Background: Further developing students' thinking about knowledge and knowing in science (epistemic beliefs) is considered a normative goal of science education in many countries around the world, even for elementary-school-aged children.
Aims: The goal of the present study was to introduce and evaluate a new intervention in science education aimed at developing children's epistemic beliefs, epistemic curiosity, and investigative interests. The intervention included an inquiry-based learning approach as well as reflections on epistemic issues because these methods are currently seen as most promising for fostering students' epistemic beliefs.
Sample: Data were collected from 65 elementary school children in Grades 3 and 4 (58.46% boys, age: M = 8.73, SD = 0.60) who participated in a voluntary extracurricular STEM enrichment programme in south-west Germany.
Methods: We investigated the effectiveness of the intervention by applying a randomized block design with a treated control group and repeated measures. The effectiveness of the intervention was analysed via multiple linear regression analyses.
Results: The results indicated that the children assigned to the intervention developed more sophisticated epistemic beliefs and a higher level of epistemic curiosity than the children assigned to the control condition. No intervention effects were found on investigative interests.
Conclusions: The results provide initial evidence for the effectiveness of the intervention and demonstrate that it is possible to improve epistemic beliefs among elementary school children in Grades 3 and 4. The study provides a starting point for understanding how young children develop epistemic beliefs.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7317376 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12301 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Pandemic or "Plandemic"?: The Mediating Role of Epistemic Justification Strategies in the Relationship Between COVID-19 Conspiracy Beliefs and COVID-19 Vaccine Conspiracy Beliefs.
Brain Behav
January 2025
Institute of Allied Health Sciences, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.
Background: In today's post-truth times, where personal feelings and beliefs have become increasingly important, determining what is accurate knowledge has become an important skill. This is especially important during uncertainty crises (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF(Epistemic) Injustice and Resistance in Canadian Research Ethics Governance.
Ethics Hum Res
January 2025
Assistant professor in the Department of Equity, Ethics, and Policy, and in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine, at McGill University.
This article brings a philosophical perspective to bear on issues of research ethics governance as it is practiced and organized in Canada. Insofar as the processes and procedures that constitute research oversight are meant to ensure the ethical conduct of research, they are based on ideas or beliefs about what ethical research entails and about which processes will ensure the ethical conduct of research. These ideas and beliefs make up an epistemic infrastructure underlying Canada's system of research ethics governance, but, we argue, extensive efforts by community members to fill gaps in that system suggest that these ideas may be deficient.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDifferences in epistemic justification profiles during conflicting socio-scientific information processing: A study of visual and memory-based behavior via eye-tracking.
Acta Psychol (Amst)
February 2025
University of Oslo, Norway. Electronic address:
How individuals process and understand controversial scientific issues with social implications has been linked to their beliefs about epistemic justification, which concern how knowledge claims can be justified. In this study, we used cluster analysis to classify undergraduate and graduate students (n = 46) based on their beliefs about epistemic justification and eye tracking to investigate how profiles of epistemic justification differed when processing and representing information about a particular socio-scientific issue. It was found that one cluster predominantly relied on justification by multiple sources, whereas two other clusters combined reliance on justification by multiple sources with either reliance on personal justification or justification by authority.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe role of epistemic trust and epistemic disruption in vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy thinking and the capacity to identify fake news.
PLOS Glob Public Health
December 2024
Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Epistemic trust - defined as readiness to regard knowledge, communicated by another agent, as significant, relevant to the self, and generalizable to other contexts-has recently been applied to the field of developmental psychopathology as a potential risk factor for psychopathology. The work described here sought to investigate how the vulnerability engendered by disruptions in epistemic trust may not only impact psychological resilience and interpersonal processes but also aspects of more general social functioning. We undertook two studies to examine the role of epistemic trust in determining capacity to recognise fake/real news, and susceptibility to conspiracy thinking-both in general and in relation to COVID-19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLimited diffusion of scientific knowledge forecasts collapse.
Nat Hum Behav
December 2024
Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Market bubbles emerge when asset prices are driven unsustainably higher than asset values, and shifts in belief burst them. We demonstrate an analogous phenomenon in the case of biomedical knowledge, when promising research receives inflated attention. We introduce a diffusion index that quantifies whether research areas have been amplified within social and scientific bubbles, or have diffused and become evaluated more broadly.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!