Review by: Hasanbegovic, Jasmina (2004-08-30)

Barbara K. Hofer is currently assistant professor of psychology at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. As an expert in epistemological development research, she is a regular presenter of papers on this topic at AERA, at the American Psychological Association meetings, and at the Society for Research on Adolescence, as well as publishing related articles and book chapters. She presented at the symposium on “The Epistemological Beliefs of Students and Teachers: Current Themes and Future Directions” at the AERA annual meeting in 2001 a paper on the relevance of epistemological awareness for online learning.

She introduces the paper with current themes of interest in the field of personal epistemology by describing the nature of the construct, the dimensionality, and methodological approaches. Researchers in this field are concerned with the beliefs individuals hold about knowledge and knowing, and the very nature of how they come to know the world. In her opinion, this construct can be represented as a form of metaknowing and as a set of beliefs, organized into theories, which operate at the metacognitive level (or beyond) and which are active in context. She identifies the dimensions that encompass the construct as the nature of knowledge (what one beliefs knowledge is) and the nature or process of knowing (how one comes to know). She also presents current methodological approaches in this field like interviews, checklists of educational values and questionnaires and highlights the relevance of epistemological beliefs according to technological changes. As the way in which students access information has changed, the awareness of how individuals evaluate sources of information, coordinate theory and evidence, and justify their knowledge assumptions needs to be analysed.

She presents a current study of how students evaluate the source of information when conducting an online search for a class assignment in science. Of main interest was the suitability of think-aloud protocols as an instrument to gain access to epistemological thinking and the way students evaluate the source of information when asked to do an online search. Further, search and selection criteria and search strategies were analysed to track the development of expertise in epistemological awareness. 22 students participated and searched for information for a imaginary project on the study of bees and their communication behaviour and thought aloud while doing so. Although only an initial method of analysis was undertaken and the analyses have not been completed, some tentative findings are summarised. Think aloud protocols not only offer useful access to student thinking in the scope of online learning, but also seem to activate epistemological thinking. Students developed highly idiosyncratic heuristics for searching and thought about their way of how to search and why to follow the strategies they did. The initial step of choosing a source of knowledge began mostly with the selection of typical search engine favourites and not with the college’s library site being the hompepage. The selection of categories of information happened by the level of expertise. High school students were more likely to draw on resources such as online encyclopaedias or general reference materials than college students. The evaluation of information included not only a review of the credibility and validity of the source, but also the length, specificity, accessibility of the source and superficial judgements like the origin of the source like being an university site. In conclusion, further steps are suggested to define a working taxonomy of criteria by which students evaluate sources.

Concerning future directions for research, Hofer calls for continuing to work on the clarity of the construct, understanding of its dimensionality and methods for investigation. She emphasizes the investigation of relations with other variables like how individuals choose and evaluate information, the transfer from one domain into another, and the consideration of an adult non-student population.

This paper presents a very important construct concerning technology enhanced teaching and learning. It introduces the main issues of the research field of epistemological beliefs and correlates these with the domain of online learning. Further research has to emphasize explicitly epistemic beliefs of students and teachers as a precondition for eLearning readiness.