The authors build on literature related to the development of epistemic cognition, research on historical thinking, and studies of individuals' epistemic beliefs. They designed this study to explore, develop, and test a measure of epistemic cognition in history. They administered the Beliefs about Learning and Teaching History Questionnaire to elementary teachers and college history professors, which represents an effort to construct a reliable and valid measure that could effectively monitor changes in epistemic cognition across large samples. Results from a confirmatory factor analysis suggested a good fit of a 2-factor model underlying the questionnaire. Responses from experts in the domain of history served as an initial attempt to validate the instrument.

This review examines the literature on teacher epistemic cognition, epistemic beliefs, and calibration to consider the relation between these constructs and instruction that emerged from empirical studies. In considering how this body of literature can enhance understanding of how students become masters of their learning processes, we will briefly review how different theoretical frameworks have conceptualized the relation between epistemic cognition, epistemic beliefs, calibration and metacognition, self-regulation, and self-regulated learning. Implications for research include a more nuanced conceptualization of epistemic beliefs and a theoretical integration of these constructs. Implications for practice regard the reciprocal relations between teachers' knowledge, experience, epistemic cognition, epistemic beliefs, and calibration and their effects on pedagogical practices. The role of teachers' education and professional development is discussed.In a recent review of current investigations on self-regulation of academic learning and performance, Zimmerman (2008) characterized the question driving this body of research as a quest for understanding "how students become masters of their own learning processes" (p. 167). We believe that a key aspect of this progress is the development of critical abilities that help learners to search for the meaning of what is learned, hence allowing them to be responsible actors in the learning process. Evaluating the quality of the information available in a particular learning context, reflecting on the nature of knowledge obtainable in a certain situation, and choosing what strategies to activate in order to get to know a specific aspect of reality are fundamental aids to enable learners to think critically.

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This chapter explores the learning outcomes for 45 teachers involved in three different federally-funded Teaching American History (TAH) grant professional development programs. The programs sought to move teachers' thinking about teaching history away from traditional stand-and-deliver practices and toward teaching historical thinking and reasoning as described in much of the reform and research literature in history education. Data were drawn from a multi-scale assessment instrument administered in a sequentialized design and from classroom observations of and interviews with participating teachers. We examine in particular growth (or lack thereof) in historical knowledge and teaching practice and epistemic positioning. Results suggested that aggregate program-based growth and epistemic change were attenuated by incongruences between how American history was expected to be taught in the technocratic culture of schooling and the reform-minded, professional judgment-based ideas cultivated within the TAH programs. Common technocratic organizational routines in the internal environment tended to undermine the interventions' influences rather than support them. In the discussion, these routines and their school culture elements are contrasted with the TAH program reform efforts as a means of understanding the outcomes.