Development of personal epistemology during the undergraduate education: disciplinary variations of beliefs about knowledge and knowledge acquisition.

Abstract

The main purpose of the research is to investigate the discipline-specific nature of students’ beliefs about general knowledge and knowledge acquisition (i.e., personal epistemology). The study examines how students develop epistemologically during the undergraduate education, and whether this epistemological development is different among students in different faculties. Methods: Two groups of undergraduate students (N = 3,050) from various faculties in a Thai university completed a questionnaire: first-year students who were about to begin studying in the university (n = 870) and students who had just graduated from the university (n = 2,180). Results: Through a principal component analysis, a five-factor structure is identified for the personal epistemology of the students. Two-way between-participants ANOVA indicates significant differences between the first-year students and the graduates in four out of the five factors. Further separate breakdown analyses within the groups of students studying or studied in a same faculty indicate that the discrepancies between the first-year and the graduates are more noticeable in some majors than others. Conclusions: The research results provide a global picture of the beliefs about general knowledge held by Thai university students. Moreover, they also suggest that undergraduate university education has an impact on the students in developing their epistemological viewpoints in certain aspects. It also appears that general epistemological development is discipline-specific and could be subject to the nature of the students’ subject majors.