A comparative study of students' epistemological beliefs about biology, chemistry and physics

النوع : Mémoire

The purpose of this research was to compare students' epistemological beliefs about biology, chemistry and physics. The study also examined the role of gender and field of study in moderating students' domain-specific epistemologies, if any. Literature on personal epistemology has shown that students' epistemologies can influence their comprehension and their achievement (e.g. Schommer, 1990). Consequently, characterizing these epistemologies can provide science educators with the background knowledge that is necessary to help students develop more sophisticated views and improved conceptual understanding. Epistemological beliefs were specifically found to be domain-specific (Buehl, Alexander & Murphy, 2002; Hofer, 2000) hence responsive to the context and discipline (Hofer, 2001). Evidence for domain-specificity stems from comparing students' epistemological beliefs on disciplines that can be clearly distinguished as hard-soft, pure-applied (Biglan, 1973a). However, no study examined students' epistemological beliefs about three commonly taught science disciplines in schools that can be more difficult to distinguish namely biology, chemistry and physics. Being specifically sensitive to the context and discipline, Hofer's (2001) framework was adopted in the present study to compare sophomore university science students' epistemological beliefs about these three disciplines. Thirty-two students filled out a questionnaire adopted from Hofer (2001), out of this sample, twenty students were selected for a semi-structured interview. For each discipline, students' epistemological beliefs were reported and analyzed on each of the four epistemological dimensions advocated by Hofer (2000): certainty/simplicity of knowledge, source of knowledge, justification of knowledge and attainability of truth. Results revealed that students exhibit domain-specific beliefs to a varying degree for each epistemological dimension.