The generative nature of epistemological judgments

Elmar Stahl, University of Education, Freiburg, Germany

In the early stages of research on epistemological beliefs, most researchers have conceived this construct as a general and rather stable way of thinking about knowing and knowledge, developing from so called 'naive' towards 'sophisticated' epistemologies. Nowadays we have growing empirical evidence that epistemological beliefs may be less coherent, more discipline-related and especially more context-dependent than it was assumed at the beginning of research. This view is in line with several approaches in cognitive psychology that were introduced to take into account the high flexibility and context-dependency of our cognitive system, like the MOP (e.g. Schank, 1982), the CI – model (e.g. Kintsch, 1998), the view of concepts (e.g. Barsalou, 1987), the COPES-model (Winne & Hadwin, 1998). Epistemological beliefs – as part of the cognitive system – might therefore be influenced by comparable processes of context-dependent activation.
From this view ‘sophisticated epistemological beliefs’ can be defined as beliefs which allow for context-sensitive judgments about knowledge claims (see Bromme, Kienhues & Stahl, 2008). Thus sophisticated beliefs enable flexibility with regard to a specific discipline and a specific context.
If this might be true, then context-sensitive epistemological judgments about knowledge claims can not be done by “just” activating some general epistemological beliefs. Instead epistemological judgments might be generated from a learner within a context by using combinations of different kinds of sources like topic-related knowledge, (discipline-specific) epistemological beliefs, ontological knowledge, and information about the context. These sources can (or cannot) be activated within different contexts and can complement or compensate each other to attain an epistemological judgment.
In my talk I am going to give some (indirect) empirical evidence for this idea, presenting data from our own research on the effects of epistemological beliefs in learning scenarios with hypermedia, interactive learning environments and films. 
Then I am going to present possible (re-)interpretations of some problems that we face in research on epistemological beliefs, e.g. problems with unstable instruments, problems to replicate findings, or the critic of Chandler, Hallett & Sokol (2002) that all assumed stages of developmental models with a linear step-by-step development of epistemological beliefs can be found in all age levels.
In the last part I am going to present a different idea on research on epistemological beliefs derived from research on the visual system (Grossberg, 1987a,b), that might help to give new insights into the context-dependency and the (claimed) generative nature of epistemological judgments.

 

References
Barsalou, L. W. (1987). The instability of graded structure: Implications for the nature of concepts. In U. Neisser (Ed.), Concepts and conceptual development: Ecological and intellectual factors in categorization (pp. 101-140). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bromme, R., Kienhues, D. & Stahl, E. (2008). Knowledge and epistemological beliefs: An intimate but complicate relationship. In M. S. Khine (Ed.), Knowing, knowledge and beliefs. Epistemological studies across diverse cultures (pp. 423-441). New York: Springer.
Chandler, M. J., Hallett, D., & Sokol, B. W. (2002). Competing claims about competing knowledge claims. In B. K. Hofer & P. R. Pintrich (Eds.), Personal epistemology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing (pp. 145-168). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Grossberg, S. (1987). Cortical dynamics of three-dimensional form, color, and brightness perception: I. Monocular theory. Perception & Psychophysics, 41, 87-116.
Grossberg, S. (1987). Cortical dynamics of three-dimensional form, color, and brightness perception: II. Binocular theory. Perception & Psychophysics, 41, 117-158.
Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigma for cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schank, R. C. (1982). Dynamic Memory: A theory of reminding and learning in computers and people. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Winne, P. H., & Hadwin, A. F. (1998). Studying as self-regulated learning. In D. J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), Metacognition in educational theory and practice (pp. 277-304). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.