Search

Epistemic beliefs are one's assumptions about knowledge and knowing. Given the research in educational psychology that established epistemic beliefs as reliable predictors of student success, we devised a pedagogical intervention to improve students' epistemic beliefs. In this study, we examined the effectiveness of the reflective writing task as a means of changing how students think about what is known. Students from two upper-level psychology classes (Cognitive and Research Methods) took a general epistemic belief survey by rating their agreements with 38 items at three different times in a semester (first-day, pre-reflective-writing task, and post-reflective-writing task). Day 1 responses were utilized to validate the survey items using principal component analysis--three variables (Knowledge Construction and Modification-KCM, Structure of Knowledge-KST, and Meaning of Successful Students-SS) emerged. The intervention successfully improved students' beliefs specific to Structure of Knowledge-KST and Meaning of Successful Students-SS, beliefs that predict student learning. This study suggests that even short interventions have the potential to influence students' beliefs about knowledge, which have been shown to have demonstrable effects on their academic success.

This study examines the written and visual results of a participatory systems-mapping process used to explore undergraduate research at a large, public research university in the United States. With the university's transition to a high-impact practice model, the institutional value of undergraduate research has increased, but challenges remain in implementing the practice equitably and inclusively, especially in the complex environment of higher education. The systems-mapping process reveals the subtle, often conflicting dynamics that underlie the undergraduate research enterprise, while simultaneously supporting the emergence of a shared vision, or story, of what the undergraduate research experience could be.

This essay considers how the current age of multiple crises is leading to changes in questions we ask of teaching and learning, questions we ask in SoTL, and the role of SoTL scholars.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how the phenomenon of academic professional development looks through the eyes of graduate students navigating the increasing complexity of postgraduate careers. This study pays particular attention to how current students navigate the interplay between their beliefs, intentions and behaviors when it comes to making choices regarding their engagement in professional development. Design/methodology/approach: This is a qualitative study, based on a phenomenological analysis of seven in-depth interviews with advanced PhD students from the earth sciences college at a large, public, research-intensive university located in the mid-Atlantic area of the USA (Penn State). Findings: Framed in the Theory of Planned Behavior, the findings of this study suggest that the interviewees varied across all aspects of Theory of Planned Behavior: in their beliefs about valued career paths, in their convergence or divergence from the departmental or institutional norms they perceived and in their sense of control over their career pathways. They all shared, however, a strong desire to successfully navigate the widening array of possibilities to achieve a range of personal and professional goals, but they often lacked the ability to align those intentions with actions related to professional development. Originality/value: This study suggests that institutions may wish to rethink their positionality in the professional development of graduate students, moving away from centralized models of direct support and towards more indirect, informal and co-created means of exerting influence and building community.

Educators and administrators are exploring competency-based education as an effective and efficient method to facilitate student learning. This reinforces a burgeoning neo-behaviorist movement in higher education which seeks to synthesize such behaviorist approaches with the cognitive focus of the last 20 years. The current research examines the outcomes in three years of a sport marketing class that blends cognitive-based and competency-based pedagogy. The first half of the course is primarily self-paced, with regular quizzes checking student mastery, while the second half of the course has students work in teams on marketing-related projects; a final examination assesses overall student learning. The research revealed that the blended approach resulted in complementary strategies which partially addressed the conventional criticisms of both cognitive- and competency-based pedagogical approaches. The study used paired sample t-tests to compare results on quizzes versus the final exam (N = 111 students comprising 36,787 total student-responses), finding that the course's hybrid structure develops student learning in both lower-order and higher-order thinking (as per Bloom's taxonomy).