Walking on the Borders: A Measure of Epistemic Cognition in History

Abstract

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.

Learning Historical Thinking With Oral History Interviews: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Intervention Study of Oral History Interviews in History Lessons

“…We assessed historical competence by administering three subtests that measured students' understanding of epistemological principles at all three measurement points. The subtests that captured their understanding of epistemological principles were inspired by the Beliefs in History Questionnaire (Maggioni, 2010;Maggioni et al, 2004Maggioni et al, , 2009) but were not exact copies of this instrument.…”

“…Historical thinking requires people to be aware of the nature of history, generate historical arguments on the basis of the available evidence, and evaluate the strength of such arguments (P. Lee & Shemilt, 2003;VanSledright, 2002;Wineburg, 2001). To measure epistemological principles of history, the Beliefs in History Questionnaire (BHQ; Maggioni, 2010) was developed in a series of studies (Maggioni, Alexander, & VanSledright, 2004;Maggioni, VanSledright, & Alexander, 2009). Three categories of epistemic beliefs were found via factor analyses-Objectivism, Subjectivism, and Criterialism.…”

An analysis of predictors of history content knowledge: Implications for policy and practice

“…As defined by teacher education researchers (e.g., Ball & Forzani, 2011;Lampert, 2009), high leverage practices are instructional strategies that teachers employ for substantial learning gains. From a cognitive perspective, domain learning models champion discipline-specific reading, writing, and discussion of content to support students' understanding of the past (Maggioni, VanSledright, & Alexander, 2009;VanSledright, 2012). Furthermore, findings from the current study bolster smallerscale qualitative and experimental results suggesting that exposure to text-dependent instruction (an emphasis of domain learning in history) has positive implications for how students learn historical content (De La Paz, 2005;Monte-Sano, 2012;Reisman, 2012).…”

Interdisciplinary Research in History Education

“…wobei die Lernenden die Bilder in der Regel "als Abbild der historischen Vergangenheit" (Lange, 2011, S. 266) (Maggioni, 2010;Maggioni, Alexander & VanSledright, 2004;Maggioni, VanSledright & Alexander, 2009 14 Im deutschsprachigen Raum wurde der BHQ in jüngster Zeit faktorenanalytisch und auf Zusammenhänge mit historischem Argumentieren (Mierwald, Seiff ert, Lehman & Brauch, 2016) und Ausprägungen geschichtsdidaktischer Kompetenzen untersucht (Mierwald et al, 2016;Nitsche & Waldis, 2016 (Bertram & Wagner, in Druck). VanSledright (2014) kritisiert diese Form des Assessments deutlich: "In fact, I suggest that the typical testing approaches we have used for decades do precious little to make sense of student learning" (S. IX).…”