Effects of epistemological beliefs and learning text structure on conceptual change.

This study focuses on a personal and an instructional variable that may affect conceptual change, which has been investigated separately in previous research: epistemological beliefs and learning text structure. Eighth graders were assigned to an experimental condition to read a refutational text and a control condition to read a normal expository text. Both texts introduced the same concepts on natural selection and biological evolution but the former activated and challenged students’ alternative conceptions about them. Within each condition there were students with more or less advanced beliefs about one dimension of their personal epistemology, that is, beliefs in the uncertainty and complexity vs. the certainty and simplicity of knowledge. The findings from pre to immediate and delayed posttests show that both variables affect knowledge revision, as reflected in explanations, in favor of reading the refutational text and also in favor of holding more sophisticated beliefs about the nature of knowledge. Moreover, a significant interaction between the two factors favored the students who had read the refutational text and believed more in complex and uncertain knowledge. A compensation effect between less mature epistemological beliefs and refutational text also emerged. Learners’ metaconceptual awareness of changes in their own conceptions was related to both variables.