Beliefs about knowledge and revision of knowledge: on the importance of epistemic beliefs for intentional conceptual change in elementary and middle school students

Abstract

In their seminal and well-known article, Pintrich et al . (1993; Pintrich, 1999) suggested the need to go beyond “cold” conceptual change and to consider the affective, motivational, and situational factors that may affect knowledge revision. Among the motivational factors, Pintrich and colleagues included epistemic beliefs, together with other, more typical motivational constructs, such as mastery goals, interest, importance, utility value, self-efficacy, and control beliefs. In describing his vision of conceptual change through five propositions, Pintrich (1999, p. 37) stated in the second that the “Adoption of more ‘constructivist’ epistemological beliefs should facilitate conceptual change.” Pintrich asserted, in particular, that belief in knowledge as complex and continuously evolving acts as a resource in the process of knowledge revision. In contrast, belief in knowledge as simple and certain places constraints on the potential for conceptual change as students tend to foreclose their thinking and do not consider alternative views. Since the mid 1990s research on the relationship between epistemic beliefs and conceptual change has begun to empirically support Pintrich's proposition, although most (if not almost all) studies have been carried out with college or high school students (e.g., Mason and Boscolo, 2004; Sinatra et al ., 2003; Qian and Alverman, 1995, 2000; Stathopoulou and Vosniadou, 2007b; Windschitl and Andre, 1998). In this chapter the relationship between epistemic beliefs and intentional change of knowledge is focused on elementary and middle school students. Addressing learners in grades one to eight appears to be relevant for two main reasons.