Epistemic beliefs and written historical reasoning: Exploring their relationship

Abstract

In this descriptive study, we investigated undergraduate students’ epistemic beliefs in history and examined the relationship between students’ beliefs and their performance in written historical reasoning in the context of a historical reasoning course. We measured students’ expressed epistemic beliefs in history through a discipline-specific survey, which we compared with students’ performance when writing a source-based historical argument. A subset of students also participated in a task-based interview to investigate more tacit epistemic beliefs related to the second-order concept, account. We found a significant correlation between students’ performance in source-based argumentative writing and their epistemic beliefs regarding historical methodology. Most students’ interview answers corresponded to their epistemic beliefs as indicated in the survey, but there was less correspondence between students’ interviews and writing. This study demonstrates the usefulness of the epistemic beliefs survey and provides evidence that students’ conceptions of the second-order concept, account, may be related to their epistemic beliefs.

The nature of historical knowledge in large-scale assessments – a study of the relationship between item formats and offerings of epistemic cognition in the Swedish national test in history

“…Basing their analytical framework on Kuhn et al 's model, Ní Cassaithe et al (2022) conducted an interview study with 17 primary school students and found that the students' view on the nature of history and the concept of evidence affect their possibilities for progression in epistemic cognition. Similar results were reported in a survey study with 62 undergraduate students; based on the framework by Stoel et al (2017), Sendur et al (2022) found a strong correlation between epistemic beliefs and the quality of source-based argumentation.…”

“…This is likely to impede the endeavors of history teachers to educate their students so that they can acquire an integrated epistemic cognition of historical knowledge. Such a nuanced epistemic cognition is necessary for developing other relevant aspects of the history subject, such as historical reasoning (Van Boxtel and van Drie, 2017) and source based argumentation (Sendur et al, 2022). Importantly, a more nuanced understanding of historical knowledge also increases individuals' ability to handle conflicting accounts (Nokes, 2014), an ability of great importance for active participation in society (Lee, 2011).…”