The Role of Contextual Epistemic Beliefs in a Multiple Source Use Task

Much remains to be uncovered about students’ a priori stance toward engaging with a complex, multiple source use task. The present study uncovered that students often selected topics that they were already familiar with, and that their relational reasoning ability was positively predictive of subsequent demonstrated critical-analytic thinking on an argumentative essay. Further, although meaningfully distinct contextual epistemic beliefs profiles were uncovered, those were not predictive of performance. Yet, beliefs about knowledge and justification are suggested to be greatly important to students’ knowledge construction and justification behaviors, and the non-significance was surprising. Future studies and planned analyses as part of the current study will further explore the relation between contextual epistemic beliefs and decision making exhibited during an MSU task. peerReviewed other