What Would Dewey Say? Channeling Dewey on the Issue of Specificity of Epistemic Beliefs: A Response to Muis, Bendixen, and Haerle (2006)

Abstract

In this response to Muis et al. (2006), I draw on the writings of Dewey to explore three critical questions. The first question is what is gained or what is lost when the study of epistemology moves from philosophy to psychology and eventually to educational practice? The second asks whether the primary question under examination should be if students' beliefs about knowledge or knowing differ by domains or why they may differ? Finally, what are the implications of the generality or specificity of students' epistemic beliefs for educational practice? KEY WORDS: beliefs; epistemology; knowledge.Within popular American culture, individuals occasionally use the catchphrase "What would X say?" or "What would X do?" Their purpose is to place their thoughts or actions or those of others within a specific theoretical, moral, or ethical framework; thereby reflecting on the suitability of those thoughts or actions for the situation at hand. Here I want to borrow from popular culture to situate my response to the Muis et al. (2006) review on the domain generality or domain specificity of epistemic beliefs in a broader philosophical/psychological context. Most who know me would not be particularly surprised that I have chosen John Dewey as my philosophical/psychological anchor for this commentary; hence the title "What

Empirical evidence regarding relations among a model of epistemic and ontological cognition, academic performance, and educational level.

“…The measurement model had good data–model fit by Hu and Bentler’s (1999) standards, with acceptable levels of construct reliability for all but one of the factors. The data produced evidence supportive of a domain-specific model of epistemic and ontological cognition, in line with other empirical findings and theoretical arguments (Alexander, 2006; Buehl et al, 2002, 2005; Hofer, 2006; Muis et al, 2006). Although the CFA, dimensions-only model did have acceptable data–model fit, a six-latent-class factor mixture model, which used the dimensions as indicators of positions, provided a better fit across numerous statistical metrics and subjective standards.…”

“…). Finally, although researchers have made strong arguments against the domain generality of personal epistemology (Alexander, 2006;Buehl et al, 2001Buehl et al, , 2002Buehl et al, , 2005Hofer, 2006;Muis et al, 2006) debate continues regarding the extent of domain specificity (Schommer & Walker, 1995;Schommer-Aikins, Duell, & Barker, 2003). Previously, we presented a conceptual model of EOC that addresses each of these concerns (see Greene et al, 2008).…”

Epistemic Beliefs and Googling

“…In their large review, Muis et al (2006) noted that empirical research had been presented in support for both domain general and for domain specific epistemic beliefs respectively, and that they may co-exist and possibly interact. The suggestions by Muis et al were strongly supported by both Hofer (2006) and Alexander (2006). To conclude, I acknowledge the co-existence of and interaction between domain-general and domainspecific epistemic beliefs.…”

“…Hofer & Pintrich (1997) introduced Justification for knowing as a dimension, which was later supported by several researchers. Both Alexander (2006) and Greene, Azevedo, & Torney-Purta (2008) have noted that this dimension is least developed, and that exploring justification is more challenging than exploring other dimensions. This assumption seems well founded considering the complexity of the justification aspect, e.g.…”

Socialising Epistemic Cognition

“…Since its inception in developmental-stage terms (Perry, 1970) there has been concern to specify components of epistemic cognition (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997;Schommer, 1990), the domain specificity or generality of those beliefs (Hofer, 2006;Muis, Bendixen, & Haerle, 2006) and generally to develop conceptual models to characterize differing epistemic beliefs across contexts in terms of their sophistication. Additionally, some have argued that greater attention should be given to the distinction between epistemic and ontological cognition (Greene et al, 2008;Schraw, 2013), and more generally there have been calls for a philosophical approach to conceptualising epistemic cognition (Alexander, 2006;Chinn, Buckland, & Samarapungavan, 2011;Greene et al, 2008;Muis et al, 2006).…”