essence of Jung’s mid-life theories, altered by modernity and eclipsed by female advancement, remains replicatable and paradigmatic outside of essentialist gender performance. PMID:25379265

Methodological considerations for research on ethnopolitical violence.

PubMed

Little, Todd D

2017-02-01

The methodological and epistemological challenges that research on ethnopolitical violence faces are examined. This research area is fundamentally important for political reasons and for understanding, as well as subsequent interventions to ameliorate, youths' responses to ethnopolitical violence. Advances in methods are reviewed that can overcome the obstacles placed by the various challenges. These issues are discussed in the context of the articles that comprise this Special Section.

Prising open the 'black box': An epistemological critique of discursive constructions of scaling up the provision of mental health care in Africa.

PubMed

Cooper, Sara

2015-09-01

Global mental health research is increasingly highlighting the high levels of untreated mental illness in Africa and calling for the scaling-up of services in order to redress this situation. A particular model of care is being strongly advocated for such scale-up, and a recent explosion of research is providing guidelines for its implementation. This article seeks to open up the 'black box' of international research on scaling up the provision of mental health care in Africa, unearthing the hidden assumptions and power dynamics underpinning the knowledge produced. It insists that gaining a better understanding of care provision demands that we not only fill the gaps in knowledge but also problematize the assumptions upon which existing knowledge is based. This article demonstrates how two interrelated paradigms are strongly mediating research in this area - those of 'scientific evidence' and 'human rights'. Drawing on recent research within the sociology of scientific knowledge, and strands of postcolonial thought, it demonstrates how these paradigms are both underpinned by several contentious epistemological assumptions, assumptions which are deeply inserted within the epistemological order of Western modernity. The main argument is that through their shared ideological undertones of 'objectivity', 'universalism' and 'rationalism', these paradigms are potentially marginalizing other possibly important ways of thinking about care in Africa, ways which might not originate from modernist forms of consciousness. This article makes a plea for a more inclusive and plural archive of knowledge on scaling up mental health care in Africa, one which is more hospitable to diverse epistemological politics and moral landscapes. © The Author(s) 2014.

New epistemological foundations for cultural psychology: from an atomistic to a self-organizing view of living systems.

PubMed

De Pascale, Adele

2014-01-01

An epistemological foundation for cultural psychology is essential to neuro- and behavioural sciences for the challenge psychological sciences must currently face: searching for an explanation of how a brain can become a mind and how individuals assign a sense to the world and their life. Biological systems are very likely determined by physical and chemical laws of spontaneous self-organization and endogenous constraints but, even if the major result of the Darwinian revolution is "the discovery that living species are their story", the modern synthesis of the evolution theory adopted only continuist and gradualist hypotheses. This nourished the analogy between the theory of natural selection and the theory of operant conditioning, thereby supporting empiricist associationism and the methodological positivism of behavioural and "classical" cognitive psychologists. Current scientific contributions provide evidence to the need for psychotherapy and psychopathology of a new epistemological approach in order to connect research stemming from animal models, up to the most abstract levels of personal meaning. The complex system oriented approach, here described, called "post-rationalism", shaped by a change initiated by evolutionary epistemology. The regulation of emotions initially develops within interpersonal relationships and evolves during both phylogeny and ontogeny, according to complex self-organization processes, leading to the acquisition of Self-organizing abilities and the construction of personal meaning. Endorsing the epistemological similarities of neo-Darwinism and behaviourism, and differentiating from this, the above mentioned approach, emphasises the fact that clinical and psycho-therapeutical practice must be founded on the laws of biological organisation: the ongoing activity of neurobiological systems, including the more abstract domains of thought and language.

Examining the Potential of Combining the Methods of Grounded Theory and Narrative Inquiry: A Comparative Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lal, Shalini; Suto, Melinda; Ungar, Michael

2012-01-01

Increasingly, qualitative researchers are combining methods, processes, and principles from two or more methodologies over the course of a research study. Critics charge that researchers adopting combined approaches place too little attention on the historical, epistemological, and theoretical aspects of the research design. Rather than…

Assessment of Social Sciences Teacher Candidates' Epistemological Beliefs: A Validation and Reliability Study of Scale

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kop, Yasar; Demir, Özden

2017-01-01

This research mainly aims to test the reliability and validity of the Epistemological Beliefs Scale developed by Kop and Demir (2014) on the level of social sciences teaching from Faculty of Education. A total of 176 students participated in the study, which was carried out on 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades of the Social Sciences Teaching Department…

Generative Role of Experiments in Physics and in Teaching Physics: A Suggestion for Epistemological Reconstruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koponen, Ismo T.; Mantyla, Terhi

2006-01-01

In physics teaching experimentality is an integral component in giving the starting point of knowledge formation and conceptualization. However, epistemology of experiments is not often addressed directly in the educational and pedagogical literature. This warrants an attempt to produce an acceptable reconstruction of the epistemological role of…

The Complex Relationship between Students' Critical Thinking and Epistemological Beliefs in the Context of Problem Solving

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hyytinen, Heidi; Holma, Katariina; Toom, Auli; Shavelson, Richard J.; Lindblom-Ylänne, Sari

2014-01-01

The study utilized a multi-method approach to explore the connection between critical thinking and epistemological beliefs in a specific problem-solving situation. Data drawn from a sample of ten third-year bioscience students were collected using a combination of a cognitive lab and a performance task from the Collegiate Learning Assessment…

Uncertainty and equipoise: at interplay between epistemology, decision making and ethics.

PubMed

Djulbegovic, Benjamin

2011-10-01

In recent years, various authors have proposed that the concept of equipoise be abandoned because it conflates the practice of clinical care with clinical research. At the same time, the equipoise opponents acknowledge the necessity of clinical research if there are unresolved uncertainties about the effects of proposed healthcare interventions. As equipoise represents just 1 measure of uncertainty, proposals to abandon equipoise while maintaining a requirement for addressing uncertainties are contradictory and ultimately not valid. As acknowledgment and articulation of uncertainties represent key scientific and moral requirements for human experimentation, the concept of equipoise remains the most useful framework to link the theory of human experimentation with the theory of rational choice. In this article, I show how uncertainty (equipoise) is at the intersection between epistemology, decision making and ethics of clinical research. In particular, I show how our formulation of responses to uncertainties of hoped-for benefits and unknown harms of testing is a function of the way humans cognitively process information. This approach is based on the view that considerations of ethics and rationality cannot be separated. I analyze the response to uncertainties as it relates to the dual-processing theory, which postulates that rational approach to (clinical research) decision making depends both on analytical, deliberative processes embodied in scientific method (system II), and good human intuition (system I). Ultimately, our choices can only become wiser if we understand a close and intertwined relationship between irreducible uncertainty, inevitable errors and unavoidable injustice.

Uncertainty and Equipoise: At Interplay Between Epistemology, Decision-Making and Ethics

PubMed Central

Djulbegovic, Benjamin

2011-01-01

In recent years, various authors have proposed that the concept of equipoise be abandoned since it conflates the practice of clinical care with clinical research. At the same time, the equipoise opponents acknowledge the necessity of clinical research if there are unresolved uncertainties about the effects of proposed healthcare interventions. Since equipoise represents just one measure of uncertainty, proposals to abandon equipoise while maintaining a requirement for addressing uncertainties are contradictory and ultimately not valid. As acknowledgment and articulation of uncertainties represent key scientific and moral requirements for human experimentation, the concept of equipoise remains the most useful framework to link the theory of human experimentation with the theory of rational choice. In this paper, I show how uncertainty (equipoise) is at the intersection between epistemology, decision-making and ethics of clinical research. In particular, I show how our formulation of responses to uncertainties of hoped-for benefits and unknown harms of testing is a function of the way humans cognitively process information. This approach is based on the view that considerations of ethics and rationality cannot be separated. I analyze the response to uncertainties as it relates to the dual-processing theory, which postulates that rational approach to (clinical research) decision-making depends both on analytical, deliberative processes embodied in scientific method (system II) and “good” human intuition (system I). Ultimately, our choices can only become wiser if we understand a close and intertwined relationship between irreducible uncertainty, inevitable errors, and unavoidable injustice. PMID:21817885

Diverse Ways to Fore-Ground Methodological Insights about Qualitative Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koro-Ljungberg, Mirka; Mazzei, Lisa A.; Ceglowski, Deborah

2013-01-01

Texts and articles that put epistemological theories and methodologies to work in the context of qualitative research can stimulate scholarship in various ways such as through methodological innovations, transferability of theories and methods, interdisciplinarity, and transformative reflections across traditions and frameworks. Such…

Scientific Thinking in Elementary School: Children's Social Cognition and Their Epistemological Understanding Promote Experimentation Skills

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Osterhaus, Christopher; Koerber, Susanne; Sodian, Beate

2017-01-01

Do social cognition and epistemological understanding promote elementary school children's experimentation skills? To investigate this question, 402 children (ages 8, 9, and 10) in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades were assessed for their experimentation skills, social cognition (advanced theory of mind [AToM]), epistemological understanding (understanding…

Qualitative Epistemology: A Scientific Platform for the Study of Subjectivity from a Cultural-Historical Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Patiño, José Fernando; Goulart, Daniel Magalhães

2016-01-01

This article contributes to the platform of thought proposed by González Rey in the development of qualitative epistemology and the theory of subjectivity. We discuss three core aspects: firstly, the general epistemological problems of modern science, with its non-critical, non-theoretical scientific ideals, and low reflexivity; secondly, we…

Combination of Interventions Can Change Students' Epistemological Beliefs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kalman, Calvin S.; Sobhanzadeh, Mandana; Thompson, Robert; Ibrahim, Ahmed; Wang, Xihui

2015-01-01

This study was based on the hypothesis that students' epistemological beliefs could become more expertlike with a combination of appropriate instructional activities: (i) preclass reading with metacognitive reflection, and (ii) in-class active learning that produces cognitive dissonance. This hypothesis was tested through a five-year study…

High School Students' Scientific Epistemological Beliefs, Self-Efficacy in Learning Physics and Attitudes toward Physics: A Structural Equation Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kapucu, Serkan; Bahçivan, Eralp

2015-01-01

Background: There are some theoretical evidences that explain the relationships between core beliefs (i.e., epistemological beliefs) and peripheral beliefs (self-efficacy in learning) in the literature. The close relationships of such type of beliefs with attitudes are also discussed by some researchers. Constructing a model that investigates…

Theories of Mind and Personal Epistemology: Their Interrelation and Connection with the Concept of Metacognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fagnant, Annick; Crahay, Marcel

2011-01-01

This paper seeks to highlight the links and discrepancies between three contemporary theoretical fields. The first part is devoted to theories of mind and personal epistemology. Both fields deal with naive theories relating to the nature of knowledge and can be integrated within the concept of "folk epistemology" (Kitchener New Ideas Psychol…

Rhetoric, Alchemy and Heuristic Procedures: Some Epistemological Questions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Edwards, Bruce L., Jr.

Although composition theorists have rejected the "alchemy" of the traditional, impressionistic, unscientific view of composition as product in favor of a process oriented approach, they have as yet failed to reach a consensus about the epistemological bases that undergird this shift. An examination of parallel developments in literary…

Rethinking the Notion of Technology in Education: Techno-Epistemology as a Feature Inherent to Human Praxis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Eijck, Michiel; Claxton, Nicholas Xumthoult

2009-01-01

Educators repeatedly underscore the intimate relationship between science and technology. This is problematic because technology, far from being "applied science," presupposes a unique epistemology (techno-epistemology). A focus on the role of science in technology overshadows this unique way of knowing and hence limits technology…

Epistemological Beliefs and Practices of Science Faculty with Education Specialties: Combining Teaching Scholarship and Interdisciplinarity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Addy, Tracie Marcella

2011-12-01

Across the United States institutions of higher education address educational reform by valuing scholarship that focuses on teaching and learning, especially in STEM fields. University science departments can encourage teaching scholarship by hiring science faculty with education specialties (SFES), individuals who have expertise in both science and science education. The goal of this study was to understand how the epistemological beliefs and teaching practices of SFES relate to national reform efforts in science teaching promoting student-centered instruction. The research questions guiding this investigation were: (1) What epistemological belief systems do science faculty with education specialties espouse concerning the teaching and learning of science?; and (2) What are the classroom practices of science faculty with education specialties? How are these practices congruent with the reform efforts described by the National Research Council (1996, 2001, 2003)? The theoretical framework guiding the study was interdisciplinarity, the integration of knowledge between two or more disciplines (science and science pedagogy). The research design employed mixed (qualitative and quantitative) approaches and focused on 25 volunteer SFES participants. The TBI, ATI, and RTOP were used to triangulate self-report and videotaped teaching vignettes, and develop profiles of SFES. Of the 25 SFES participants, 82 percent of their beliefs were transitional or student-centered beliefs. Seventy-two percent of the 25 SFES espoused more student-focused than teacher focused approaches. The classroom practices of 10 SFES were on average transitional in nature (at the boundary of student-focused and teacher-focused). The beliefs of SFES appeared to be influenced by the sizes of their courses, and were positive correlated with reform-based teaching practices. There was a relationship between the degree to which they implemented reform-based practice and their perceived level of

Exploration of Epistemological Beliefs in a Summer Science Program for High Achieving Students(1)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cormier, Sebastien; Raia, F.; Steinberg, R.

2006-12-01

We will describe changes in epistemology of students in a comprehensive summer science program for high achieving students at City College New York. The program focuses on having students participate in the process of scientific discovery using inquiry based activities such as the astronomy units from Physics by Inquiry(2). Multiple tools were used throughout the program to study student epistemological beliefs about science. We administered a Likert scale survey about how science is done as well as multiple content questions from which student beliefs were inferred. Instructor perspectives on student epistemologies are used in conjunction with these tools to study improvements and correlations between the different measures. (1) Supported in part by the National Science Foundation (2) Physics by Inquiry, L.C. McDermott, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1996

Coupling epistemology and identity in explaining student interest in science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Richards, Jennifer; Conlin, Luke; Gupta, Ayush; Elby, Andrew

2013-01-01

In this paper, we present the case of Estevan, an eighth-grader from Honduras whose interest in science lies primarily at the intersection of personal epistemology and identity. Drawing on video data from classroom interactions as well as interviews with Estevan and his teacher, Ms. K, we show how Estevan's passionate engagement in sensemaking about the seasons arose from an alignment between his epistemological stance that science involves figuring things out for yourself and his enacted identity as someone who faces challenges head-on. We use Estevan's case to highlight the importance of remaining open to the multiplicity of connections that might exist between interest in science and students' identities and to motivate looking deeper into such issues before prescribing how to engage students in science.

Racial Counternarratives and Latina Epistemologies in Relational Organizing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bonilla, Christopher Milk

2014-01-01

This paper describes the perceptions and actions of working-class Latina family leaders as they promote their epistemological values during the community organizing of a "huerta" (vegetable garden) in an urban bilingual school. I focus on how their racial counternarratives are embedded in the intersected oppression of their local context…

Ontological, Epistemological and Methodological Assumptions: Qualitative versus Quantitative

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahmed, Abdelhamid

2008-01-01

The review to follow is a comparative analysis of two studies conducted in the field of TESOL in Education published in "TESOL QUARTERLY." The aspects to be compared are as follows. First, a brief description of each study will be presented. Second, the ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions underlying each study…

Epistemological Perspectives on Cognitive Development in College Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hettich, Paul

Seldom are college students introduced to theories that describe how they and other students change intellectually during their college years. Two epistemological perspectives on cognitive development in college students and how they can be presented to students are examined in this paper. The first perspective is William Perry's forms of…

Changing Epistemological Beliefs with Nature of Science Implementations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Keith; Willoughby, Shannon

2018-01-01

This article discusses our investigation regarding nature of science (NOS) implementations and epistemological beliefs within an undergraduate introductory astronomy course. The five year study consists of two years of baseline data in which no explicit use of NOS material was implemented, then three years of subsequent data in which specific NOS…

An Examination of Locus of Control, Epistemological Beliefs and Metacognitive Awareness in Preservice Early Childhood Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bedel, Emine Ferda

2012-01-01

This study aims to explore the locus of control, epistemological beliefs and metacognitive awareness levels of preservice early childhood education teachers and to determine the interrelations among these variables. 206 teacher candidates have been asked to fill out Rotter's Internal-External Locus of Control Scale, Central Epistemological Beliefs…

Is It the Teaching or the Discipline? Influences of Disciplinary Epistemology and Pedagogy on Students Adapting Study Behaviour and Epistemological Beliefs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kember, David; Hong, Celina; Yau, Vickie; Ho, Amaly

2014-01-01

This study examined the pace and degree of adaptation of study behaviour and personal epistemological beliefs between school and university through interviews with 110 final-year university students. The study took place in Hong Kong, where the highly competitive school system encourages remembering modelling answers for the public examinations;…

Knowing Truth: Peirce's Epistemology in an Educational Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCarthy, Christine L.

2005-01-01

In this paper I examine Peirce's epistemological and ontological theories and indicate their relevance to educational practice. I argue that Peirce's conception of Firsts, Seconds and Thirds entails a fundamental ontological realism. I further argue that Peirce does have a theory of truth, that it is a particular non-traditional "correspondence"…

Modelling between Epistemological Beliefs and Constructivist Learning Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Çetin-Dindar, Ayla; Kirbulut, Zübeyde Demet; Boz, Yezdan

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to model the relationship between pre-service chemistry teachers' epistemological beliefs and their preference to use constructivist-learning environment in their future class. The sample was 125 pre-service chemistry teachers from five universities in Turkey. Two instruments were used in this study. One of the…

Situating methodology within qualitative research.

PubMed

Kramer-Kile, Marnie L

2012-01-01

Qualitative nurse researchers are required to make deliberate and sometimes complex methodological decisions about their work. Methodology in qualitative research is a comprehensive approach in which theory (ideas) and method (doing) are brought into close alignment. It can be difficult, at times, to understand the concept of methodology. The purpose of this research column is to: (1) define qualitative methodology; (2) illuminate the relationship between epistemology, ontology and methodology; (3) explicate the connection between theory and method in qualitative research design; and 4) highlight relevant examples of methodological decisions made within cardiovascular nursing research. Although there is no "one set way" to do qualitative research, all qualitative researchers should account for the choices they make throughout the research process and articulate their methodological decision-making along the way.

Undergraduates' Attitudes Toward Science and Their Epistemological Beliefs: Positive Effects of Certainty and Authority Beliefs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fulmer, Gavin W.

2014-02-01

Attitudes toward science are an important aspect of students' persistence in school science and interest in pursuing future science careers, but students' attitudes typically decline over the course of formal schooling. This study examines relationships of students' attitudes toward science with their perceptions of science as inclusive or non-religious, and their epistemological beliefs about epistemic authority and certainty. Data were collected using an online survey system among undergraduates at a large, public US university (n = 582). Data were prepared using a Rasch rating scale model and then analyzed using multiple-regression analysis. Gender and number of science and mathematics courses were included as control variables, followed by perceptions of science, then epistemological beliefs. Findings show that respondents have more positive attitudes when they perceive science to be inclusive of women and minorities, and when they perceive science to be incompatible with religion. Respondents also have more positive attitudes toward science when they believe scientific knowledge is uncertain, and when they believe knowledge derives from authority. Interpretations of these findings and implications for future research are discussed.

The Relationship between Pre-Service Science Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs and Preferences for Creating a Constructivist Learning Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saylan, Asli; Armagan, Fulya Öner; Bektas, Oktay

2016-01-01

The present study investigated the relationship between pre-service science teachers' epistemological beliefs and perceptions of a constructivist learning environment. The Turkish version of Constructivist Learning Environment Survey and Schommer's Epistemological Belief Questionnaire were administered to 531 pre-service science teachers attending…

A history of gravity: An introduction to the epistemology of Paul Feyerabend

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rodrigues, Danilo Miranda

2015-08-01

The goal of this work is to show an historical introduction to epistemology of Paul Feyerabend and the importance of his concept of epistemological anarchism for education.Feyerabend defended that different and even contradictory theories must be used in education, this multiplicity of possible explanations for natural phenomena is important to express the real development of science.There are many different explanations for the fall of bodies, since the "natural places" in Aristotle until the Newtonian Gravitation or the General Relativity. The contact with many different explanations has as important contribution for the learning of Astronomy.

Evolution Acceptance and Epistemological Beliefs of College Biology Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borgerding, Lisa A.; Deniz, Hasan; Anderson, Elizabeth Shevock

2017-01-01

Evolutionary theory is central to biology, and scientifically accurate evolution instruction is promoted within national and state standards documents. Previous literature has identified students' epistemological beliefs as potential predictors of evolution acceptance. The present work seeks to explore more directly how student views of evolution…

Plato's Critique of Rhetoric in the "Gorgias" (447a-466a): Epistemology, Methodology, and the Lyotardian Differend.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McComiskey, Bruce

The uncritical acceptance of Plato's treatment of sophistic doctrines (specifically in Plato's dialogue the "Gorgias") in the university has resulted in an impoverished contemporary view of sophistic rhetoric. Since Socrates' foundational epistemology allows for the knowledge of immutable truth and Gorgias' relativistic epistemology does…

Merging curriculum design with chemical epistemology: A case of teaching and learning chemistry through modeling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Erduran, Sibel

The central problem underlying this dissertation is the design of learning environments that enable the teaching and learning of chemistry through modeling. Significant role of models in chemistry knowledge is highlighted with a shift in emphasis from conceptual to epistemological accounts of models. Research context is the design and implementation of student centered Acids & Bases Curriculum, developed as part of Project SEPIA. Qualitative study focused on 3 curriculum activities conducted in one 7th grade class of 19 students in an urban, public middle school in eastern United States. Questions guiding the study were: (a) How can learning environments be designed to promote growth of chemistry knowledge through modeling? (b) What epistemological criteria facilitate learning of growth of chemistry knowledge through modeling? Curriculum materials, and verbal data from whole class conversations and student group interviews were analyzed. Group interviews consisted of same 4 students, selected randomly before curriculum implementation, and were conducted following each activity to investigate students' developing understandings of models. Theoretical categories concerning definition, properties and kinds of models as well as educational and chemical models informed curriculum design, and were redefined as codes in the analysis of verbal data. Results indicate more diversity of codes in student than teacher talk across all activities. Teacher concentrated on educational and chemical models. A significant finding is that model properties such as 'compositionality' and 'projectability' were not present in teacher talk as expected by curriculum design. Students did make reference to model properties. Another finding is that students demonstrate an understanding of models characterized by the seventeenth century Lemery model of acids and bases. Two students' developing understandings of models across curriculum implementation suggest that curriculum bears some change in

Bringing ourselves into view: disclosure as epistemological and ontological production of a lesbian subject.

PubMed

McDonald, Carol; McIntyre, Marjorie; Merryfeather, Lyn

2011-03-01

Using Gadamerian hermeneutics as a methodology and feminist philosophical thought as an analytical framework, this study explores understandings of experiences of disclosure of sexual orientation for older 'lesbian' women. The study draws on an interpretative inquiry in which participants theoretically align with sexual identity categories with both an ontological and an epistemological purpose and later move away from or even disassociate from the 'category' (of lesbian). Reflecting on these interpretations, that of the epistemological and the ontological production of a subject, we ask: What does it mean then to say I am a lesbian? This is where a tension exists: how is it that in spite of the incongruencies of what constitutes a lesbian, and the apparent ambiguity of people to name themselves, we continue to act (as health care providers and researchers) as if the category itself is meaningful and stable? A feminist lens provides an inroad to consider sexuality as practices, rather than as fixed identity; practices that are constituted within the discursive, social and material realities of a life as well as within political and ideological systems in which one resides. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Exploring Science Teachers' Argumentation and Personal Epistemology About Global Climate Change

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Shiyu; Roehrig, Gillian

2017-06-01

This case study investigated the nature of in-service science teachers' argumentation and personal epistemology about global climate change during a 3-year professional development program on climate change education. Qualitative analysis of data from interviews and written assessments revealed that while these teachers grounded their arguments on climate issues in evidence, the evidence was often insufficient to justify their causal claims. Compared with generating arguments for their own views, teachers had more difficulties in constructing evidence-based arguments for alternative perspectives. Moreover, while these teachers shared some similarities in their epistemology about climate science, they varied in their beliefs about specific aspects such as scientists' expertise and the credibility of scientific evidence. Such similarities and distinctions were shown to relate to how teachers used evidence to justify claims in their arguments. The findings also suggested a mismatch between teachers' personal epistemology about science in general and climate science, which was revealed through their argumentation. This work helps to further the ongoing discussions in environmental education about what knowledge and skills teachers need in order to teach climate issues and prepare students for future decision making. It constitutes first steps to facilitate reasoning and argumentation in climate change education and provides important implications for future design of professional development programs.

The central dogma, "GMO" and defective epistemology.

PubMed

Tagliabue, Giovanni

2017-10-02

The expression "Genetically Modified Organisms" was coined to indicate a group of agricultural products (mostly crops and vegetables), modified through direct DNA recombination in order to obtain useful phenotypic traits or to inhibit undesirable characteristics. But the border between rDNA ("GMO") and other biotech methods is blurred. Moreover, the ill-assorted group is frequently charged with having peculiar, negative characteristics: many activists, part of the public and a few social science scholars think that "GMOs" are all dubious, even inherently dangerous. However, theoretical justifications of this alleged problematic nature which is supposed to be necessarily linked to the "splicing" of DNA, only when applied to agricultural products, are missing: the only text which tries to go in depth on the subject, an article by biologist Barry Commoner, takes aim at the wrong target, misunderstanding the Central Dogma. "GMO" is a term that has no clear reference, let alone in a detrimental sense. The only attempt to give it epistemological dignity fails.

Preparing BSW Students for Service-Learning: Enhancing Epistemological Reflection

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Averett, Paige E.; Arnd-Caddigan, Margaret

2014-01-01

This article includes a review of the literature on personal epistemology and the reflective judgment model and applies these theoretical concepts to undergraduate students who engage in service-learning projects. The application will provide instructors with greater understanding of students' abilities and limitations in their…

Suhrawardi's Epistemological Point of View and Its Educational Outcomes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nowrozi, Reza Ali; Ardakani, Seyed Hassan Hashemi; Shiri, Ali Shiravani

2012-01-01

This study investigates Suhrawardi's epistemological and philosophical point of view in order to analyze and elicit its educational outcomes. His philosophy, which can be called eclectic philosophy (involving intellect and intuition), regularly proposes a different philosophical system with intuitionist outlook. It is the combination of two…

Historical epistemology of the body-mind interaction in psychiatry

PubMed Central

Berrios, German E.

2018-01-01

This paper deals with the history of the relationship between the mind-body dualism and the epistemology of madness. Earlier versions of such dualism posed little problem in regard to the manner of their communication. The Cartesian view that mind and body did, in fact, name different substances introduced a problem of incommunicability that is yet to be resolved. Earlier views that madness may be related to changes in the brain began gaining empirical support during the 17th century. Writers on madness chose to resolve the mind-body problem differently Some stated that such communication was not needed; others, that mind was a redundant concept, as madness could be fully explained by structural changes in the brain; and yet others described psychological spaces for madness to inhabit as a symbolic conflict. The epistemology of the neurosciences bypasses the conundrum, as it processes all together the variables representing the brain, subjectivity, and behavior and bridges the “philosophical” gap by means of correlational structures. PMID:29946206

Epistemological Syncretism in a Biology Classroom: A Case Study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bennett, William D.; Park, Soonhye

2011-02-01

In teaching science, the beliefs of teachers may come into conflict and inhibit the implementation of reformed teaching practice. An experienced biology teacher, Mr. Hobbs, was found to have two different sets of epistemological beliefs while his classroom practice was predominantly teacher-centered. A case study was then performed in order to investigate the underlying issues that contributed to his classroom practice. Data sources included preliminary and follow-up interviews and classroom observations. Data analysis indicated that factors that prevented the epistemological conflict from reaching a resolution included Mr. Hobbs' beliefs about learning, contextual teaching factors, personal experiences as a student, and views of the nature of science. The findings from this case indicate that science teachers possess complex belief systems that are not immediately obvious to either the teacher or science teacher educators, and science teacher educators need to address teacher beliefs when they encourage teachers to implement reformed teaching practices.

Théodule Ribot's ambiguous positivism: philosophical and epistemological strategies in the founding of French scientific psychology.

PubMed

Guillin, Vincent

2004-01-01

Théodule Ribot (1839-1916) is regarded by many historians of psychology as the "father" of the discipline in France. Ribot contributed to the development of a "new psychology" independent from philosophy, relying on the methods of the natural sciences. However, such an epistemological transition encountered fierce opposition from both the champions of the old-fashioned metaphysical psychology and the representatives of the "scientific spirit." This article focuses on the objections raised by the latter, and especially philosophers of science, against the possibility of a scientific psychology. For instance, according to Auguste Comte, psychology does not satisfy certain basic methodological requirements. To overcome these objections, Ribot, in his La Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine (1870/1914), devised an epistemological strategy that amounted to invoking criticisms of Comte's views made by other representatives of the positivist school, such as John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. Copyright 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Looking at Filipino Pre-Service Teachers' Value for Education through Epistemological Beliefs about Learning and Asian Values

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Magno, Carlo

2010-01-01

The present study investigated the contribution of epistemological beliefs about learning and Asian values on pre-service teachers' value for education. The relationship of epistemological beliefs and valuing education is based on Schwartz and Bilsky's (1987; 1990) theory of human values. The participants were 362 pre-service teachers from…

THE EPISTEMOLOGY BEHIND THE CURTAIN: THOUGHTS ON THE SCIENCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS.

PubMed

Clarke, Brett H

2017-07-01

This essay is concerned with the epistemological complications of the interface between psychoanalysis and "scientific" disciplines and methodologies-in particular, with respect to theories of knowledge and conceptualizations of subjectivity appropriate to psychoanalysis. The author suggests that there is in such interface the potential for an untheorized scientism in empiricist prescriptions for the reform and rescue of psychoanalysis, and revisits the notion that subjectivity as conceived psychoanalytically, grounded in lived experience, is irreducible in ways that are unique and existentially abiding. The author explores the problem through the lens of philosophical hermeneutics and cautions against merging psychoanalysis, under the guise of a salutary pluralism, with disciplines guided by a systematized empiricism and its attendant epistemological commitments. © 2017 The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Inc.

Relating GTE and Knowledge-Based Courseware Engineering: Some Epistemological Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

De Diana, Italo P. F.; Ladhani, Al-Noor

1998-01-01

Discusses GTE (Generic Tutoring Environment) and knowledge-based courseware engineering from an epistemological point of view and suggests some combination of the two approaches. Topics include intelligent tutoring; courseware authoring; application versus acquisition of knowledge; and domain knowledge. (LRW)

Elementary Students' Scientific Epistemological Beliefs in Relation to Socio-Economic Status and Gender

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ozkal, Kudret; Tekkaya, Ceren; Sungur, Semra; Cakiroglu, Jale; Cakiroglu, Erdinc

2011-03-01

This study investigated students' scientific epistemological beliefs in relation to socio-economic status (SES) and gender. Data were obtained from 1,152 eight grade Turkish elementary school students using Scientific Epistemological Beliefs instrument. Canonical correlation analysis indicated that students with a working mother and educated parents as well as greater number of books at home together with a separate study room are more likely to have tentative views and less likely to have fixed views about science compared to students with unemployed mother, uneducated parents, less books at home, and no separate study room. Generally, results revealed while family SES correlated positively with tentative views, it was negatively associated with fixed views, implying that students from high SES family were more likely to believe that knowledge is uncertain and not handed down by authority compared to students from low SES family. This study, however, failed to indicate any relationship between father work-status, buying daily newspaper and epistemological beliefs. In addition, Multivariate Analysis of Variance indicated that boys more likely to have tentative beliefs compared to girls.

Elementary Students' Scientific Epistemological Beliefs in Relation to Socio-Economic Status and Gender

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ozkal, Kudret; Tekkaya, Ceren; Sungur, Semra; Cakiroglu, Jale; Cakiroglu, Erdinc

2010-11-01

This study investigated students’ scientific epistemological beliefs in relation to socio-economic status (SES) and gender. Data were obtained from 1,152 eight grade Turkish elementary school students using Scientific Epistemological Beliefs instrument. Canonical correlation analysis indicated that students with a working mother and educated parents as well as greater number of books at home together with a separate study room are more likely to have tentative views and less likely to have fixed views about science compared to students with unemployed mother, uneducated parents, less books at home, and no separate study room. Generally, results revealed while family SES correlated positively with tentative views, it was negatively associated with fixed views, implying that students from high SES family were more likely to believe that knowledge is uncertain and not handed down by authority compared to students from low SES family. This study, however, failed to indicate any relationship between father work-status, buying daily newspaper and epistemological beliefs. In addition, Multivariate Analysis of Variance indicated that boys more likely to have tentative beliefs compared to girls.

Unbelievable?! Theistic/Epistemological Viewpoint Affects Religion-Health Relationship.

PubMed

Speed, David

2017-02-01

Research suggests that Religion/Spirituality promotes a variety of positive health outcomes. However, despite reporting lower levels of Religion/Spirituality, non-believers report comparable levels of health to believers. The current study tested the hypothesis that Religion/Spirituality does not have a uniform effect on health for all persons, and tested theological/epistemological categories as moderators. Using the 2012 and 2014 General Social Survey (N = 2670), the relationship between Religion/Spirituality and happiness and self-rated health was investigated. Results indicated that Gnostic Theists experienced Religion/Spirituality more positively than their peers did; Agnostic Theists experienced Religion/Spirituality less positively than their peers did; and Negative Atheists experienced Religion/Spirituality less positively than their peers did. These findings suggested that Religion/Spirituality is not associated with salutary effects for all persons, and that whether a person believes in god(s) and how confident he/she was in god(s)' existence, influenced his/her experience with Religion/Spirituality.

Epistemological beliefs of physics undergraduate and graduate students and faculty in the context of a well-structured and an ill-structured problem

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mercan, Fatih C.

cognitive models of personal epistemology can explain personal epistemology in physics to a limited extent, however, these models cannot adequately account for the variation of epistemological beliefs across problem contexts. Modeling beliefs about knowledge emerged as a part of personal epistemology and an indicator of epistemological sophistication, which do not develop until extensive experience in the field. Based on these findings, the researcher recommended providing opportunities for practicing model construction for students.

Improving epistemological beliefs and moral judgment through an STS-based science ethics education program.

PubMed

Han, Hyemin; Jeong, Changwoo

2014-03-01

This study develops a Science-Technology-Society (STS)-based science ethics education program for high school students majoring in or planning to major in science and engineering. Our education program includes the fields of philosophy, history, sociology and ethics of science and technology, and other STS-related theories. We expected our STS-based science ethics education program to promote students' epistemological beliefs and moral judgment development. These psychological constructs are needed to properly solve complicated moral and social dilemmas in the fields of science and engineering. We applied this program to a group of Korean high school science students gifted in science and engineering. To measure the effects of this program, we used an essay-based qualitative measurement. The results indicate that there was significant development in both epistemological beliefs and moral judgment. In closing, we briefly discuss the need to develop epistemological beliefs and moral judgment using an STS-based science ethics education program.

Arguments at cross-purposes: moral epistemology and medical ethics

PubMed Central

Loughlin, M

2002-01-01

Different beliefs about the nature and justification of bioethics may reflect different assumptions in moral epistemology. Two alternative views (put forward by David Seedhouse and Michael H Kottow) are analysed and some speculative conclusions formed. The foundational questions raised here are by no means settled and deserve further attention. PMID:11834756

From Epistemology to Ecopolitics: Renewing a Paradigm for Curriculum.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gough, Noel

1989-01-01

Contrasts the epistemological world view of education found in Western industrialized societies with an emerging ecopolitical view which is based in an Aristotelian moral universe. Points out that reforms may affect procedures and practices without altering purposes and values. Suggests that these traditions should be transcended in order to gain…

Students' Epistemological Framing in Quantum Mechanics Problem Solving

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Modir, Bahar; Thompson, John D.; Sayre, Eleanor C.

2017-01-01

Students' difficulties in quantum mechanics may be the result of unproductive framing and not a fundamental inability to solve the problems or misconceptions about physics content. We observed groups of students solving quantum mechanics problems in an upper-division physics course. Using the lens of epistemological framing, we investigated four…

Teachers' Responses to Using a Small-Group Delivery Method during Reading Instruction: A Qualitative Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reynolds, Dorothy M. Valentine

2010-01-01

The purpose of this research was to examine teachers' perspectives on transitioning from a predominately whole to small-group delivery method during reading instruction. This study used a qualitative approach and nested itself in an epistemology of constructivism. The research operated under the umbrella of practice ethnography as it closely…

Citizen science as seen by scientists: Methodological, epistemological and ethical dimensions.

PubMed

Riesch, Hauke; Potter, Clive

2014-01-01

Citizen science as a way of communicating science and doing public engagement has over the past decade become the focus of considerable hopes and expectations. It can be seen as a win-win situation, where scientists get help from the public and the participants get a public engagement experience that involves them in real and meaningful scientific research. In this paper we present the results of a series of qualitative interviews with scientists who participated in the 'OPAL' portfolio of citizen science projects that has been running in England since 2007: What were their experiences of participating in citizen science? We highlight two particular sets of issues that our participants have voiced, methodological/epistemological and ethical issues. While we share the general enthusiasm over citizen science, we hope that the research in this paper opens up more debate over the potential pitfalls of citizen science as seen by the scientists themselves.

The impact of science teachers' epistemological beliefs on authentic inquiry: A multiple-case study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jackson, Dionne Bennett

The purpose of this study was to examine how science teachers' epistemological beliefs impacted their use of authentic inquiry in science instruction. Participants in this multiple-case study included a total of four teachers who represented the middle, secondary and post-secondary levels. Based on the results of the pilot study conducted with a secondary science teacher, adjustments were made to the interview questions and observation protocol. Data collection for the study included semi-structured interviews, direct observations of instructional techniques, and the collection of artifacts. The cross case analysis revealed that the cases epistemological beliefs were mostly Transitional and the method of instruction used most was Discussion. Two of the cases exhibited consistent beliefs and instructional practices, whereas the other two exhibited beliefs beyond their instruction. The findings of this study support the literature on the influence of contextual factors and professional development on teacher beliefs and practice. The findings support and contradict literature relevant to the consistency of teacher beliefs with instruction. This study's findings revealed that the use of reform-based instruction, or Authentic Inquiry, does not occur when science teachers do not have the beliefs and experiences necessary to implement this form of instruction.

The effects of paradigmatic orientations of education research and discourse

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smithson, John Lawrence

This essay presents an examination of contemporary disputes over methodological and epistemological foundations underlying inquiry within the field of education research; investigating the obstacles to communication and understanding found in scholarly exchanges occurring across competing paradigmatic orientations. Terminological challenges to cross-paradigmatic communication are examined, identifying three specific terminological difficulties, referred to as homonym, contextual, and onti-stemic problems. Nicholas Burbules' model of dialogue, based upon characteristics of convergence, divergence, inclusive and critical traits, is adopted and applied to a sample of cross-paradigmatic exchanges found in recent educational research journals. Examination of those exchanges reveals certain strategies associated with cross-paradigmatic communication. These strategies, labeled as trivialization, caricaturization, and re-direction, are shown to be detrimental to the mutual understanding of the interlocutors. The model is then extended to address examples of paradigmatic orientations within methodological and epistemological contexts in order to consider the relationship between the various orientations represented in the literature of interest. Methodological and epistemological orientations are shown to be loosely coupled, with unexpected shifts in paradigmatic values found among researchers' methodological and epistemological commitments. Finally, the nature of the relationship between competing paradigmatic orientations is examined, with particular attention given to four types of incommensurability (ontological, linguistic, epistemological, and values incommensurability). I conclude that, though difficult, cross-paradigmatic communication is necessary in order to provide a multi-paradigmatic perspective that takes us beyond the fractured picture of educational phenomena available from current research approaches.

Epistemological and Pedagogical Challenges of Teaching International Business Ethics Courses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dion, Michel

2015-01-01

International business ethics courses imply four basic epistemological and pedagogical challenges: (a) understanding various perceptions of ethics and values/virtues; (b) identifying ethical maxims among religious/spiritual traditions; (c) designing international business ethics courses as dialogical experiences; and (d) deepening our personal…

Effects of Epistemological Beliefs and Topic-Specific Beliefs on Undergraduates' Cognitive and Strategic Processing of Dual-Positional Text.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kardash, CarolAnne M.; Howell, Karen L.

2000-01-01

Investigates effects of epistemological beliefs and topic-specific beliefs on undergraduates' (N=40) cognitive and strategic processing of a dual-positional text. Findings reveal that epistemological beliefs about the speed of learning affected the overall number of cognitive processes exhibited, whereas topic-specific beliefs interacted with the…

Epistemological Syncretism in a Biology Classroom: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bennett, William D.; Park, Soonhye

2011-01-01

In teaching science, the beliefs of teachers may come into conflict and inhibit the implementation of reformed teaching practice. An experienced biology teacher, Mr. Hobbs, was found to have two different sets of epistemological beliefs while his classroom practice was predominantly teacher-centered. A case study was then performed in order to…

Metamethod study of qualitative psychotherapy research on clients' experiences: Review and recommendations.

PubMed

Levitt, Heidi M; Pomerville, Andrew; Surace, Francisco I; Grabowski, Lauren M

2017-11-01

A metamethod study is a qualitative meta-analysis focused upon the methods and procedures used in a given research domain. These studies are rare in psychological research. They permit both the documentation of the informal standards within a field of research and recommendations for future work in that area. This paper presents a metamethod analysis of a substantial body of qualitative research that focused on clients' experiences in psychotherapy (109 studies). This review examined the ways that methodological integrity has been established across qualitative research methods. It identified the numbers of participants recruited and the form of data collection used (e.g., semistructured interviews, diaries). As well, it examined the types of checks employed to increase methodological integrity, such as participant counts, saturation, reflexivity techniques, participant feedback, or consensus and auditing processes. Central findings indicated that the researchers quite flexibly integrated procedures associated with one method into studies using other methods in order to strengthen their rigor. It appeared normative to adjust procedures to advance methodological integrity. These findings encourage manuscript reviewers to assess the function of procedures within a study rather than to require researchers to adhere to the set of procedures associated with a method. In addition, when epistemological approaches were mentioned they were overwhelmingly constructivist in nature, despite the increasing use of procedures traditionally associated with objectivist perspectives. It is recommended that future researchers do more to explicitly describe the functions of their procedures so that they are coherently situated within the epistemological approaches in use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Observing a Client's Grieving Process: Bringing Logical Positivism into Qualitative Grief Counselling Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilson, John; Gabriel, Lynne; James, Hazel

2014-01-01

This positional paper originates from our need as researcher/practitioners to establish a meaningful epistemological framework for research into bereaved people's journey through loss and grief over time. We describe how the field of grief research has a long and established biological basis, in keeping with a positivist epistemology.…

Giant viruses: The difficult breaking of multiple epistemological barriers.

PubMed

Claverie, Jean-Michel; Abergel, Chantal

2016-10-01

The discovery of the first "giant virus", Mimivirus, in 2003 could solely have been that of an exceptional freak, a blind alley of evolution as occasionally encountered in biology, albeit without conceptual significance. On the contrary, once broken this epistemological barrier, additional unrelated families of giant viruses such as the Pandoraviruses, the Pithoviruses and most recently Mollivirus, were quickly unraveled, suggesting that an entire chapter of microbiology had been ignored since Pasteur and Ivanovski. In this article, we examine to what extent the giant viruses challenge previous definitions of viruses, the diversity of forms they could take, and how they might have evolved from extinct ancestral cellular lineages. Inspired by the epistemology of Gaston Bachelard, we will also suggest the reasons for which giant viruses laid hidden in plain sight for more than a century. Finally, we propose a new definition for "viruses" that paradoxically emphasize the fact that they do not encode a single universally shared macromolecule or biochemical function. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Using Computer Simulations for Promoting Model-based Reasoning. Epistemological and Educational Dimensions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Develaki, Maria

2017-11-01

Scientific reasoning is particularly pertinent to science education since it is closely related to the content and methodologies of science and contributes to scientific literacy. Much of the research in science education investigates the appropriate framework and teaching methods and tools needed to promote students' ability to reason and evaluate in a scientific way. This paper aims (a) to contribute to an extended understanding of the nature and pedagogical importance of model-based reasoning and (b) to exemplify how using computer simulations can support students' model-based reasoning. We provide first a background for both scientific reasoning and computer simulations, based on the relevant philosophical views and the related educational discussion. This background suggests that the model-based framework provides an epistemologically valid and pedagogically appropriate basis for teaching scientific reasoning and for helping students develop sounder reasoning and decision-taking abilities and explains how using computer simulations can foster these abilities. We then provide some examples illustrating the use of computer simulations to support model-based reasoning and evaluation activities in the classroom. The examples reflect the procedure and criteria for evaluating models in science and demonstrate the educational advantages of their application in classroom reasoning activities.

Using Epistemological Positions and Orientations to Instruction to Explore School-Based, Agricultural Educators' Perceptual Identities: A Q-Sort Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roberts, Richie; Montgomery, Diane

2017-01-01

Mounting empirical evidence suggests the conflation of teachers' instructional orientations and personal epistemological beliefs helps form the perceptual identity of educators. The current study, therefore, sought to describe in what way Oklahoma agricultural education teachers' epistemological beliefs and orientations toward instruction combine…

Narrative inquiry: Locating Aboriginal epistemology in a relational methodology.

PubMed

Barton, Sylvia S

2004-03-01

This methodology utilizes narrative analysis and the elicitation of life stories as understood through dimensions of interaction, continuity, and situation. It is congruent with Aboriginal epistemology formulated by oral narratives through representation, connection, storytelling and art. Needed for culturally competent scholarship is an experience of research whereby inquiry into epiphanies, ritual, routines, metaphors and everyday experience creates a process of reflexive thinking for multiple ways of knowing. Based on the sharing of perspectives, narrative inquiry allows for experimentation into creating new forms of knowledge by contextualizing diabetes from the experience of a researcher overlapped with experiences of participants--a reflective practice in itself. The aim of this paper is to present narrative inquiry as a relational methodology and to analyse critically its appropriateness as an innovative research approach for exploring Aboriginal people's experience living with diabetes. Narrative inquiry represents an alternative culture of research for nursing science to generate understanding and explanation of Aboriginal people's 'diabetic self' stories, and to coax open a window for co-constructing a narrative about diabetes as a chronic illness. The ability to adapt a methodology for use in a cultural context, preserve the perspectives of Aboriginal peoples, maintain the holistic nature of social problems, and value co-participation in respectful ways are strengths of an inquiry partial to a responsive and embodied scholarship.

Emotional intelligence: a review of the literature with specific focus on empirical and epistemological perspectives.

PubMed

Akerjordet, Kristin; Severinsson, Elisabeth

2007-08-01

The aim of this literature review was to evaluate and discuss previous research on emotional intelligence with specific focus on empirical and epistemological perspectives. The concept of emotional intelligence is derived from extensive research and theory about thoughts, feelings and abilities that, prior to 1990, were considered to be unrelated phenomena. Today, emotional intelligence attracts growing interest worldwide, contributing to critical reflection as well as to various educational, health and occupational outcomes. Systematic review. The findings revealed that the epistemological tradition of natural science is the most frequently used and that, therefore, few articles related to humanistic sciences or philosophical perspectives were found. There is no agreement as to whether emotional intelligence is an individual ability, non-cognitive skill, capability or competence. One important finding is that, regardless of the theoretical framework used, researchers agree that emotional intelligence embraces emotional awareness in relation to self and others, professional efficiency and emotional management. There have been some interesting theoretical frameworks that relate emotional intelligence to stress and mental health within different contexts. Emotional learning and maturation processes, i.e. personal growth and development in the area of emotional intelligence, are central to professional competence. There is no doubt that the research on emotional intelligence is scarce and still at the developmental stage. Clinical questions pertaining to the nursing profession should be developed with focus on personal qualities of relevance to nursing practice. Different approaches are needed in order to further expand the theoretical, empirical and philosophical foundation of this important and enigmatic concept. Emotional intelligence may have implications for health promotion and quality of working life within nursing. Emotional intelligence seems to lead to more

On the Epistemological Features Promoted by "Philosophy for Children" and Their Psychological Advantages When Incorporated into RE

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van der Straten Waillet, Nastasya; Roskam, Isabelle; Possoz, Cécile

2015-01-01

This article presents the epistemological paradigm in which Philosophy for Children (P4C) is embedded and the personal epistemological positions that are promoted by P4C, in order to address the concern that P4C might induce relativism in pupils. On the basis of theoretical considerations and empirical results, it is shown that P4C does not…

The Basic Epistemological Questions--Are There Also Valid Answers?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oderman, Dale B.

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that seeks answers to two main questions: How do we know? and How do we know we know? This paper is concerned with how four major schools of thought have addressed these questions and the implications that their answers to these questions have for education. The paper begins by discussing how four major…

Wittgenstein for Adolescents? Post-Foundational Epistemology in High School Philosophy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stickney, Jeff A.

2014-01-01

Drawing on experience teaching secondary philosophy students, I investigate meaningful engagement with Wittgenstein in a Grade 12 epistemology unit. The premise is that without some introduction to landmark philosophers of the early twentieth century, students are left out of many contemporary philosophical conversations: linguistic idealism or…

Task Complexity, Epistemological Beliefs and Metacognitive Calibration: An Exploratory Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stahl, Elmar; Pieschl, Stephanie; Bromme, Rainer

2006-01-01

This article presents an explorative study, which is part of a comprehensive project to examine the impact of epistemological beliefs on metacognitive calibration during learning processes within a complex hypermedia information system. More specifically, this study investigates: 1) if learners differentiate between tasks of different complexity,…

"Evidence" Under a Magnifying Glass: Thoughts on Safety Argument Epistemology

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Graydon, P. J.; Holloway, C. M.

2015-01-01

Common definitions of "safety case" emphasize that evidence is the basis of a safety argument, yet few widely referenced works explicitly define "evidence". Their examples suggest that similar things can be regarded as evidence. But the category evidence seems to contain (1) processes for finding things out, (2) information resulting from such processes, and (3) relevant documents. Moreover, any item of evidence could be replaced by further argument. Normative models of informal argumentation do not offer clear guidance on when a safety argument should cite evidence rather than appeal to a more detailed argument. Disciplines such as the law address the problem with a practical, domain-specific epistemology. In this paper, we explore these problems associated with evidence citations in safety arguments, identify goals for a theory of safety argument evidence and a practical safety argument epistemology, propose a model of safety evidence citation that advances the identified goals, and present a related extension to the Goal Structuring Notation (GSN).

Natural kinds in evolution and systematics: metaphysical and epistemological considerations.

PubMed

Brigandt, Ingo

2009-06-01

Despite the traditional focus on metaphysical issues in discussions of natural kinds in biology, epistemological considerations are at least as important. By revisiting the debate as to whether taxa are kinds or individuals, I argue that both accounts are metaphysically compatible, but that one or the other approach can be pragmatically preferable depending on the epistemic context. Recent objections against construing species as homeostatic property cluster kinds are also addressed. The second part of the paper broadens the perspective by considering homologues as another example of natural kinds, comparing them with analogues as functionally defined kinds. Given that there are various types of natural kinds, I discuss the different theoretical purposes served by diverse kind concepts, suggesting that there is no clear-cut distinction between natural kinds and other kinds, such as functional kinds. Rather than attempting to offer a unique metaphysical account of 'natural' kind, a more fruitful approach consists in the epistemological study of how different natural kind concepts are employed in scientific reasoning.

The Influence of Curriculum, Instruction, Technology, and Social Interactions on Two Fifth-Grade Students' Epistemologies in Modeling Throughout a Model-Based Curriculum Unit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baek, Hamin; Schwarz, Christina V.

2015-04-01

In the past decade, reform efforts in science education have increasingly attended to engaging students in scientific practices such as scientific modeling. Engaging students in scientific modeling can help them develop their epistemologies by allowing them to attend to the roles of mechanism and empirical evidence when constructing and revising models. In this article, we present our in-depth case study of how two fifth graders—Brian and Joon—who were students in a public school classroom located in a Midwestern state shifted their epistemologies in modeling as they participated in the enactment of a technologically enhanced, model-based curriculum unit on evaporation and condensation. First, analyses of Brian's and Joon's models indicate that their epistemologies in modeling related to explanation and empirical evidence shifted productively throughout the unit. Additionally, while their initial and final epistemologies in modeling were similar, the pathways in which their epistemologies in modeling shifted differed. Next, analyses of the classroom activities illustrate how various components of the learning ecology including technological tools, the teacher's scaffolding remarks, and students' collective activities and conversations, were marshaled in the service of the two students' shifting epistemologies in modeling. These findings suggest a nuanced view of individual learners' engagement in scientific modeling, their epistemological shifts in the practice, and the roles of technology and other components of a modeling-oriented learning environment for such shifts.

Evidence-based medicine and epistemological imperialism: narrowing the divide between evidence and illness.

PubMed

Crowther, Helen; Lipworth, Wendy; Kerridge, Ian

2011-10-01

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has been rapidly and widely adopted because it claims to provide a method for determining the safety and efficacy of medical therapies and public health interventions more generally. However, as others have noted, EBM may be riven through with cultural bias, both in the generation of evidence and in its translation. We suggest that technological and scientific advances in medicine accentuate and entrench these cultural biases, to the extent that they may invalidate the evidence we have about disease and its treatment. This creates a significant ethical, epistemological and ontological challenge for medicine. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Vico's Theory of Knowledge and Some Problems in Genetic Epistemology.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gash, Hugh

1983-01-01

Argues that Vico's constructivist epistemology is germane to contemporary cognitive developmental psychology, first in clarifying the meaning of the environment in Piaget's theory and second by providing, through the description of mental operations, a way of overcoming directions to the overly formal quality of Piaget's basic concrete-operational…

Principles of Social Justice in Educational Research: The Case of Contract Research.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Griffiths, Morwenna

1998-01-01

Delineates small-scale contract-research principles predicated on an understanding of social justice and of research purposes, epistemological issues, and possibilities for ethical and political action. Principles embrace improvement, knowledge and learning, changed belief systems, collaboration and consultation, openness to other communities,…

The Right Tools for the Job: The Challenges of Theory and Method in Geoscience Education Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Riggs, E. M.

2011-12-01

As geoscience education has matured as a research field over the last decade, workers in this area have been challenged to adapt methodologies and theoretical approaches to study design and data collection. These techniques are as diverse as the earth sciences themselves, and researchers have drawn on established methods and traditions from science education research, social science research, and the cognitive and learning sciences. While the diversity of methodological and theoretical approaches is powerful, the challenge is to ground geoscience education research in rigorous methodologies that are appropriate for the epistemological and functional realities of the content area and the environment in which the research is conducted. The issue of theory is the first hurdle. After techniques are proven, earth scientists typically need not worry much about the theoretical value or theory-laden nature of measurements they make in the field or laboratory. As an example, a field geologist does not question the validity of the gravitational field that levels the spirit level within a Brunton compass. However, in earth science education research, these issues are magnified because a theoretical approach to a study affects what is admitted as data and the weight that can be given to conclusions. Not only must one be concerned about the validity of measurements and observations, but also the value of this information from an epistemological standpoint. The assigning of meaning to student gestures, utterances, writing and actions all carries theoretical implications. For example, working with geologists learning or working in the field, purely experimental research designs are very difficult, and the majority of the work must be conducted in a naturalistic environment. In fact dealing with time pressure, distractions, and complexity of a field environment is part of intellectual backdrop for field geology that separates experts from novices and advanced students from

An Epistemological and Ethical Categorization of Perspectives on Early Childhood Curriculum.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Ok Seung

2001-01-01

Reviews the literature on contemporary early childhood education, categorizing perspectives on early childhood curriculum according to their core epistemological and ethical views about the mission of institutions of early childhood education. Identifies four perspectives guiding the curricula: idealism, empiricism, developmentalism, and…

An Evaluation of the Pattern between Students' Motivation, Learning Strategies and Their Epistemological Beliefs: The Mediator Role of Motivation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sen, S.; Yilmaz, A.; Yurdagül, H.

2014-01-01

This study aims at analysing the relations between students' achievement motivation, learning strategies and their epistemological beliefs in learning through structural equation modelling, and at exploring the mediation role of motivation in the relations between learning strategies and epistemological beliefs. The study group was composed of 446…

Science Writing Heurisitc: A Writing-to-Learn Strategy and Its Effect on Student's Science Achievement, Science Self-Efficacy, and Scientific Epistemological View

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Caukin, Nancy S.

2010-01-01

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to determine if employing the writing-to-learn strategy known as a "Science Writing Heuristic" would positively effect students' science achievement, science self-efficacy, and scientific epistemological view. The publications "Science for All American, Blueprints for Reform: Project…

The Effects of Gender and Type of Inquiry Curriculum on Sixth Grade Students' Science Process Skills and Epistemological Beliefs in Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zaleta, Kristy L.

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of gender and type of inquiry curriculum (open or structured) on science process skills and epistemological beliefs in science of sixth grade students. The current study took place in an urban northeastern middle school. The researcher utilized a sample of convenience comprised of 303 sixth…

Qualitative Research in Career Development: Exploring the Center and Margins of Discourse About Careers and Working

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blustein, David L.; Kenna, Alexandra C.; Murphy, Kerri A.; DeVoy, Julia E.; DeWine, David B.

2005-01-01

This article explores the contributions of qualitative research to the study of career development and the psychology of working. Epistemological perspectives (logical positivism, postpositivism, and social constructionism) are discussed as they relate to historical context, career theories, and the various methods used within qualitative…

Research in Mathematics Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schoenfeld, Alan H.

2016-01-01

As one of the three Rs, "'rithmetic" has always been central to education and education research. By virtue of that centrality, research in mathematics education has often reflected and at times led trends in education research. This chapter provides some deep background on epistemological and other issues that shape current research,…

Personal Epistemology and Self-Efficacy in the Special Education Teacher

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Bradley W.

2011-01-01

This report summarizes the personal epistemology and self-efficacy concepts and how they affect special education teachers. This report is based on the social cognitive theory, perceived and collective efficacy, and how the conceptual thoughts of a special education teacher affect their instructional focus in the classroom. Self-efficacy beliefs…

Epistemological Trends in Educational Leadership Studies in Israel: 2000-2012

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Eyal, Ori; Rom, Noa

2015-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the epistemological trends in the Israeli Educational Leadership (EL) scholarship between the years 2000 and 2012. Design/methodology/approach: The 51 studies included in this review were detected through a systematic search in online academic databases. Abstracts of studies identified as being…

Designing Intelligent Knowledge: Epistemological Faith and the Democratization of Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pierce, Clayton

2007-01-01

In this essay, Clayton Pierce examines the epistemological standpoints of Intelligent Design (ID) and evolutionary science education, focusing specifically on the pedagogical question of how ID and modern science-based education fail to promote democratic relations in how students learn, think, and associate with science and technology in society.…

Epistemology, Ontology and Ethics: "Galaxies Away from the Engineering World"?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Christensen, Steen Hyldgaard; Erno-Kjolhede, Erik

2008-01-01

Philosophy of technology/philosophy of science has recently become part of the curriculum of engineering degree programmes in Denmark. However, to what extent do teachers of engineering see it as meaningful for students to work with relatively abstract philosophical concepts such as epistemology, ontology and ethics as part of engineering degree…

Taking Down the Walls: Communities and Educational Research in Canada's 21st Century. NALL Working Paper.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haig-Brown, Celia

To take community seriously in the conduct of educational research, the researcher should consider taking down epistemological walls and the "real" ones that confine the processes and products of academic labor to artificially isolated settings. Epistemologically, the question of walls relates to the kinds of knowledge competed over,…

Middle School Students' Use of Epistemological Resources while Reasoning about Science Performance Tasks and Media Reports of Socioscientific Issues

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Buckingham, Brandy L. E.

The goal of science education is to prepare students to make decisions about the complicated socioscientific issues that are an inescapable part of modern life, from personal medical decisions to evaluating a political candidate's environmental platform. We cannot expect adults to maintain a deep conceptual understanding of the current state of every branch of science that might prove relevant to their lives, so we must prepare them to rely on other knowledge to make these decisions. Epistemological beliefs about scientific knowledge--what it is, its purpose, how it is constructed--are one type of knowledge that could be brought to bear when evaluating scientific claims. Complicating this situation is the fact that most adults will get most of their information about these socioscientific issues from the news media. Journalists do not have the same goals or norms as scientists, and this media lens can distort scientific issues. This dissertation addresses the question of whether we can assess epistemological change in a way that gives us meaningful information about how people will apply their epistemological understanding of science when they make decisions in the real world. First, I designed a written assessment made up of performance tasks to assess middle school students' implicit epistemological beliefs, and looked at whether we can use such an assessment to see epistemological change over two years. I then gave the same students news articles about whether there is a link between vaccines and autism and looked at their reasoning about this issue and how the journalistic features of two different articles impacted their reasoning. Finally, I examined the external validity of the epistemology assessment by looking at whether it predicted anything about students' responses to the news articles. While I was able to find evidence of differences between eighth graders' and sixth graders' use of epistemological resources within the performance tasks, I found that

College physics students' epistemological self-reflection and its relationship to conceptual learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

May, David B.; Etkina, Eugenia

2002-12-01

Students should develop self-reflection skills and appropriate views about knowledge and learning, both for their own sake and because these skills and views may be related to improvements in conceptual understanding. We explored the latter issue in the context of an introductory physics course for first-year engineering honors students. As part of the course, students submitted weekly reports, in which they reflected on how they learned specific physics content. The reports by 12 students were analyzed for the quality of reflection and some of the epistemological beliefs they exhibited. Students' conceptual learning gains were measured with standard survey instruments. We found that students with high conceptual gains tend to show reflection on learning that is more articulate and epistemologically sophisticated than students with lower conceptual gains. Some implications for instruction are suggested.

"A Reason to Write": Exploring Writing Epistemologies in Two Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pahl, Kate

2012-01-01

This article argues that it is important to take account of children's epistemologies of writing when exploring writing ecologies in homes and communities. Writing as more broadly defined by children and young people might include different forms of notation, inscription systems and decoration of objects in the home. Drawing on two research…

Settler Traditions of Place: Making Explicit the Epistemological Legacy of White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism for Place-Based Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Seawright, Gardner

2014-01-01

With the rise of place-based models of education, credence needs to be given to epistemological traditions that curate individual understandings of and relations to the social world (i.e., places). The epistemological traditions that have been shared across generations of North American settler colonialists are at the center of this article. The…

Objectivity and reliability in qualitative analysis: realist, contextualist and radical constructionist epistemologies.

PubMed

Madill, A; Jordan, A; Shirley, C

2000-02-01

The effect of the individual analyst on research findings can create a credibility problem for qualitative approaches from the perspective of evaluative criteria utilized in quantitative psychology. This paper explicates the ways in which objectivity and reliability are understood in qualitative analysis conducted from within three distinct epistemological frameworks: realism, contextual constructionism, and radical constructionism. It is argued that quality criteria utilized in quantitative psychology are appropriate to the evaluation of qualitative analysis only to the extent that it is conducted within a naive or scientific realist framework. The discussion is illustrated with reference to the comparison of two independent grounded theory analyses of identical material. An implication of this illustration is to identify the potential to develop a radical constructionist strand of grounded theory.

Folding into being: early embryology and the epistemology of rhythm.

PubMed

Wellmann, Janina

2015-03-01

Historians have often described embryology and concepts of development in the period around 1800 in terms of "temporalization" or "dynamization". This paper, in contrast, argues that a central epistemological category in the period was "rhythm", which played a major role in the establishment of the emerging discipline of biology. I show that Caspar Friedrich Wolff's epigenetic theory of development was based on a rhythmical notion, namely the hypothesis that organic development occurs as a series of ordered rhythmical repetitions and variations. Presenting Christian Heinrich Pander's and Karl Ernst von Baer's theory of germ layers, I argue that Pander and Baer regarded folding as an organizing principle of ontogenesis, and that the principle's explanatory power stems from their understanding of folding as a rhythmical figuration. In a brief discussion of the notion of rhythm in contemporary music theory, I identify an underlying physiological epistemology in the new musical concept of rhythm around 1800. The paper closes with a more general discussion of the relationship between the rhythmic episteme, conceptions of life, and aesthetic theory at the end of the eighteenth century.

Qualitative research and the epidemiological imagination: a vital relationship.

PubMed

Popay, J

2003-01-01

This paper takes as its starting point the assumption that the 'Epidemiological Imagination' has a central role to play in the future development of policies and practice to improve population health and reduce health inequalities within and between states but suggests that by neglecting the contribution that qualitative research can make epidemiology is failing to deliver this potential. The paper briefly considers what qualitative research is, touching on epistemological questions--what type of "knowledge" is generated--and questions of methods--what approaches to data collection, analysis and interpretation are involved). Following this the paper presents two different models of the relationship between qualitative and quantitative research. The enhancement model (which assumes that qualitative research findings add something extra to the findings of quantitative research) suggests three related "roles" for qualitative research: generating hypothesis to be tested by quantitative research, helping to construct more sophisticated measures of social phenomena and explaining unexpected research from quantitative research. In contrast, the Epistemological Model suggests that qualitative research is equal but different from quantitative research making a unique contribution through: researching parts other research approaches can't reach, increasing understanding by adding conceptual and theoretical depth to knowledge, shifting the balance of power between researchers and researched and challenging traditional epidemiological ways of "knowing" the social world. The paper illustrates these different types of contributions with examples of qualitative research and finally discusses ways in which the "trustworthiness" of qualitative research can be assessed.

High School Students' Epistemological Beliefs, Conceptions of Learning, and Self-Efficacy for Learning Biology: A Study of Their Structural Models

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sadi, Özlem; Dagyar, Miray

2015-01-01

The current work reveals the data of the study which examines the relationships among epistemological beliefs, conceptions of learning, and self-efficacy for biology learning with the help of the Structural Equation Modeling. Three questionnaires, the Epistemological Beliefs, the Conceptions of Learning Biology and the Self-efficacy for Learning…

Qualitative Research in Counseling Psychology: A Primer on Research Paradigms and Philosophy of Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ponterotto, Joseph G.

2005-01-01

This article presents an overview of philosophy of science and research paradigms. The philosophy of science parameters of ontology, epistemology, axiology, rhetorical structure, and methodology are discussed across the research paradigms of positivism, postpositivism, constructivism-interpretivism, and the critical-ideological perspective.…

Exercising Quality Control in Interdisciplinary Education: Toward an Epistemologically Responsible Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stein, Zachary; Connell, Michael; Gardner, Howard

2008-01-01

This article argues that certain philosophically devised quality control parameters should guide approaches to interdisciplinary education. We sketch the kind of reflections we think are necessary in order to produce epistemologically responsible curricula. We suggest that the two overarching epistemic dimensions of levels of analysis and basic…

Epistemological controversies in the analytic field elucidated by the theological realm.

PubMed

Squverer, Amos

2015-08-01

This article proposes to address certain epistemological controversies in psychoanalysis by elucidating them through the religious field. The theological field serves the author as the repressed, which indicates the latent stakes that continue to do work at the heart of these debates. The goal is to show how debates that take place on the epistemological level bring into confrontation different anthropological concepts and discursive traditions that have their roots in religious discourses. The principal hypothesis of the author is that the dissident theories of psychoanalysis can be understood as a return to a pre-monotheistic theological conception or to an idolatrous practice that aims, primarily, to undo castration. This hypothesis will be used to elucidate the debates with two authors: Adler and Rank. The author shows how these theorists, by leaving analytical ground, connect their theories to pre-monotheistic conceptions and highlight conceptual tools that are characteristic to them. Copyright © 2015 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Theory Building and Modeling in a Sinking and Floating Unit: A Case Study of Third and Fourth Grade Students' Developing Epistemologies of Science. Research Report

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kawasaki, Keiko; Herrenkohl, Leslie Rupert; Yeary, Sherry A.

2004-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to carefully examine the evolution of students' theory building and modeling, critical components of scientific epistemologies, over a unit of study on sinking and floating in one third/fourth grade classroom. The study described in this paper follows in the tradition of Design Experiments (Brown 1992, Collins 1990)…

Tempest, Arizona: Criminal Epistemologies and the Rhetorical Possibilities of Raza Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Serna, Elias

2013-01-01

This essay looks at Ethnic Studies activism in Arizona through a rhetorical lens in order to highlight epistemological aspects of activities such as a high school Chicano Literature class, Roberto "Dr. Cintli" Rodriguez's journalism, and student activism to defend the Mexican-American Studies Department. Taking rhetoric's premise that…

"I Take Engineering with Me": Epistemological Transitions across an Engineering Curriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Winberg, Christine; Winberg, Simon; Jacobs, Cecilia; Garraway, James; Engel-Hills, Penelope

2016-01-01

In this paper we study epistemological transitions across an intended engineering curriculum and recommend strategies to assist students in attaining the increasingly complex concepts and insights that are necessary for transition to advanced levels of study. We draw on Legitimation Code Theory [Maton, Karl. 2014, "Knowledge and Knowers:…

Toward an epistemology of nano-technosciences: Probing technoscience from a historical perspective: on today's surprising prevalence and relevance of Francis Bacon.

PubMed

Schmidt, Jan C

2011-12-01

This paper aims to contribute to the attempts to clarify and classify the vague notion of "technosciences" from a historical perspective. A key question that is raised is as follows: Does Francis Bacon, one of the founding fathers of the modern age, provide a hitherto largely undiscovered programmatic position, which might facilitate a more profound understanding of technosciences? The paper argues that nearly everything we need today for an ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the works of Bacon-this position will be called epistemological real-constructivism. Rather than realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon's position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon could contribute to the expanding and critical discussion on technoscience. In the following I will reconstruct the term "technoscience". My finding is that at least four different understandings or types of the term "technoscience" co-exist. In a second step, I will analyze and elaborate on Bacon's epistemological position. I will identify central elements of the four different understandings in Bacon's work. Finally, I will conclude that the epistemology of technoscience is, indeed, very old-it is the epistemological position put forward by Bacon.

Moral knowledge: some reflections on moral controversies, incompatible moral epistemologies, and the culture wars.

PubMed

Engelhardt, H Tristram

2004-01-01

An authentic Christian bioethical account of abortion must take into consideration the conflicting epistemologies that separate Christian moral theology from secular moral philosophy. Moral epistemologies directed to the issue of abortion that fail to appreciate the orientation of morality to God will also fail adequately to appreciate the moral issues at stake. Christian accounts of the bioethics of abortion that reduce moral-theological considerations to moral-philosophical considerations will not only fail to appreciate fully the offense of abortion, but morally mislead. This article locates the bioethics of abortion within the theology of the Church of the first millennium, emphasizing that abortion was prohibited, whether or not one considered the embryo or fetus to be ensouled.

YPAR and Critical Epistemologies: Rethinking Education Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Caraballo, Limarys; Lozenski, Brian D.; Lyiscott, Jamila J.; Morrell, Ernest

2017-01-01

Knowledges from academic and professional research-based institutions have long been valued over the organic intellectualism of those who are most affected by educational and social inequities. In contrast, participatory action research (PAR) projects are collective investigations that rely on indigenous knowledge, combined with the desire to take…

What Difference Does Quantity Make? On the Epistemology of Big Data in Biology

PubMed Central

Leonelli, Sabina

2015-01-01

Is big data science a whole new way of doing research? And what difference does data quantity make to knowledge production strategies and their outputs? I argue that the novelty of big data science does not lie in the sheer quantity of data involved, but rather in (1) the prominence and status acquired by data as commodity and recognised output, both within and outside of the scientific community; and (2) the methods, infrastructures, technologies, skills and knowledge developed to handle data. These developments generate the impression that data-intensive research is a new mode of doing science, with its own epistemology and norms. To assess this claim, one needs to consider the ways in which data are actually disseminated and used to generate knowledge. Accordingly, this paper reviews the development of sophisticated ways to disseminate, integrate and re-use data acquired on model organisms over the last three decades of work in experimental biology. I focus on online databases as prominent infrastructures set up to organise and interpret such data; and examine the wealth and diversity of expertise, resources and conceptual scaffolding that such databases draw upon. This illuminates some of the conditions under which big data need to be curated to support processes of discovery across biological subfields, which in turn highlights the difficulties caused by the lack of adequate curation for the vast majority of data in the life sciences. In closing, I reflect on the difference that data quantity is making to contemporary biology, the methodological and epistemic challenges of identifying and analyzing data given these developments, and the opportunities and worries associated to big data discourse and methods. PMID:25729586

What Difference Does Quantity Make? On the Epistemology of Big Data in Biology.

PubMed

Leonelli, Sabina

2014-06-01

Is big data science a whole new way of doing research? And what difference does data quantity make to knowledge production strategies and their outputs? I argue that the novelty of big data science does not lie in the sheer quantity of data involved, but rather in (1) the prominence and status acquired by data as commodity and recognised output, both within and outside of the scientific community; and (2) the methods, infrastructures, technologies, skills and knowledge developed to handle data. These developments generate the impression that data-intensive research is a new mode of doing science, with its own epistemology and norms. To assess this claim, one needs to consider the ways in which data are actually disseminated and used to generate knowledge. Accordingly, this paper reviews the development of sophisticated ways to disseminate, integrate and re-use data acquired on model organisms over the last three decades of work in experimental biology. I focus on online databases as prominent infrastructures set up to organise and interpret such data; and examine the wealth and diversity of expertise, resources and conceptual scaffolding that such databases draw upon. This illuminates some of the conditions under which big data need to be curated to support processes of discovery across biological subfields, which in turn highlights the difficulties caused by the lack of adequate curation for the vast majority of data in the life sciences. In closing, I reflect on the difference that data quantity is making to contemporary biology, the methodological and epistemic challenges of identifying and analyzing data given these developments, and the opportunities and worries associated to big data discourse and methods.

Prediction of Students' Argumentation Skills about Controversial Topics by Epistemological Understanding

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mason, Lucia; Scirica, Fabio

2006-01-01

This study focuses on the contribution of overall epistemological understanding to argumentation skills, after controlling for topic knowledge and interest, in eighth graders. Students were introduced to two controversial topics, global warming and genetically modified food, through the reading of a two-sided text on each topic. After reading,…

The Role of Tasks and Epistemological Beliefs in Online Peer Questioning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cho, Young Hoan; Lee, Jaejin; Jonassen, David H.

2011-01-01

The current study examines the assertion that students are motivated and learn more by carrying out tasks consistent with their epistemological beliefs in web-based learning environments. In the study, 120 undergraduate students in an educational technology course participated as part of their coursework. Using a wiki, triads reciprocally asked…

The New Epistemology and the Milan Approach: Feminist and Sociopolitical Considerations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

MacKinnon, Laurie Katherine; Miller, Dusty

1987-01-01

Explores the sociopolitical implications of the new epistemology and the Milan approach, concluding that, while second order cybernetics has greater potential to incorporate a radical social analysis, it has, nevertheless, failed to do so. The application of second order cybernetics in family therapy appears to be constrained by the sociopolitical…

The Value of Information: Normativity, Epistemology, and LIS in Luciano Floridi

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fyffe, Richard

2015-01-01

This paper is a critical reconstruction of Luciano Floridi's view of librarianship as "stewardship of a semantic environment," a view that is at odds with the dominant tradition in which library and information science (LIS) is understood as social epistemology. Floridi's work helps to explain the normative dimensions of librarianship in…

How does epistemological knowledge on modelling influence students' engagement in the issue of climate change?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tasquier, Giulia

2016-05-01

Involvement in climate change has been proven to be hindered by emotional and social barriers, as well as by conceptual difficulties that students may encounter in dealing with scientific content related to particular issues such as the greenhouse effect. In this study, we start from the conjecture that behind many conceptual difficulties and emotional barriers lie particular epistemological obstacles related to a naive and stereotypical view of science. These include, in particular, the belief that science still has the role and power to provide a unique, unquestionable, and certain explanation of events and processes. Such a naive idea clashes strongly with the intrinsic complexity of climate science. This paper sets out to investigate if and how the improvement of epistemological knowledge can influence behavioural habits and foster students' engagement in climate change. In order to explore such an issue, we focus on five interviews collected at the end of a teaching experience on climate change, carried out with secondary school students (grade 11; 16-year olds). This study is a follow-up of other two analytical studies aimed at investigating, respectively, the impact of the experience on students' epistemological knowledge and on their behavioural habits.

Domain Specificity of Personal Epistemology: Resolved Questions, Persistent Issues, New Models

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hofer, Barbara K.

2006-01-01

Beliefs that individuals hold about knowledge and knowing, or what has been termed ''personal epistemology'', are related to learning and achievement in complex ways. These beliefs are also differentiated by discipline (e.g., math, science, history) as well as by judgment domains (e.g., personal taste, morality, meaning). This commentary on five…

Beyond Re/Presentation: A Case for Updating the Epistemology of Schooling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biesta, Gert J. J.; Osberg, Deborah

2007-01-01

In this paper we wish to argue that despite strong challenges to representational epistemology in the last two centuries, modern schooling is still organised around a representational view of knowledge. This is the case despite teaching practices being modified to accommodate different views of knowledge that have emerged in the last two…

Exploring arts-based knowledge translation: sharing research findings through performing the patterns, rehearsing the results, staging the synthesis.

PubMed

Rieger, Kendra; Schultz, Annette S H

2014-04-01

Cultivation of knowledge translation (KT) strategies that actively engage health professionals in critical reflection of their practice and research-based evidence are imperative to address the research-practice gap. While research-based evidence is exponentially growing, our ability to facilitate uptake by nurses and other health professionals has not kept pace. Innovative approaches that extend epistemological bias beyond a singular standpoint of postpositivism, such as the utilization of arts-based methods, expand the possibility to address the complexities of context, engage audience members, promote dissemination within communities of practice, and foster new audiences interested in research findings. In this paper, we address the importance of adopting a social constructivist epistemological stance to facilitate knowledge translation to diverse audiences, explore various arts-based knowledge translation (ABKT) strategies, and open a dialogue concerning evaluative tenets of ABKT. ABKT utilizes various art forms to disseminate research knowledge to diverse audiences and promote evidence-informed practice. ABKT initiatives translate knowledge not based upon a linear model, which views knowledge as an objective entity, but rather operate from the premise that knowledge is socially situated, which demands acknowledging and engaging the learner within their context. Theatre, dance, photography, and poetry are art forms that are commonly used to communicate research findings to diverse audiences. Given the emerging interest and importance of utilizing this KT strategy situated within a social constructivist epistemology, potential challenges and plausible evaluative criteria specific to ABKT are presented. ABKT is an emerging KT strategy that is grounded in social constructivist epistemological tenets, and holds potential for meaningfully sharing new research knowledge with diverse audiences. ABKT is an innovative and synergistic approach to traditional

Mixed methods research.

PubMed

Halcomb, Elizabeth; Hickman, Louise

2015-04-08

Mixed methods research involves the use of qualitative and quantitative data in a single research project. It represents an alternative methodological approach, combining qualitative and quantitative research approaches, which enables nurse researchers to explore complex phenomena in detail. This article provides a practical overview of mixed methods research and its application in nursing, to guide the novice researcher considering a mixed methods research project.

Dialectical Imagery and Postmodern Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davison, Kevin G.

2006-01-01

This article suggests utilizing dialectical imagery, as understood by German social philosopher Walter Benjamin, as an additional qualitative data analysis strategy for research into the postmodern condition. The use of images mined from research data may offer epistemological transformative possibilities that will assist in the demystification of…

High School Physics Students' Personal Epistemologies and School Science Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alpaslan, Muhammet Mustafa; Yalvac, Bugrahan; Loving, Cathleen

2017-01-01

This case study explores students' physics-related personal epistemologies in school science practices. The school science practices of nine eleventh grade students in a physics class were audio-taped over 6 weeks. The students were also interviewed to find out their ideas on the nature of scientific knowledge after each activity. Analysis of…

Epistemology and the Curriculum: The Bio-Ecocultural Cognitive Spiral as Model.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gagne, Raymond C.

Described is a curriculum theory and construction within an epistemological model whose specific purpose is to serve as a general guide to the Amerindian peoples (Indians and Inuit) in their search for solutions to the problem of cultural survival. The model is also meant to have universal application, especially where there are cultures in…

Conceptual and Epistemological Undercurrents of Learning as a Process of Change

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Montfort, Devlin B.

2011-01-01

In the preparation and education of civil engineers it is essential to both increase student knowledge of the world (conceptual understanding), but also to establish and develop new ways of thinking (epistemology). Both of these processes of change can be considered learning, but they are vastly different in the time, energy and resources they…

Teacher research experiences, epistemology, and student attitudes toward science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Payne, Diana L.

This concurrent mixed methods research study examined the impact of a Teacher Research Experience (TRE) on science teacher beliefs about science, scientific research, science teaching, and student attitudes toward science. Surveys, interviews, reflective journals, and classroom observations of six teachers involved in a TRE were utilized to examine changes in beliefs as a result of participation in the TRE. Student attitudes were measured with a pre and post survey. An analysis of qualitative data from the teachers' interviews, journals, and pre and post TRE surveys indicated that some change occurred in their beliefs about science and scientists for all six teachers, and that teachers' beliefs about science teaching were affected in a variety of ways after participating in the TRE. The quantitative results of the study using Science Teachers' Beliefs About Science (STBAS) instrument suggest that the change from the beginning to the end of the school year, if any, was minimal. However, interviews with and observations of teachers identified valuable components of the TRE, such as the advanced resources (e.g., DVD, samples), a feeling of rejuvenation in teaching, a new perspective on science and scientific research, and first hand experiences in science. Results from the classroom observations using the Science Classroom Practice Record (SCPR) were mixed. Some differences may be explained, however, as relating to content taught in the pre and post classes observed or simply to inherent differences in student dynamics and behavior from class to class. There were no significant differences from pre to post TRE regarding student attitudes toward science as measured by paired samples t-tests on the modified Attitudes Toward Science (mATSI) instrument. Attitudes and beliefs are not easily changed, and change is more likely to result from direct experience and education rather than an indirect experience. Although the results are generalizable only to the participants in

A guide to understanding social science research for natural scientists.

PubMed

Moon, Katie; Blackman, Deborah

2014-10-01

Natural scientists are increasingly interested in social research because they recognize that conservation problems are commonly social problems. Interpreting social research, however, requires at least a basic understanding of the philosophical principles and theoretical assumptions of the discipline, which are embedded in the design of social research. Natural scientists who engage in social science but are unfamiliar with these principles and assumptions can misinterpret their results. We developed a guide to assist natural scientists in understanding the philosophical basis of social science to support the meaningful interpretation of social research outcomes. The 3 fundamental elements of research are ontology, what exists in the human world that researchers can acquire knowledge about; epistemology, how knowledge is created; and philosophical perspective, the philosophical orientation of the researcher that guides her or his action. Many elements of the guide also apply to the natural sciences. Natural scientists can use the guide to assist them in interpreting social science research to determine how the ontological position of the researcher can influence the nature of the research; how the epistemological position can be used to support the legitimacy of different types of knowledge; and how philosophical perspective can shape the researcher's choice of methods and affect interpretation, communication, and application of results. The use of this guide can also support and promote the effective integration of the natural and social sciences to generate more insightful and relevant conservation research outcomes. © 2014 Society for Conservation Biology.

Disciplinary perspectives on multicultural research: Reply to Dvorakova (2016) and Yakushko et al. (2016).

PubMed

Hall, Gordon C Nagayama; Yip, Tiffany; Zárate, Michael A

2016-12-01

In their comments on Hall, Yip, and Zárate (2016), Dvorakova (2016) addresses cultural psychology methods and Yakushko, Hoffman, Consoli, and Lee (2016) address qualitative research methods. We provide evidence of the neglect of underrepresented groups in the publications of major journals in cultural psychology and qualitative psychology. We do not view any particular research method as inherently contributing to "epistemological violence" (Yakushko et al., 2016, p. 5), but it is the misguided application and/or interpretation of data generated from such methods that perpetuate oppression. We contend that best practices for representing ethnocultural diversity in research will require a diverse toolbox containing quantitative, qualitative, biological, and behavioral approaches. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Disciplining Qualitative Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Denzin, Norman K.; Lincoln, Yvonna S.; Giardina, Michael D.

2006-01-01

Qualitative research exists in a time of global uncertainty. Around the world, governments are attempting to regulate scientific inquiry by defining what counts as "good" science. These regulatory activities raise fundamental, philosophical epistemological, political and pedagogical issues for scholarship and freedom of speech in the…

Interdisciplinary Research and Disciplinary Toleration: A Reply to Kitty Locker.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kent, Thomas

1994-01-01

Responds to an article in this issue regarding the challenge of interdisciplinary research. Suggests that the primary motivation for avoiding interdisciplinary research is political, not epistemological. (SR)

The erudite humility of the historian: the 'critical epistemology' of Georges Lantéri-Laura.

PubMed

Basso Lorini, Elisabetta

2017-06-01

This paper analyses the historical and epistemological work of the French psychiatrist Georges Lantéri-Laura (1930-2004) within the context of the French 'tradition' of history and philosophy of sciences, with special reference to Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault. After an introduction devoted to a critical survey of the most recent works on the history and historiography of psychiatry in French, the paper outlines Lantéri-Laura's approach by focusing especially on the role played by the methodological concept of 'semiology' as regards the relation between medicine and psychiatry. The last part of the paper draws attention to the relation between the history and philosophy of psychiatry in light of Lantéri-Laura's 'critical epistemology'.

College Students' Scientific Epistemological Views and Thinking Patterns in Socioscientific Decision Making

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Shiang-Yao; Lin, Chuan-Shun; Tsai, Chin-Chung

2011-01-01

This study aims to test the nature of the assumption that there are relationships between scientific epistemological views (SEVs) and reasoning processes in socioscientific decision making. A mixed methodology that combines both qualitative and quantitative approaches of data collection and analysis was adopted not only to verify the assumption…

Encouraging Epistemological Exploration: Impacts on Undergraduates' Retention and Application of Course Material

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adler, Jonathan M.; Matthews, Elizabeth A.

2009-01-01

Students bring an intact, if unarticulated, epistemological perspective into the classroom that influences how they receive and process new information. In this study, students who explored a wider range of perspectives had significantly improved learning outcomes as measured in 3 domains: retention of specific content, retention of general…

The Investigation of the Epistemological Beliefs of University Students According to Gender, Grade, Fields of Study, Academic Success and Their Learning Styles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tumkaya, Songul

2012-01-01

The aim of this study is to investigate the epistemological beliefs of university students according to their genders, classes, fields of Study, academic success and learning styles. This study was carried out with 246 females and 242 males, in total 488 university students. The data was collected through Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire…

Enhancing Validity When Researching the "Other": Insights from Pierre Bourdieu's Theory of Social Science Research Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Naidoo, Devika

2014-01-01

This article explores aspects of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social science research practice and discusses their relevance for enhancing validity when researching the "other." Aspects such as: a relational way of thinking about concepts, epistemology and methodology; the rigorous construction of the object of research; and…

Modeling Psychological Attributes in Psychology – An Epistemological Discussion: Network Analysis vs. Latent Variables

PubMed Central

Guyon, Hervé; Falissard, Bruno; Kop, Jean-Luc

2017-01-01

Network Analysis is considered as a new method that challenges Latent Variable models in inferring psychological attributes. With Network Analysis, psychological attributes are derived from a complex system of components without the need to call on any latent variables. But the ontological status of psychological attributes is not adequately defined with Network Analysis, because a psychological attribute is both a complex system and a property emerging from this complex system. The aim of this article is to reappraise the legitimacy of latent variable models by engaging in an ontological and epistemological discussion on psychological attributes. Psychological attributes relate to the mental equilibrium of individuals embedded in their social interactions, as robust attractors within complex dynamic processes with emergent properties, distinct from physical entities located in precise areas of the brain. Latent variables thus possess legitimacy, because the emergent properties can be conceptualized and analyzed on the sole basis of their manifestations, without exploring the upstream complex system. However, in opposition with the usual Latent Variable models, this article is in favor of the integration of a dynamic system of manifestations. Latent Variables models and Network Analysis thus appear as complementary approaches. New approaches combining Latent Network Models and Network Residuals are certainly a promising new way to infer psychological attributes, placing psychological attributes in an inter-subjective dynamic approach. Pragmatism-realism appears as the epistemological framework required if we are to use latent variables as representations of psychological attributes. PMID:28572780

Human Research and Complexity Theory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Horn, James

2008-01-01

The disavowal of positivist science by many educational researchers has resulted in a deepening polarization of research agendas and an epistemological divide that appears increasingly difficult to span. Despite a turning away from science altogether by some, and thus toward various forms of poststructuralist inquiry, this has not held back the…

The Nature of Educational Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gillett, Simon G.

2011-01-01

The paper is in two parts. The first part of the paper is a critique of current methodology in educational research: scientific, critical and interpretive. The ontological and epistemological assumptions of those methodologies are described from the standpoint of John Searle's analytic philosophy. In the second part two research papers with…

Virtue-Epistemology and the Chagos Unknown: Questioning the Indictment of Knowledge Transmission

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Papastephanou, Marianna

2015-01-01

Though concerned with knowledge, this article begins with unknown political events that are ignored by the culture and educational practices of the societies in whose name the events took place. The questions that these events raise indicate a relation of epistemology with ethics and education that complicates some theoretical and managerial…

When Liu Hui Meets Archimedes: Students' Epistemological and Cultural Interpretations of Mathematics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Po-Hung

2014-01-01

The present study aimed to investigate in what way and to what extent Taiwanese college students' epistemological views of mathematics had evolved during a history-based liberal arts mathematics course titled: "When Liu Hui Meets Archimedes--Development of Eastern and Western Mathematics." The course was designed to help college students…

Mixed methods research in music therapy research.

PubMed

Bradt, Joke; Burns, Debra S; Creswell, John W

2013-01-01

Music therapists have an ethical and professional responsibility to provide the highest quality care possible to their patients. Much of the time, high quality care is guided by evidence-based practice standards that integrate the most current, available research in making decisions. Accordingly, music therapists need research that integrates multiple ways of knowing and forms of evidence. Mixed methods research holds great promise for facilitating such integration. At this time, there have not been any methodological articles published on mixed methods research in music therapy. The purpose of this article is to introduce mixed methods research as an approach to address research questions relevant to music therapy practice. This article describes the core characteristics of mixed methods research, considers paradigmatic issues related to this research approach, articulates major challenges in conducting mixed methods research, illustrates four basic designs, and provides criteria for evaluating the quality of mixed methods articles using examples of mixed methods research from the music therapy literature. Mixed methods research offers unique opportunities for strengthening the evidence base in music therapy. Recommendations are provided to ensure rigorous implementation of this research approach.

The Epistemology of Moral Bioenhancement.

PubMed

Crutchfield, Parker

2016-07-01

Moral bioenhancement is the potential practice of manipulating individuals' moral behaviors by biological means in order to help resolve pressing moral issues such as climate change and terrorism. This practice has obvious ethical implications, and these implications have been and continue to be discussed in the bioethics literature. What have not been discussed are the epistemological implications of moral bioenhancement. This article details some of these implications of engaging in moral bioenhancement. The argument begins by making the distinction between moral bioenhancement that manipulates the contents of mental states (e.g. beliefs) and that which manipulates other, non-representational states (e.g. motivations). Either way, I argue, the enhanced moral psychology will fail to conform to epistemic norms, and the only way to resolve this failure and allow the moral bioenhancement to be effective in addressing the targeted moral issues is to make the moral bioenhancement covert. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Towards Transformation of Knowledge and Subjectivity in Curriculum Inquiry: Insights from Chen Kuan-Hsing's "Asia as Method"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Angel M. Y.

2012-01-01

Chen's book, "Asia as Method" (Duke University Press, 2010), and his theorization on topics of de-imperialization, de-colonization, de-cold war, as well as on foregrounding epistemologies and frames of reference situated in the diverse contexts in Asia have contributed to empowering scholars and researchers situated not only in Taiwan,…

Feminist Methodologies and Engineering Education Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beddoes, Kacey

2013-01-01

This paper introduces feminist methodologies in the context of engineering education research. It builds upon other recent methodology articles in engineering education journals and presents feminist research methodologies as a concrete engineering education setting in which to explore the connections between epistemology, methodology and theory.…

An introduction to the medical epistemology of Georges Canguilhem: moving beyond Michel Foucault.

PubMed

Spicker, S F

1987-11-01

Although American philosophers and physicians are generally familiar with the writings of Claude Bernard (1813-1878), especially his Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865), the medical epistemology of Georges Canguilhem, born in 1904, is virtually unknown in English speaking nations. Although indebted to Bernard for his conception of the methods to be employed in the acquisition of medical knowledge, Canguilhem radically reformulates Bernard's concepts of 'disease', 'health', 'illness', and 'pathology'. Contemporary exhortations to medical professionals and medical students that they "pay more attention to the whole patient" take on significance in working through the writings of Canguilhem; of crucial importance is the relation that obtains between a patient's unique symptomatology and the proper drug regiment that is required.

Some Research Orientations for Research in Social Studies Education. [Draft].

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van Manen, M. J. Max

The need for a different conception of research from the classical statistical approach to theory development in social studies teaching is addressed in this paper. In a schema of dominant orientations of social theory, the outstanding epistemological features of the three main schools of contemporary metascience are outlined. Three systems of…

Research and Research Methods in Geographical Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Graves, Norman J., Ed.

This collection of papers examines research methods in geographical education in nine countries. "Research Methods in the History of Geographical Education" (William Marsden, the United Kingdom) examines the methods used and some of the research undertaken in the history of geographical education. "Research Methods in Investigating…

Qualitative psychotherapy research: the journey so far and future directions.

PubMed

Levitt, Heidi M

2015-03-01

This article documents the evolution of qualitative psychotherapy research over the past 3 decades. Clients' and therapists' accounts of their experiences in psychotherapy provide a window into the psychotherapy relationship and its mechanisms of change. A sizable body of literature has been generated that uses qualitative methods to collect and analyze these accounts and to shed light on the psychotherapy process. It notes changes in the field such as growing numbers of dissertations and publications using qualitative methods as well as a strengthening emphasis on qualitative research within graduate education and research funding bodies. Future recommendations include developing principles for practice from qualitative methods and conducting qualitative meta-analyses. Other recommendations include forming journal review policies that support the publication of qualitative research and that focus on coherence in adapting methods to meet research goals, in light of a study's characteristics and epistemological framework, rather than focusing on sets of procedures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Feminist methodologies and engineering education research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Beddoes, Kacey

2013-03-01

This paper introduces feminist methodologies in the context of engineering education research. It builds upon other recent methodology articles in engineering education journals and presents feminist research methodologies as a concrete engineering education setting in which to explore the connections between epistemology, methodology and theory. The paper begins with a literature review that covers a broad range of topics featured in the literature on feminist methodologies. Next, data from interviews with engineering educators and researchers who have engaged with feminist methodologies are presented. The ways in which feminist methodologies shape their research topics, questions, frameworks of analysis, methods, practices and reporting are each discussed. The challenges and barriers they have faced are then discussed. Finally, the benefits of further and broader engagement with feminist methodologies within the engineering education community are identified.

Global Multiculturalism: Africa and the Recasting of the Philosophical and Epistemological Plateaus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abdi, Ali A.

2007-01-01

This article focuses on the problematic relation between African worldviews and their attendant educational and epistemological systems, on the one hand, and the dominant European discourses that have attempted to negate the validity of those, both in historical and contemporary Africa, on the other hand. The article first deals with its subtitle…

The Impact of Translators' Epistemological Beliefs and Gender on Their Translation Quality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Araghizade, Elmira; Jadidi, Esmaeil

2016-01-01

This study aimed to determine the relationship between translators' epistemological beliefs and gender on their Persian-to-English translation quality. To do so, a group of 53 MA translation students both male and female were selected, through convenient sampling to participate in this study. For data collection two instruments were employed: 1…

The epistemology of mathematical and statistical modeling: a quiet methodological revolution.

PubMed

Rodgers, Joseph Lee

2010-01-01

A quiet methodological revolution, a modeling revolution, has occurred over the past several decades, almost without discussion. In contrast, the 20th century ended with contentious argument over the utility of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST). The NHST controversy may have been at least partially irrelevant, because in certain ways the modeling revolution obviated the NHST argument. I begin with a history of NHST and modeling and their relation to one another. Next, I define and illustrate principles involved in developing and evaluating mathematical models. Following, I discuss the difference between using statistical procedures within a rule-based framework and building mathematical models from a scientific epistemology. Only the former is treated carefully in most psychology graduate training. The pedagogical implications of this imbalance and the revised pedagogy required to account for the modeling revolution are described. To conclude, I discuss how attention to modeling implies shifting statistical practice in certain progressive ways. The epistemological basis of statistics has moved away from being a set of procedures, applied mechanistically, and moved toward building and evaluating statistical and scientific models. Copyrigiht 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Epistemological Predictors of "Self Efficacy on Learning Biology" and "Test Anxiety Related to Evaluation of Learning on Biology" for Pre-Service Elementary Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koksal, Mustafa Serdar

2011-01-01

The degree to which pre-service teachers learn biology is related to both motivational factors of self-regulation and factors regarding epistemological beliefs. At the same time, self-regulation and epistemological beliefs are also associated with one another. Based on this relationship, the purpose of this study was to investigate the…

An Epistemological Approach to Modeling: Cases Studies and Implications for Science Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sensevy, Gerard; Tiberghien, Andree; Santini, Jerome; Laube, Sylvain; Griggs, Peter

2008-01-01

Models and modeling are a major issue in science studies and in science education. In addressing such an issue, we first propose an epistemological discussion based on the works of Cartwright (1983, 1999), Fleck (1935/1979), and Hacking (1983). This leads us to emphasize the transitions between the abstract and the concrete in the modeling…

[Benchmarks for interdisciplinary health and social sciences research: contributions of a research seminar].

PubMed

Kivits, Joëlle; Fournier, Cécile; Mino, Jean-Christophe; Frattini, Marie-Odile; Winance, Myriam; Lefève, Céline; Robelet, Magali

2013-01-01

This article proposes a reflection on an interdisciplinary seminar, initiated by philosophy and sociology researchers and public health professionals. The objective of this seminar was to explore the mechanisms involved in setting up and conducting interdisciplinary research, by investigating the practical modalities of articulating health and human and social sciences research in order to more clearly understand the conditions, tensions and contributions of collaborative research. These questions were discussed on the basis of detailed analysis of four recent or current research projects. Case studies identified four typical epistemological or methodological issues faced by researchers in the fields of health and human and social sciences: institutional conditions and their effects on research; deconstruction of the object; the researcher's commitment in his/her field; the articulation of research methods. Three prerequisites for interdisciplinary research in social and human sciences and in health were identified: mutual questioning of research positions and fields of study; awareness of the tensions related to institutional positions and disciplinary affiliation; joint elaboration and exchanges between various types of knowledge to ensure an interdisciplinary approach throughout all of the research process.

An Instrument Development Study for Determining Prospective Science Teachers' Science-Specific Epistemological Beliefs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koksal, Mustafa Serdar; Ertekin, Pelin

2016-01-01

The study is focusing on development of an instrument to determine science-specific epistemological beliefs of prospective science teachers. The study involved 364 (male = 82, female = 282) prospective science teachers enrolled in a science teacher education program. The confirmatory factor analysis, reliability analysis and correlation analysis…

Verification of Causal Influences of Reasoning Skills and Epistemology on Physics Conceptual Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ding, Lin

2014-01-01

This study seeks to test the causal influences of reasoning skills and epistemologies on student conceptual learning in physics. A causal model, integrating multiple variables that were investigated separately in the prior literature, is proposed and tested through path analysis. These variables include student preinstructional reasoning skills…

Between Cyberplace and Cyberspace: the researcher's role in virtual setting research.

PubMed

Galimberti, Carlo; Brivio, Eleonora; Cantamesse, Matteo

2011-01-01

Disciplines such as Internet Research, the Psychology of Cyberspace and the Social Psychology of Cyberplaces call for an epistemological reflection not merely on the universe of objects they deal with, but also, and perhaps especially, on the research settings used to investigate them. With this work, we intend to make a contribution to the debate on three issues: psychosocial interpretation of the new environments, the "mediated" nature of the researcher-setting-study object relationship, and cyberplaces as settings for mediated interaction research.

Evaluation of a Design Principle for Fostering Students' Epistemological Views on Models and Modelling Using Authentic Practices as Contexts for Learning in Chemistry Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Prins, Gjalt T.; Bulte, Astrid M. W.; Pilot, Albert

2011-01-01

Science education should foster students' epistemological view on models and modelling consistent with formal epistemology in science and technology practices. This paper reports the application of a curriculum unit in the classroom using an authentic chemical practice, "Modelling drinking water treatment", as the context for learning.…

The epistemology of Deep Brain Stimulation and neuronal pathophysiology

PubMed Central

Montgomery, Erwin B.

2012-01-01

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a remarkable therapy succeeding where all manner of pharmacological manipulations and brain transplants fail. The success of DBS has resurrected the relevance of electrophysiology and dynamics on the order of milliseconds. Despite the remarkable effects of DBS, its mechanisms of action are largely unknown. There has been an expanding catalogue of various neuronal and neural responses to DBS or DBS-like stimulation but no clear conceptual encompassing explanatory scheme has emerged despite the technological prowess and intellectual sophistication of the scientists involved. Something is amiss. If the scientific observations are sound, then why has there not been more progress? The alternative is that it may be the hypotheses that frame the questions are at fault as well as the methods of inference (logic) used to validate the hypotheses. An analysis of the past and current notions of the DBS mechanisms of action is the subject in order to identify the presuppositions (premises) and logical fallacies that may be at fault. The hope is that these problems will be avoided in the future so the DBS can realize its full potential quickly. In this regard, the discussion of the methods of inference and presuppositions that underlie many current notions is no different then a critique of experimental methods common in scientific discussions and consequently, examinations of the epistemology and logic are appropriate. This analysis is in keeping with the growing appreciation among scientists and philosophers of science, the scientific observations (data) to not “speak for themselves” nor is the scientific method self-evidently true and that consideration of the underlying inferential methods is necessary. PMID:23024631

Towards an epistemological basis for andragogy in midwifery education.

PubMed

Ho, E

1991-04-01

In designing the curriculum for pre and post registration midwifery courses, the author has utilised an andragogical model. This term refers to the art and science of teaching adults (Knowles 1978). The ideas that Knowles (1978) put forward about andragogy while not new, have been implemented in adult education and are certainly relevant to the modern practice of midwifery education. The aim of this paper is to examine the two extreme philosophical views about the nature of man and to provide an epistemological basis for andragogy in midwifery education.

Fostering Creativity in the Classroom: Effects of Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs, Motivation, and Goal Orientation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hong, Eunsook; Hartzell, Stephanie A.; Greene, Mary T.

2009-01-01

The relationships of teachers' epistemological beliefs, motivation, and goal orientation to their instructional practices that foster student creativity were examined. Teachers' perceived instructional practices that facilitate the development of multiple perspectives in problem solving, transfer, task commitment, creative skill use, and…

In Excess of Epistemology: Siegel, Taylor, Heidegger and the Conditions of Thought

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Emma

2015-01-01

Harvey Siegel's epistemologically-informed conception of critical thinking is one of the most influential accounts of critical thinking around today. In this article, I seek to open up an account of critical thinking that goes beyond the one defended by Siegel. I do this by re-reading an opposing view, which Siegel himself rejects as leaving…

The Convergence of Relational and Interpersonal Knowing in Young Adult's Epistemological Development.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baxter Magolda, Marcia B.

The roles of impersonal (or abstract) and relational (or connected) modes of knowing in the experiences of young adults were studied, and the ways the two converge are described in this report of the post-college phase of a 7-year longitudinal study of the epistemological development of college students, i.e., their assumptions about the limits,…

Neopositivism and the DSM psychiatric classification. An epistemological history. Part 1: Theoretical comparison.

PubMed

Aragona, Massimiliano

2013-06-01

Recent research suggests that the DSM psychiatric classification is in a paradigmatic crisis and that the DSM-5 will be unable to overcome it. One possible reason is that the DSM is based on a neopositivist epistemology which is inadequate for the present-day needs of psychopathology. However, in which sense is the DSM a neopositivist system? This paper will explore the theoretical similarities between the DSM structure and the neopositivist basic assumptions. It is shown that the DSM has the following neopositivist features: (a) a sharp distinction between scientific and non-scientific diagnoses; (b) the exclusion of the latter as nonsensical; (c) the faith on the existence of a purely observable basis (the description of reliable symptoms); (d) the introduction of the operative diagnostic criteria as rules of correspondence linking the observational level to the diagnostic concept.

The Epistemological Conditions of Moral Education: The Notions of Rationality and Objectivity Revisited

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holma, Katariina

2011-01-01

The crucial epistemological question for formulating the principles that underlie moral education concerns the status of rationality and objectivity in ethics and education. In this essay Katariina Holma argues that the intertwined understanding of the concepts of education, ethics, rationality, and objectivity is built into our language and our…

A Pilot Study of the Epistemological Beliefs of Students in Industrial-Technical Fields

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zinn, Bernd

2012-01-01

An investigation of the epistemological beliefs of apprentices in the commercial engineering sector is of interest for vocational training, both from the point of view of optimising vocational didactic processes as well as in terms of communicating suitable knowledge based beliefs about principles and performance in the commercial engineering…

Deconstructing Pre-Service Teachers' Field Experience Narratives: The Role of Epistemological Beliefs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bays, Rebecca B.; Ashong, Carol; Ward, Teresa E.; Commander, Nannette E.

2014-01-01

Teacher development programs incorporate field experiences for pre-service teachers (PTs) to gain first hand teaching experiences. The purpose of this study is to examine PTs' perceptions of field experiences, and more specifically, to investigate whether these perceptions relate to PTs epistemological beliefs. A sample of 115 undergraduate…

The Relationship between Personal Epistemology and Self-Regulation among Turkish Elementary School Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alpaslan, Muhammet Mustafa

2017-01-01

The purpose of the study was to determine the level of the relationship among Turkish elementary school students' personal epistemologies, motivation, learning strategies, and achievements in science. A total of 322 fifth-grade students participated in the study. Results from the structural equation modeling showed that students' personal…

Addressing Research Design Problem in Mixed Methods Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alavi, Hamed; Hąbek, Patrycja

2016-03-01

Alongside other disciplines in social sciences, management researchers use mixed methods research more and more in conduct of their scientific investigations. Mixed methods approach can also be used in the field of production engineering. In comparison with traditional quantitative and qualitative research methods, reasons behind increasing popularity of mixed research method in management science can be traced in different factors. First of all, any particular discipline in management can be theoretically related to it. Second is that concurrent approach of mixed research method to inductive and deductive research logic provides researchers with opportunity to generate theory and test hypothesis in one study simultaneously. In addition, it provides a better justification for chosen method of investigation and higher validity for obtained answers to research questions. Despite increasing popularity of mixed research methods among management scholars, there is still need for a comprehensive approach to research design typology and process in mixed research method from the perspective of management science. The authors in this paper try to explain fundamental principles of mixed research method, its typology and different steps in its design process.

The uncertain foundation of neo-Darwinism: metaphysical and epistemological pluralism in the evolutionary synthesis.

PubMed

Delisle, Richard G

2009-06-01

The Evolutionary Synthesis is often seen as a unification process in evolutionary biology, one which provided this research area with a solid common theoretical foundation. As such, neo-Darwinism is believed to constitute from this time onward a single, coherent, and unified movement offering research guidelines for investigations. While this may be true if evolutionary biology is solely understood as centred around evolutionary mechanisms, an entirely different picture emerges once other aspects of the founding neo-Darwinists' views are taken into consideration, aspects potentially relevant to the elaboration of an evolutionary worldview: the tree of life, the ontological distinctions of the main cosmic entities (inert matter, biological organisms, mind), the inherent properties of self-organizing matter, evolutionary ethics, and so on. Profound tensions and inconsistencies are immediately revealed in the neo-Darwinian movement once this broader perspective is adopted. This pluralism is such that it is possible to identify at least three distinct and quasi-incommensurable epistemological/metaphysical frameworks as providing a proper foundation for neo-Darwinism. The analysis of the views of Theodosius Dobzhansky, Bernhard Rensch, and Ernst Mayr will illustrate this untenable pluralism, one which requires us to conceive of the neo-Darwinian research agenda as being conducted in more than one research programme or research tradition at the same time.

Reporting Qualitative Research: Standards, Challenges, and Implications for Health Design.

PubMed

Peditto, Kathryn

2018-04-01

This Methods column describes the existing reporting standards for qualitative research, their application to health design research, and the challenges to implementation. Intended for both researchers and practitioners, this article provides multiple perspectives on both reporting and evaluating high-quality qualitative research. Two popular reporting standards exist for reporting qualitative research-the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) and the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR). Though compiled using similar procedures, they differ in their criteria and the methods to which they apply. Creating and applying reporting criteria is inherently difficult due to the undefined and fluctuating nature of qualitative research when compared to quantitative studies. Qualitative research is expansive and occasionally controversial, spanning many different methods of inquiry and epistemological approaches. A "one-size-fits-all" standard for reporting qualitative research can be restrictive, but COREQ and SRQR both serve as valuable tools for developing responsible qualitative research proposals, effectively communicating research decisions, and evaluating submissions. Ultimately, tailoring a set of standards specific to health design research and its frequently used methods would ensure quality research and aid reviewers in their evaluations.

Neopositivism and the DSM psychiatric classification. An epistemological history. Part 2: Historical pathways, epistemological developments and present-day needs.

PubMed

Aragona, Massimiliano

2013-12-01

Little is known about the concrete historical sources for the use of neopositivist operational criteria by the DSM-III. This paper suggests that distinct sources operated implicitly. The current usefulness of the operational approach is questioned. It is shown that: (a) in epistemology, neopositivism has been replaced by more adequate accounts; (b) psychologists rejected operational definitions because these were unable to define the majority of mental phenomena; (c) mental symptoms cannot be directly described as such, because they already make part of the psychiatric diagnosis to which they belong. In conclusion, diagnosing is based on the hermeneutical co-construction of mental symptoms. The failure of the neopositivist programme suggests that it is time to reconcile scientific formalization and semiotic activity.

Statistical and Epistemological Issues in the Evaluation of Treatment Efficacy of Pharmaceutical, Psychological, and Combination Treatments for Women's Sexual Desire Difficulties.

PubMed

Chivers, Meredith L; Basson, Rosemary; Brotto, Lori A; Graham, Cynthia A; Stephenson, Kyle R

2017-04-03

We were grateful to receive responses from Leonore Tiefer, Anita Clayton and Robert Pyke, and Richard Balon and Robert Segraves, to our commentary (Brotto et al., 2016 ) on Pyke and Clayton ( 2015 ). These commentaries raise a number of substantive statistical and epistemological issues relating to the evaluation of treatment efficacy in pharmaceutical, psychological, and combination treatments for sexual desire difficulties and caution researchers to remain mindful of sources of bias as we do the science. In what follows, we discuss each of these issues in turn in hopes of encouraging our field to adopt the highest possible standards when carrying out and interpreting treatment outcome research.

Perceived Problem Solving Skills: As a Predictor of Prospective Teachers' Scientific Epistemological Beliefs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Temel, Senar

2016-01-01

This study aims to determine the level of perceived problem solving skills of prospective teachers and the relations between these skills and their scientific epistemological beliefs. The study was conducted in the fall semester of 2015-2016 academic year. Prospective teachers were applied Problem Solving Inventory which was developed by Heppner…

No Longer Conveyor but Creator: Developing an Epistemology of the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Trombley, Laura E. Skandera; Flanagan, William G.

2001-01-01

Discusses the impact of the World Wide Web in terms of epistemology. Topics include technological innovations, including new dimensions of virtuality; the accessibility of information; tracking Web use via cookies; how the Web transforms the process of learning and knowing; linking information sources; and the Web as an information delivery…

Epistemological Understanding in Different Judgment Domains: Relationships with Gender, Grade Level, and Curriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mason, Lucia; Boldrin, Angela; Zurlo, Giovanna

2006-01-01

This article reports a theoretically based study on the model of development of epistemological understanding proposed by Kuhn (2000) [Kuhn, D. (2000). Theory of mind, metacognition, and reasoning: A life-span perspective. In P. Mitchell & K. J. Riggs (Eds.), "Children's reasoning and the mind" (pp. 301-326). Hove, UK: Psychology…

Effectiveness of Case-Based Learning Instruction on Epistemological Beliefs and Attitudes toward Chemistry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cam, Aylin; Geban, Omer

2011-01-01

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of case-based learning instruction over traditionally designed chemistry instruction on eleventh grade students' epistemological beliefs and their attitudes toward chemistry as a school subject. The subjects of this study consisted of 63 eleventh grade students from two intact classes…

[The constructivist epistemological belief about scientific knowledge varies according to the year of training in medical students but not in students of other health careers].

PubMed

Lazcano, Ximena; Villalón, Francisco; Vera, Soledad; Conget, Paulette

2017-09-01

To optimize the teaching-learning process it is fundamental to know the representations that students have regarding knowledge. Epistemological beliefs are implicit theories that guide the practical actions of people. To characterize and compare epistemological beliefs regarding the nature and acquisition of scientific knowledge of health career students. Between 2012 and 2013, 726 students coursing first, third or fifth year from six health careers answered a validated questionnaire that includes closed and open questions aimed to characterize their epistemological beliefs about scientific knowledge. Irrespective of the career, when students had to select predefined answers, most of them appeared as constructivists (61%). On the other hand, when they had to argue, the majority seemed objectivist (47%). First-year medical students have the highest frequency of constructivist epistemological beliefs (56%). Paradoxically, the lowest percentage is found (34%) in the fifth year. The students of the health careers, in particular those of Medicine, recognize that knowledge is not acquired immediately (83%) and that its distribution is shared (92%). Discordance between selections and arguments suggests that epistemological sophistication is achieved declaratively but not practically. The lower proportion of students who presented constructivist beliefs in the fifth year compared to first year of Medicine could be associated with the pedagogical approaches used in the different cycles of the career.

Methodology Is Content: Indigenous Approaches to Research and Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin, Brian

2017-01-01

There has been extensive work in the space of Indigenous epistemological approaches to research. Because Australian Indigenous peoples have been researched significantly, there are guidelines around the ethical and cultural conduct of this type of research. Via investigating the Academy's approach to research in general, we can illuminate the vast…

Are Replication Studies Possible in Qualitative Second/Foreign Language Classroom Research? A Call for Comparative Re-Production Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Markee, Numa

2017-01-01

A widely accepted orthodoxy is that it is impossible to do replication studies within qualitative research paradigms. Ontologically and epistemologically speaking, such a view is largely correct. However, in this paper, I propose that what I call comparative re-production research--that is, the empirical study of qualitative phenomena that occur…