Epistemic Cognitive Beliefs and Academic Help Seeking

Abstract

This study aims to identify the levels of Epistemic Cognitive Beliefs (ECB) and the behaviour of Academic Help Seeking (AHS) among secondary school students in Jordan and detect the ability of ECB to predict AHS behaviour. It also aims to identify differences in the levels of ECB due to the variables of gender, academic branch and the interaction between gender and academic branch. The sample of the study consisted of 330 students who were in their second year of secondary school. To achieve the aims of the study, the ECB scale (Wang et al., 2013) and the AHS scale (White, 2011) were used. The results indicated that the levels of both ECB and AHS were high among secondary school students in Jordan. There were statistically significant differences in the levels of ECB due to the gender of the students, which favoured males, and due to academic branch, which favoured the sciences. Finally, there were no statistically significant differences in the levels of ECB due to the interaction between gender and academic branch. Furthermore, ECB contributed to the explanation of 34.9% of the AHS behaviour.