Situating epistemological development

Abstract

Personal epistemology as a field has been around for forty years and generated a wide assortment of models to explain epistemological development Dominant frameworks are inspired either by Piagetian or information processing perspectives on cognition, and all have failed to explain a range of empirical results that question the stability and coherence predicted by these frameworks. Recent models from a more situated perspective seem much more capable of explaining the variability seen empirically. This paper adds to this situated perspective by outlining a research approach for locating epistemic beliefs within analyses that triangulate between people's participation in knowledge construction and evaluation, the artifacts such participation may produce, and individual's reflection upon both participation and artifacts. Examples of such work are used to demonstrate the fruitfulness of this approach. Epistemlc cognition and epistemlc belief What do people think knowledge is, or how we get it, or why we believe it, or what it means to know something? How do such ideas develop throughout people's Jives? How is that development shaped by the experiences people have, in schoo~ on the playground, in their homes, at their jobs, or anywhere else? How do these ideas influence how people think about their world, make judgments, solve problems, or Jearn new things? These questions are at the heart of the study of personal epistemology, people's beliefs about knowledge and knowing. The field of personal epistemology has been going strong for forty years now, generating a variety of models to account for the development of epistemological beliefs. This growth has occurred alongside, and perhaps even prompted, a concurrent growth in the educational concern that learning in the disciplines should include understanding of disciplinary epistemologies. Yet, none of the theoretical models put forth in the last forty years adequately explains the array of empirical findings within personal epistemology or related studies of epistemic cognition. Also over the last forty years, there has been a cultural tum in psychology, inspired by the theories developed by Vygotsky (1978) and his contemporaries, and further developed by many others (Cole, 1996; Engestr6rn, 1987; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1990; Wenger, 1998; Wertsch, 1985). This cultural tum is largely absent in personal epistemology research. Indeed, it can be hard to discern in cognitive developmental research generally. Two features of sociocultural perspectives have particular importance to studies of epistemic cognition. One is the conceptualization of cognition as situated within activity, and the second is that all such activity is inherently cultural (and historical). The ways in which epistemic cognition may be situated has only recently begun to be theorized (Chinn, Buckland, & Samarapungavan, 2011; Hammer & Elby, 2002). My aim here is to build on these recent efforts in two ways. The first is to emphasize the ways in which epistemic cognition is culturally situated. That is, in order to properly understand the epistemic beliefs that individuals may develop it is necessary to understand how such beliefs derive from cultural activity, both everyday activity and activity situated within disciplinary cultures (e.g., of science). A second aim is to propose a particular approach to conducting situated research on epistemic cognition that can productively coordinate the range of research methods required to understand the complex terrain that is epistemic cognition. The argument proceeds in two parts. First, the major theoretical perspectives that have been proposed within the field of personal epistemology since Perry's (1970) seminal work are summarized. One might think such a summary hardly necessary given the quantity of recent reviews of personal epistemology research (Hofer & Bendixen, in press; Hofer & Pintrich, 2002; Khine, 2008; Muis, Bendixen, & Haerle, 2006). Such reviews are typically neutral in their evaluations of competing theories, however, whereas a critical examination emphasizes how existing models fail to explain available data. The second part of the argument then describes a situative perspective on epistemic cognition, what it looks like, what it can explain, and how it can be developed. Before getting into the main line of argument, it may be useful to clarity some terminology. The study of people's ideas about knowledge and knowing, and how these develop, has occurred primarily in two distinct strands of research. One of these is developmental research on the young child's theory of mind and the