Within the context of exploring an ill-structured task using the Google search engine, this study examined (a) the connections between general epistemic beliefs and the complexity of learners' knowledge exploration processes (i.e., learning complexity) and (b) the role of activating learners' task-oriented epistemic beliefs (i.e., epistemic…

Texts play an integral role in science research and science classrooms yet biology textbooks have traditionally failed to reflect the epistemic elements of the discipline such as justification of claims and visual representations of empirical data. This study investigates high school biology students' reading experiences when engaging more…

The purpose of this study was to explore the role of students' use of writing strategies in light of their English writing achievements in Taiwan. This research used a cognitive approach to examine the process of writing. Forty student writers (including 20 low and 20 high achievers) in Taiwan participated in this study. Strategies used for…

This study examined the impact of two epistemic commitments on the quality of college students' scientific reasoning in the domain of hydrostatics. These were the commitment to the consistency of theory with prior knowledge and commitment to the consistency of theory with evidence. Participants were 12 sophomore science majors enrolled in a large…