This study investigates whether university students’ epistemic beliefs and prior knowledge about controversial socioscientific issues (SSIs) can predict the different types of arguments that students construct. Two hundred forty‐three university students were asked to construct different types of supportive arguments—social, ethical, economic, scientific, ecological—as well as counterarguments and rebuttals after they had read a scenario on a SSI. Participants’ epistemic beliefs and prior knowledge were assessed separately. Results showed that students’ epistemic beliefs and prior knowledge predicted the quantity, quality, and diversity of the different types of arguments the students constructed. In particular, students who held sophisticated epistemic beliefs about the structure of knowledge and exhibited relatively more robust prior knowledge scores, produced arguments of greater quantity, better quality, and higher diversity than students with less sophisticated epistemic beliefs and low prior knowledge scores. Educational implications are discussed.

Contributions from Biology Education Research (CBER) is the international book series of the European Researchers in Didactics of Biology (ERIDOB). The series includes edited collections of state-of-the-art papers presented at the ERIDOB international conferences, and monographs or edited collections of chapters by leading international scholars of the domain. The aim of the series is to shed light on global issues and trends in the teaching and learning of biology by gathering cutting edge research findings, theoretical views, and implications or concrete suggestions for everyday school practice regarding biology. The books may serve as resources for (a) getting informed about the most recent findings of biology education research to possibly integrate them in new personal research, and (b) studying about the teaching and learning of biology as a pre-service or in-service biology teacher. So, the main audiences for the series range from senior to early career biology education researchers and pre-or in-service biology teachers working at all educational levels. Book proposals for this series may be submitted to the Publishing Editor:

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This study researches relationships between 12th-grade students’ epistemological beliefs towards science and their conceptual understanding of evolution by natural selection. Forty-two 12th-grade students in a suburban high school in Cyprus, who participated in a biology course, completed measures of their: (a) epistemological beliefs towards science before the intervention of being taught evolution n (b) conceptual understanding of evolution by natural selection after evolution intervention, (c) epistemological beliefs towards science after evolution intervention. Based on previous research, we hypothesised there would be a significant relationship between students’ epistemological beliefs and their conceptual understanding of evolution by natural selection after the evolution intervention. We also hypothesised that inquiry-based intervention on evolution by natural selection would foster students’ epistemological beliefs. Our results indicate that participants’ initial epistemological beliefs predict very modestly and statistically non-significant learning achievements on conceptual understanding of evolution by natural selection. However, our results show a significant improvement in participants’ epistemological beliefs after engagement in an inquiry-based intervention on evolution by natural selection. The educational significance of this and its implications are discussed.