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When thinking critically about socio-scientific issues, individuals’ expectations about the nature of knowledge and knowing, as well as their emotions when these expectations are met or not, may play an important role in critical thinking. In this study, we examined the role of epistemic emotions in mediating the effects of epistemic cognition on critical thinking when contending with conflicting information about genetically modified foods. Two hundred four university students completed a prior knowledge test on genetically modified foods, and then reported their epistemic beliefs about genetically modified foods. Participants then read a text that presented advantages and disadvantages of genetically modified foods, and reported the epistemic emotions they experienced during reading of that text. Participants then composed an argumentative essay about genetically modified foods, which were coded for critical thinking. Results from path analysis revealed that a belief in complex knowledge predicted less surprise and confusion, but more enjoyment. For the source of knowledge, a belief in the active construction of knowledge predicted less surprise and enjoyment. For justification for knowing, a belief that knowledge should be critically evaluated positively predicted curiosity, and negatively predicted confusion and boredom. Moreover, beliefs that knowledge about genetically modified foods is complex and uncertain positively predicted critical thinking. Confusion and anxiety also positively predicted critical thinking, whereas frustration negatively predicted critical thinking. Lastly, confusion mediated relations between epistemic beliefs and critical thinking. Results suggest complex relations between epistemic cognition, epistemic emotions, and critical thinking that have implications for educational practice as well as for future research on epistemic cognition and epistemic emotions.

University students' epistemic beliefs may have practical consequences for studying and success in higher education. Such beliefs constitute epistemic theories that may empirically manifest themselves as epistemic profiles. This study examined university students' epistemic profiles and their relations to conceptions of learning, age, gender, discipline, and academic achievement. The participants were 1515 students from five faculties who completed questionnaires about epistemic beliefs, including a subsample who also completed a questionnaire that included conceptions of learning. We measured epistemic beliefs: reflective learning, collaborative knowledge-building, valuing metacognition, certain knowledge, and practical value. First, we analyzed structural validity by using confirmatory factor analysis. Second, we conducted latent profile analysis that revealed three epistemic profiles: Pragmatic (49%), reflective-collaborative (26%) and fact-oriented (25%). Then, we compared the conceptions of learning across the profiles as well as demographic information, credits, and grades. The profiles' conceptions of learning varied: The reflective-collaborative group scored high on conception of learning named "construction of knowledge." Its members were more likely to be females, teachers, and mature students, and they had the highest academic achievement. The fact-oriented group (mostly engineering/science students) scored highest on "intake of knowledge." The pragmatic group scored highest on "use of knowledge:" During the second year, their academic achievement improved. In sum, the epistemic profiles were closely related to conceptions of learning and also associated with academic achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epistemic cognition involves the thinking executed as people discern what they know versus what they question, doubt, or disbelieve. Effective or adaptive epistemic cognition underlies the higher-order thinking required for life in the 21st century and has been positively correlated with academic achievement. As such, researchers have designed a number of educational interventions with the goal of developing students' epistemic cognition, but no comprehensive examination of their efficacy exists. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis to better understand the effect of epistemic cognition interventions upon academic achievement and what characteristics differentiated their efficacy. Twenty-six experimental and quasi-experimental studies met our inclusion criteria. Using 28 independent samples and 59 effect sizes, we found epistemic cognition interventions had a statistically significant, medium-level effect on academic achievement (Cohen's d = 0.509, p <.001). Moderator analyses revealed interventions based in guided forms of instruction and models emphasizing justification and reconciliation of objectivity and subjectivity were more successful than other interventions, suggesting several promising directions for future research and practice. Surprisingly, we found that shorter interventions were generally more successful in promoting academic performance than longer ones. Educational Impact and Implications Statement: The proliferation of information and misinformation in the current digital age affects how people construct, justify, and use knowledge, that is, their epistemic cognition. Previous research has shown that students' epistemic cognition predicts their academic achievement. Our analyses reveal that epistemic cognition interventions, on average, have a positive influence on academic achievement. Further, epistemic cognition interventions based on source evaluation and guided inquiry instruction are particularly promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effect of the metacognitive instruction in which students' epistemic cognitions were explicitly addressed, on tenth-grade students' conceptual understandings regarding force and motion. The participants of the study included 107 (49 female, 58 male) tenth-grade students at two public high schools. A quasi-experimental design was employed. Two intact classes of each school were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The Force and Motion Conceptual Tests I and II were administered to assess the students' conceptual understandings in force and motion. A survey was applied to probe the students' prior epistemic cognitions in physics. The results of the study revealed that the metacognitive instruction was more effective than the expository teaching in terms of promoting students' conceptual understandings. A statistically significant interaction between the treatment and the students' prior epistemic cognitions was also observed. The students with higher pre-epistemic cognitions got higher conceptual scores in the experimental group whereas the conceptual development of the control group students was independent of their pre-epistemic cognitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Informed Health Choices (IHC) Key Concepts are principles for evaluating the trustworthiness of claims about treatment effects. The Key Concepts provide a framework for developing learning-resources to help people use the concepts when treatment claims are made, and when they make health choices. Objective: To compare the framework provided by the IHC Key Concepts to other frameworks intended to promote critical thinking about treatment (intervention) claims and choices. Methods: We identified relevant frameworks from reviews of frameworks, searching Google Scholar, citation searches, and contact with key informants. We included frameworks intended to provide a structure for teaching or learning to think critically about the basis for claims, evidence used to support claims, or informed choices. For a framework to be included, there had to be a description of its purpose; a list of concepts, competences, or dispositions; and definitions of key terms. We made independent assessments of framework eligibility and extracted data for each included framework using standardised forms. Results: Twenty-two frameworks met our inclusion criteria. The purpose of the IHC Framework is similar to that of two frameworks for critical thinking and somewhat similar to that of a framework for evidence-based practice. Those frameworks have broader scopes than the IHC Framework. An important limitation of broad frameworks is that they do not provide an adequate basis (concepts) for deciding which claims to believe and what to do. There was at most some overlap between the concepts, competences, and dispositions in each of the 22 included frameworks and those in the IHC Framework. Conclusions: The IHC Key Concepts Framework appears to be unique. Our review has shown how it and other frameworks can be improved by taking account of the ways in which other related frameworks have been developed, evaluated, and made useful.

Many urgent problems that societies currently face—from climate change to a global pandemic—require citizens to engage with scientific information as members of democratic societies as well as to solve problems in their personal lives. Most often, to solve their epistemic aims (aims directed at achieving knowledge and understanding) regarding such socio-scientific issues, individuals search for information online, where there exists a multitude of possibly relevant and highly interconnected sources of different perspectives, sometimes providing conflicting information. The paper provides a review of the literature aimed at identifying (a) constraints and affordances that scientific knowledge and the online information environment entail and (b) individuals' cognitive and motivational processes that have been found to hinder, or conversely, support practices of engagement (such as critical information evaluation or two-sided dialogue). Doing this, a conceptual framework for understanding and fostering what we call online engagement with scientific information is introduced, which is conceived as consisting of individual engagement (engaging on one's own in the search, selection, evaluation, and integration of information) and dialogic engagement (engaging in discourse with others to interpret, articulate and critically examine scientific information). In turn, this paper identifies individual and contextual conditions for individuals' goal-directed and effortful online engagement with scientific information.

Epistemic beliefs about history can influence the way educators address this discipline with their students. This mixed-methods study establishes a comparison between three groups: secondary education, and both second-year and third-year primary education social studies pre-service teachers. Using a sample of 430 participants, the Beliefs About History Questionnaire (BHQ) was applied to quantitatively assess the level of agreement with three stances (copier, borrower, and criterialist) and the consistency of the answers. Responses were also codified and qualitatively examined. While all groups favored a criterialist stance, secondary education pre-service teachers showed more nuanced and consistent visions than their primary education counterparts. A discussion is presented on the role of initial teacher training and on the characterization of epistemic cognition in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Students' academic achievement relies on a variety of pedagogical, affective, and individual factors. The investigation of academic emotions and epistemic cognition has been a focal point in existing research. Previous studies have predominantly delved into the essence of students' epistemic cognition and academic emotions. Nonetheless, the correlation between the epistemic cognition, academic emotions, and academic success of Chinese undergraduate students remains inadequately explored. This research delves into the interconnectedness of these variables and examines which facets of epistemic cognition and academic emotions can forecast students' academic performance. A total of three hundred and eighty (380) Chinese undergraduate students were chosen via random sampling for this study. Their self-reported academic achievements were taken into account. Additionally, they completed questionnaires tailored to evaluate their epistemic cognition and academic emotions. The participants' scores underwent Pearson correlation and multiple regression analyses. The findings indicate that positive emotions correlate positively, while negative emotions correlate negatively with students' academic success. Furthermore, positive emotions and three categories of epistemic cognition were found to be predictors of students' academic accomplishments. In conclusion, it is deduced that both epistemic cognition and positive emotions play a role in enhancing students' academic success. The implications of these findings extend to educational psychologists, educators, and students, both theoretically and practically., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Many urgent problems that societies currently face—from climate change to a global pandemic—require citizens to engage with scientific information as members of democratic societies as well as to solve problems in their personal lives. Most often, to solve their epistemic aims (aims directed at achieving knowledge and understanding) regarding such socio-scientific issues, individuals search for information online, where there exists a multitude of possibly relevant and highly interconnected sources of different perspectives, sometimes providing conflicting information. The paper provides a review of the literature aimed at identifying (a) constraints and affordances that scientific knowledge and the online information environment entail and (b) individuals' cognitive and motivational processes that have been found to hinder, or conversely, support practices of engagement (such as critical information evaluation or two-sided dialogue). Doing this, a conceptual framework for understanding and fostering what we call online engagement with scientific information is introduced, which is conceived as consisting of individual engagement (engaging on one's own in the search, selection, evaluation, and integration of information) and dialogic engagement (engaging in discourse with others to interpret, articulate and critically examine scientific information). In turn, this paper identifies individual and contextual conditions for individuals' goal-directed and effortful online engagement with scientific information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explored the impact of participating in a Virtual Internship (VI) computer-supported collaborative learning simulation, on high school students' (n = 43) development of knowledge and skills for critiquing the political media with which they engage. Second, we evaluated the effect of this intervention on students' self-efficacy for using specific media strategies to take political action. Finally, we explored the epistemic (knowledge-seeking) and non-epistemic aims that students set for themselves while participating within our VI, which was designed specifically to address students' epistemic cognition. Analyses of both the quantitative and qualitative data revealed that students: (1) evinced gains in knowledge about what "fracking" is and also knowledge about why it is a controversial topic; (2) evinced gains in self-efficacy for civic engagement—a key indicator to students' likelihood for acting; and (3) were able to understand the politicized nature of a social media post, and therefore reported wanting to pursue knowledge-seeking goals to understand both sides of the argument and the trustworthiness of the information sources. We discuss these results vis-à-vis the literature on epistemic games, which can help students develop the knowledge, skills, identity, and values of a profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the early years of children's education have long been acknowledged as crucial in supporting learning and development, there has been less focus on argumentation literacy as a way to promote active learning. This conceptual paper explores a new cross-disciplinary teaching framework, called the kaleidoscope framework of inquiry dialogue, which explicates the role of elementary school children's collaborative argumentation processes during inquiry dialogue. The two key theories (reflective devices) in the framework include reflexivity and epistemic cognition. Using a kaleidoscope metaphor, we conceive of dynamic theoretical interactions which depend on aspects of children's collaborative argumentation skills and learning/teaching contexts (the pieces of coloured glass contained within the kaleidoscope) that are in focus at any particular point in time. This paper first discusses inquiry dialogue and collaborative argumentation, followed by an overview of the underlying theories of reflexivity and epistemic cognition used in the kaleidoscope framework. Implications for supporting elementary school children's collaborative argumentation processes during inquiry are discussed throughout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Participating in undergraduate research experiences (UREs) supports the development of engineering students' technical and professional skills. However, little is known about the perceptions of research or researchers that students develop through these experiences. Understanding these perceptions will provide insight into how students come to understand knowledge evaluation and creation, while allowing research advisors to better support student development. Purpose In this paper, we explore how undergraduate engineering students perceive what it means to do research and be a researcher, using identity and epistemic cognition as sensitizing concepts. Our goal is to explore students' views of UREs to make the benefits of these experiences more accessible. Design/Method: We created and adapted open‐ended survey items from previously published studies. We collected responses from mechanical and biomedical engineering undergraduates at five institutions (n = 154) and used an inductive approach to analyze responses. Results: We developed four salient themes from our analysis: (a) research results in discovery, (b) research includes dissemination such as authorship, (c) research findings are integrated into society, and (d) researchers demonstrate self‐regulation. Conclusions: The four themes highlight factors that students perceive as part of a researcher identity and aspects of epistemic cognition in the context of UREs. These results suggest structuring UREs to provide opportunities for discovery, dissemination, societal impact, and self‐regulation will help support students in their development as researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the background of many studies focusing either on scientific reasoning or views on the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI), the aim of this article is to present and empirically analyse a framework that associates these central science education constructs. Based on the idea of inquiry methods, the ScieNo-framework includes three scientific reasoning competencies ('Scie') and ten naïve and informed NOSI views ('No') that can be aligned on a theoretical level. We test this alignment using data from a quantitative cross-sectional study. In this study, internationally published instruments on scientific reasoning and NOSI views were administered in a sample of 802 students. We estimate structural equation models (SEM) that encompass correlations between scientific reasoning competencies and NOSI views. In order to control for effects of schooling in a second step, we included the grade level as a predictor into these models and checked whether the correlations were stable. The results confirm small to high positive and negative correlations between informed and naïve NOSI views and the scientific reasoning competencies that match the theory-based assumption. We interpret these as a first quantitative confirmation of the ScieNo-framework and open up further perspectives on usage of the framework for science education purposes and for future science education research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into teachers' epistemic cognition is emerging as a key to understanding the quality of teachers' knowledge for teaching. Typically, investigations into the quality of teachers' knowledge have been situated within traditional subject areas, such as science or maths. However, developing good quality teacher knowledge about improving students' abilities to engage in self-regulated learning (SRL), across subject areas, is equally important. Studies have demonstrated gaps in teachers' knowledge and epistemic beliefs about SRL – the foundations for teachers' epistemic cognition about SRL. This paper introduces a model of teachers' epistemic cognition about SRL, and reports a micro-analytic study with four secondary science teachers who undertook a 12-week researcher-facilitated Professional Learning Community (PLC). Thematic and numerical analysis of interviews and lesson plans indicated that the PLC facilitated teachers' reflexive examination of their knowledge and their epistemic beliefs about SRL. Improvements in SRL content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and constructivist beliefs were observed consistently for three of the four teachers. Providing opportunities, such as a facilitated PLC, to enable teachers to reflexively examine their epistemic cognition about a generic subject such as SRL, may be a necessary step in translating research about learning and instruction into classroom practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent reforms in science education emphasize having students develop and refine core disciplinary ideas through participation in science knowledge–building practices. Supporting students' meaningful participation in these practices is challenging, in part because our understanding of how this kind of participation develops is underexplored. This paper characterizes the epistemic dimension of classroom scientific practice—the underlying assumptions and criteria guiding students' knowledge-building work—in moment-to-moment interactions, and how their use of these criteria shifted over time. These patterns of change illustrate how, by 8th grade, students were more consistently using sophisticated disciplinary forms of epistemic criteria than they were in 6th grade. The shifts toward disciplinary sophistication were cumulative over time and across content areas, suggesting that they reflected a shift in something other than content knowledge gains. Yet these cumulative shifts did not occur in a clean, predictable progression toward sophistication. This study documents the details of these shifts over time and across content areas. By providing an empirical account of the evolution of students' knowledge-building work in practice over time, this study argues for the centrality of epistemic learning goals in science education and proposes implications for how to measure and support students' meaningful participation in scientific practices in contextually valid ways. Educational Impact and Implications Statement: Being a scientist involves not only learning science ideas, but knowing how to use the practices and tools of science to build knowledge. Although we know how students' science content ideas develop, we know less about how they learn to build science knowledge themselves over time. This study documents how middle school students' participation in science practices evolved over the course of three years, focusing on how they developed mechanistic accounts and justified claims. It shows that students engaged deeply in this knowledge-building work in the context of a curriculum that supported their engagement in authentic science tasks. In addition, their engagement gradually became more aligned to the work that scientists do, albeit in complex and unexpected ways. This evolution occurred across science content area units and across teachers, suggesting that learning how to develop mechanistic explanations and justify ideas can carry over and continue to build from unit to unit and from classroom to classroom; and it emphasizes the importance of practice-based learning goals, in addition to content-focused learning goals, in science education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the role of epistemic cognition in calibration to task complexity before and during learning. Sixty-six undergraduate students were presented with two learning tasks—a simple task and a more complex task—in random order. Prior to learning, offline measures of learners' epistemic beliefs about climate change were taken. An open-ended questionnaire was then used to capture task definitions, goals, and plans. To assess online epistemic cognition and learning strategies used during learning, a think-aloud protocol was employed. Results showed that epistemic beliefs before learning predicted epistemic cognition during learning. Further, results demonstrated that calibration to task complexity before learning was not related to epistemic beliefs but was related to epistemic cognition during learning. These findings suggest that individuals engage in epistemic cognition during learning to better understand the nature of the knowledge to be learned and that this results in better calibration of learning processes to task complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For high school students to develop scientific understanding and reasoning, it is essential that they engage in epistemic cognition and scientific argumentation. In the current study, we used the AIR model (i.e., Aims and values, epistemic Ideals, and Reliable processes) to examine high school students’ epistemic cognition and argumentation as evidenced in collaborative discourse in a science classroom. Specifically, we employed a qualitative case study approach to focus on four small-group discussions about scientific phenomena during the Quality Talk Science intervention (QTS), where students regularly received explicit instruction on asking authentic questions and engaging in argumentation. In total, five categories of epistemic ideals and five categories of reliable processes were identified. Students demonstrated more instances of normative epistemic ideals and argumentative responses in the discussions after they received a revised scientific model for discussion and explicit instruction on argumentation. Concomitantly, there were fewer instances of students making decisions based on process of elimination to determine a correct scientific claim. With respect to the relationship of epistemic cognition to authentic questioning and argumentation, the use of epistemic ideals seemed to be associated with the initiation of authentic questions and students’ argumentation appeared to involve the use of epistemic ideals.

• Domain level conceptual change is considered through two frameworks. • Conceptions of history are analyzed as epistemic practices through the AIR Model. • There exists no singular conception of history shared by expert historians. • Conceptual change must embrace an understanding of multiple conceptions. Along their path towards expertise, historians undergo conceptual changes. The purpose of this theoretical paper is to argue that conceptual change in history involves, first, a fundamental shift from an understanding of history as the past to an understanding of history as human production. And second, expert conceptual change involves understanding multiple approaches to the production of history. Each approach is associated with constraints on historical concepts and meta-concepts. We outline differences and similarities between these broad approaches through a framework that merges epistemic cognition and historical theory. Currently, there exists no singular conception of history to set as an unproblematic aim of epistemic education, and conceptual change must therefore embrace the aim of understanding of multiple conceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between epistemic perspective and online epistemic processing of evidence when reading a text were examined. Thirty-seven young adolescents and 24 graduate university students were asked to read and think aloud with two texts, one in the history domain and the other in the science domain. Participants also completed a prior-knowledge test and an instrument assessing their epistemic perspective. Results showed that participants who exhibited an evaluativist epistemic perspective and high prior knowledge used the epistemic standard of scientific research more than participants who held a nonevaluativist epistemic perspective. Furthermore, an age-related developmental difference was observed, with adults using the epistemic standard of scientific research more than young adolescents. Domain differences were observed in both participants' epistemic perspectives and online epistemic processing. Participants overall engaged in online epistemic processing of evidence more in the history topic than in the science topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this longitudinal study, we explored children's reasoning about social inclusion/exclusion at Year 1 and Year 3 (n = 169 Year 1, n = 129 Year 3) of early primary education in Australia and how this reasoning related to changes in children's epistemic cognition. The data collection involved 30-minute interviews in which children were asked to engage in two tasks related to (1) epistemic cognition and (2) including an aggressive child in play. Findings showed that children were more likely to choose to include the aggressive child in Year 3 if they also expressed Subjectivist epistemic beliefs than if they expressed Objectivist beliefs. The children who expressed Subjectivist epistemic beliefs were more likely to justify their decision to include an aggressive child in a more nuanced and complex manner. We argue for a focus on epistemic reflexivity for reasoning about social inclusion as a way in which to provide new understandings about how broader contextual influences may mediate such reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argumentative practices have been shown to deepen understanding and improve academic performance. After 10 years of work with science curricula designed to develop reasoning, we present a framework grounded in data from our projects for identifying different forms of metacognitive engagement in science inquiry classes. We focus on four categories of discourse from our data: object of thought or discourse; expressions of what someone is thinking; degree of specificity; and discourse applying and tailoring understanding of epistemic cognition to particular topics. We present multiple examples in each of these categories. Our goal is to provide analytic tools along with examples to better identify and code argumentative discourse that advances students' apt epistemic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper reports engineering students ’ practical epistemic cognition by studying their interactional work in situ. Studying “epistemologies in action” the study breaks away from mainstream approaches that describe this in terms of beliefs or of stage theories. Background: In epistemology, knowledge is traditionally seen as “justified true belief,” neglecting knowledge related to action. Interest has increased in studying the epistemologies people use in situated action, and their development of epistemic fluency. How appropriate such approaches are in engineering and design education need further investigation. Research Questions: 1) How do students in the context of a design project use epistemic tools in their interactional work? and 2) What are the implications of the findings in terms of how students’ cognitive and epistemological development could be conceptualized? Methodology: A collaborative group of six students were video recorded on the 14th day of a fifth-semester design project, as they were preparing for a formal critique session. The entire, almost 6 h, session was recorded by four video cameras mounted in the design studio, with an additional fifth body-mounted camera. The video data collected was analyzed using video ethnographic, conversation analysis, and embodied interaction analysis methods. Findings: The results show that the students use a wealth of bodily material resources as an integral and seamless part of their interactions as epistemic tools, in their joint production of understanding and imagining. The analysis also suggests that students’ epistemological and cognitive development, individually and as a group, should be understood in terms of developing “epistemic fluency.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem-solving is a significant skill in facing the 21st century. Students have different levels of problem-solving. The levels that explain individual abilities in solving mathematics problems are called as cognitive level. It consists of three levels; cognition, metacognition, and epistemic cognition. The cognitive level influences the individual in understanding the problem and deciding the right strategies to solve it. The material used to obtain the data is three variables linear equation system, by involving two high ability students at the tenth grade from one of the state senior high schools in Pati. This research employs a qualitative method in which the data are collected through task-based interview and time triangulation is applied to validate the data. The results reveal that at the cognition level, students with high ability have an understanding related to conceptual and procedural knowledge, but the ability of students in factual knowledge is low, especially in terminology skill; at the metacognition level, the students are able to write down each strategy in each method, but it is not detailed; while at the epistemic cognition level, they are able to explain the weaknesses of a method, but they have not been able to provide a solution to overcome its weaknesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing international concern about the extent to which teachers are prepared to work with an increasingly diverse student (and community) population. To date, research into the relationship between teacher preparation and preparedness to teach diverse learners has not focused on teacher educators' understandings about teaching to/about diversity. Such understandings can be informed by epistemic aspects of professional work. Epistemic cognitions (cognitions about knowledge and knowing) allow professionals to generate perspectives necessary to tackle new and old challenges. The social lab reported in this paper investigated 12 Australian teacher educators' perspectives about teaching to/about diversity using the 3R-Epistemic Cognition (EC) framework. The findings showed that the 3R-EC framework could be useful for capturing epistemic reflexive dialogues about teaching to/about diversity, although some aspects of the framework were identified by the teacher educators as challenging. On the basis of these identified challenges, refinements concerning communication and use of the 3R-EC framework were identified. The feedback also led to some refinements of the social lab methodology for use in the larger national study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literacy scholars have offered compelling theories about and methods for understanding the digital literacy practices of youth. However, little work has explored the possibility of an approach that would demonstrate how different perspectives on literacies might intersect and interconnect in order to better describe the multifaceted nature of youth digital literacies. In this conceptual article, we adopt the idea of theoretical triangulation in interpretive inquiry and explore how multiple perspectives can jointly contribute to constructing a nuanced description of young people's literacies in today's digitally mediated global world. For this purpose, we first suggest a triangulation framework that integrates sociocultural, affective, and cognitive perspectives on digital literacies, focusing on recent developments in these perspectives. We then use an example of discourse data from a globally connected online affinity space and demonstrate how our multidimensional framework can lead to a complex analysis and interpretation of the data. In particular, we describe the substance of one specific case of youth digital literacies from each of the three perspectives on literacy, which in turn converge to provide a complex account of such literacy practices. In conclusion, we discuss the promise and limitations of our integrative approach to studying the digital literacy practices of youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Skepticism against unverified claims is a key critical thinking skill. • How does this skill develop between at the outset of formal education? • 3- to 7-year-olds evaluated verified , unverified , and insufficiently verified claims. • They rated unverified and insufficiently verified claims as less acceptable. • This has implications for foundations of critical thinking and science literacy. Abstract Critical to children’s learning is the ability to judiciously select what information to accept—to use as the basis for learning and inference—and what information to reject. This becomes especially difficult in a world increasingly inundated with information, where children must carefully reason about the process by which claims are made in order to acquire accurate knowledge. In two experiments, we investigated whether 3- to 7-year-old children ( N = 120) understand that factual claims based on verified evidence are more acceptable than claims that have not been sufficiently verified. We found that even at preschool age, children evaluated verified claims as more acceptable than insufficiently verified claims, and that the extent to which they did so was related to their explicit understanding, as evident in their explanations of why those claims were more or less acceptable. These experiments lay the groundwork for an important line of research studying the roots and development of this foundational critical thinking skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epistemic cognition, defined as the ways that people acquire, justify, and use knowledge, has been a prominent area of scholarship in educational psychology for nearly 50 years. Researchers have argued that epistemic cognition is a key predictor of many 21st century learning outcomes including critical thinking, scientific literacy, and historical thinking, among others. Despite a large volume of quantitative empirical research on epistemic cognition and academic achievement, there has been no published systematic analysis of this literature. We conducted a meta-analysis of 132 nonexperimental studies in this literature, and found epistemic cognition, as measured predominantly in terms of beliefs, was positively correlated with academic achievement, r = .162, p < .001, indicating a small but meaningful relationship. Moderator analyses revealed models and instruments focusing on development and justification of knowledge had higher correlations with academic achievement than those focused on constructs related to authority. We found evidence supporting domain-general, domain-specific, and topic-specific conceptualizations of epistemic cognition, and stronger correlations when the specificity of the epistemic cognition measure matched the specificity of the achievement measure. Conceptual knowledge and argumentation performance were more strongly associated with epistemic cognition than declarative or procedural knowledge performance. Finally, we found epistemic cognition predicted academic achievement from elementary school through graduate school, suggesting the importance of studying epistemic cognition across all educational levels. These findings have direct implications for honing epistemic cognition theory, creating better measures of epistemic cognition, and developing effective educational interventions on this critical topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study characterized students' online collaborative discourse from a theory‐building perspective and examined its relation to epistemic and conceptual understanding. Fifty‐two fifth graders' Knowledge Forum discussions on electricity were analysed. Discourse moves were coded within the inquiry threads, and two key epistemic patterns were identified: problem‐centred uptake and theory‐building moves. Analysis showed that higher‐quality discourse threads included more problem‐centred uptake moves in which ideas were built more coherently on each other to address the central problem. There were also more theory‐building moves on explanation and sustain inquiry. We also examined the relationship between discourse moves and conceptual‐epistemic understanding. Regression analyses showed that problem‐centred uptake predicted epistemic cognition beyond prior epistemic cognition and that theory‐building moves on explanation predicted students' conceptual understanding beyond their prior science understanding. Implications for fostering more productive discourse and sophisticated epistemic cognitions using online discussion are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While critical rationality is an explicit goal of Catholic education, its practice in confessional Catholic religious education can be problematic for epistemological reasons: the prevailing Catholic religious epistemology may not be conducive to critical thinking in the RE classroom. A survey among 1068 teachers conducted in fifteen Catholic schools in the Philippines confirmed that a significant percentage of the respondents - especially religious educators - exhibited epistemologies considered incompatible with critical thinking specifically in the domains of religious beliefs and value judgements - the two areas covered by the Philippine Catholic RE curriculum. An examination of Catholic religious and moral epistemologies is recommended to determine the possibility and necessity of critical thinking in matters of faith and morals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Metacognitive theories,” an article Gregg Schraw and I published in Educational Psychology Review in 1995, has been cited in over a thousand scholarly publications. In this follow-up, dedicated to Gregg and written after his recent death, I provide a brief overview of our 1995 article and then reflect on it in four ways. First, I consider the development of the concept of metacognition prior to 1995, including its emergence and use in previous writings by each co-author. Then, I turn to the collaboration itself, including the interplay of complementary conceptions and the construction of new ideas. Third, I consider the article’s citation history and the role it has played in the subsequent literature. Finally, I discuss research on metacognition since 1995, including subsequent work on epistemic cognition by each of the co-authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A core concern in learning is coming to understand the ways in which claims of knowledge are made. The epistemic cognition literature typically characterises this learning in terms of how learners cognitively conceptualise the source and nature of knowledge. Recent work has offered alternative accounts of epistemic cognition that recognise the discursive nature of the construct. These accounts are derived from analysis of the ways that learners talk about knowledge in tasks such as evaluating scientific claims from sources of varying qualities. In this paper we draw on this recent work to advance a novel approach to the analysis of discourse data in epistemic contexts. This approach is exemplified through its application to an existing dataset, demonstrating both the application of the approach and the particular kinds of discourse that learners engaged in. This discursive approach has the potential for broad application in the learning sciences' treatment of epistemic cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]