This study explores the epistemic considerations that seemed to govern thirty-one Indian teachers' beliefs while teaching certain concepts of probability, especially using random generators. It focuses on knowing how these teachers make transitions between the different interpretations of probability, namely, Logical (sometimes also known as…

This article presents a series of three experiments investigating the processing of nested epistemic expressions, utterances containing two epistemic modals in one clause, such as "he 'certainly may' have forgotten." While some linguists claim that in a nested epistemic expression one modal is semantically embedded within the scope of…

Confidence and its accuracy have been most commonly examined in domains such as general knowledge and learning, with less study of other domains, such as applied knowledge and problem solving. Monitoring accuracy in real-world competencies may depend on characteristics of the domain. In this study, we examined whether monitoring accuracy, both…

We report a series of experiments examining whether people ascribe knowledge for true beliefs based on probabilistic evidence. Participants were less likely to ascribe knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence than for beliefs based on perceptual evidence (Experiments 1 and 2A) or testimony providing causal information (Experiment 2B).…

Research on student epistemologies in introductory courses has highlighted the importance of understanding physics as "a refinement of everyday thinking" [A. Einstein, J. Franklin Inst. 221, 349 (1936)]. That view is difficult to sustain in quantum mechanics, for students as for physicists. How might students manage the transition? In…

There is ample evidence that reasoning about stochastic phenomena is often subject to systematic bias even after instruction. Few studies have examined the detailed learning processes involved in learning probability. This paper examines a case study drawn from a large corpus of data collected as part of a research project that dealt with the…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe the underlying topics and the topic evolution in the 50-year history of educational leadership research literature. Method: We used automated text data mining with probabilistic latent topic models to examine the full text of the entire publication history of all 1,539 articles published in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate epistemological predictors of nature of science understandings of 281 prospective biology teachers surveyed using the Epistemological Beliefs Scale Regarding Science and the Nature of Science Scale. The findings on multiple linear regression showed that understandings about definition of science and…

We present a view of knowledge construction processes, focusing on partially correct constructs. Motivated by unexpected and seemingly inconsistent quantitative data based on the written reports of students working on an elementary probability task, we analyze in detail the knowledge construction processes of a representative student. We show how…

This article reports on a case study from a design-based research project that investigated how students make sense of the disciplinary tools they are taught to use, and specifically, what personal, interpersonal, and material resources support this process. The probability topic of binomial distribution was selected due to robust documentation of…

Comprehension of moral reasoning is important both for successful moral education and for Kohlbergian claims that moral reasoning development is cognitive in nature. Because a psychometrically appropriate moral comprehension instrument does not appear to exist, the Moral Comprehension Questionnaire (MCQ) was constructed in Study 1 and displayed…

Presents an analysis of the different meanings associated with randomness throughout its historical evolution as well as a summary of research concerning the subjective perception of randomness by children and adolescents. Some teaching suggestions are included to help students gradually understand the characteristics of random phenomena. Contains…

A model for processes of abstraction, based on epistemic actions, has been proposed elsewhere. Here we apply this model to processes in which groups of individual students construct shared knowledge and consolidate it. The data emphasizes the interactive flow of knowledge from one student to the others in the group, until they reach a shared…

Protocols were obtained from 22 subjects as they discovered the conditions under which equilibrium is obtained on a balance beam by predicting and observing the outcomes of a series of problems. The interviews revealed that subjects used a variety of heuristics to make predictions once they had isolated the two relevant features of the problem,…

Discusses the nature of information measuring its distance from the perfect theory or from the right answer to the information seeking question that led to it. The measures here are provided by the Tichy-Hilpinen-Oddie-Niiniluoto-likeness measures introduced in the context of the philosophical problem of verisimilitude. (JAK)