Developmental Systems of Students' Personal Theories About Education

Investigating relations between beliefs about justification for knowing, interest, and knowledge across two socio-scientific topics

“…In turn, such topic interest may provide impetus for building a reliable knowledge base with respect to those topics. Although they have not focused on justification by multiple sources and topic interest in particular, this finding also gains credence by being consistent with several conceptualizations highlighting potential indirect effects of epistemic beliefs on performance via motivation (Barger & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2017;Buehl, 2003;Hofer & Pintrich, 1997;Muis, 2007). Presumably, justification by multiple sources did not have a direct positive effect on knowledge about nuclear power because knowledge about this topic was more strongly predicted by topic interest.…”

“…These assumptions are consistent with several theoretical models conceptualizing epistemic beliefs as contributors to various motivation constructs (Barger & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2017;Buehl, 2003;Hofer & Pintrich, 1997;Muis, 2007), as well as with prior empirical work linking beliefs about justification for knowing to individual interest (Bråten, Anmarkrud, et al, 2014;Strømsø & Bråten, 2009). Specifically, we hypothesized that personal justification had a direct negative effect on topic interest whereas justification by multiple sources had a direct positive effect.…”

“…It may seem less likely that interest and knowledge at a topic-specific level underlie justification beliefs at a domain-specific level than the other way around, however, because justification beliefs concerning science in general may be considered to frame and guide the acquisition of interest and knowledge about specific topics. Of note is also that our reason for testing this particular relationship between variables was theoretical, with the assumption that epistemic beliefs underlie motivation and performance rather than vice versa being consistent with several theoretical models (Barger & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2017;Buehl, 2003;Hofer & Pinrich, 1997;Muis, 2007). We acknowledge, however, that longitudinal studies or experimental studies targeting justification beliefs and assessing changes in topic interest and topic knowledge are needed to discover causal relationships between these constructs.…”

“…Further specification of this idea of mediation through motivation is found in theoretical work by Buehl (2003) and Muis (2007), who suggested that epistemic beliefs influence motivation constructs such as self-beliefs, values, and achievement goals. Such motivation constructs may in turn influence learners' knowledge generation and achievement (see also, Barger & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2017). On the basis of this view, we set out to test a model where a particular value-related motivation construct, individual topic interest, was assumed to mediate the effects of the different types of justification beliefs included in Ferguson et al's (2012Ferguson et al's ( , 2013 trichotomous framework on students' knowledge.…”

Momentary Engagement as a Complex Dynamic System

“…Hilpert & Marchand, 2018;Koopmans & Stamovlasis, 2016). The DSP has gained momentum in developmental psychology (e.g., Kaplan & Garner, 2017;Lerner & Schmid Callina, 2014;Nogueiras, Kunnen & Iborra, 2017;Overton, 2015;van Geert, 2011) and educational psychology (e.g., Barger & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2017;Hilpert & Marchand, 2018;Kaplan & Garner, 2017;Nogueiras, Kunnen & Iborra, 2017), providing a comprehensive ontology that can guide theorybuilding, research, and interventions. The following section overviews some core tenets of DSP which we build on in our conceptualization of momentary student engagement.…”