The Role of Epistemic Beliefs in Self-Regulated Learning

 
TOPIC
 
The topic of this journal is the role of students’ epistemic beliefs, or in other words, beliefs about human knowledge, as they relate to the self-regulated learning environment. Muis believes that epistemic beliefs not only affect self-regulated learning (whether negatively or positively), but that the two are actually interrelated. Epistemic beliefs affect the results of self-regulated learning due to attitudes and assumptions that students make while completing a project, and self-regulated learning helps to develop epistemic beliefs because of the processes that a learner follows in tasks of varying subject matter and levels of difficulty.
 
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 
The three research questions identified include: “What are the limits of human knowledge? What are the sources of human knowledge? [and] What is the nature of human knowledge?” (p. 173)
 
PROCEDURE
 
The author began this study by identifying common assumptions and features of other researchers’ models of epistemic beliefs and their research on self-regulated learning. She found that there was much data available regarding both topics separately, but Muis wanted the two integrated to show specifically how beliefs about knowledge that a student holds can help or hinder their self-paced learning, as well as how self-regulated learning affects epistemic beliefs. In Muis’s integrated model of epistemic beliefs and self-regulated learning (p. 177), she identified four phases that a learner must go through in a self-regulated learning activity. These phases include: 1) Task Definition (student forms ideas and attitudes about the assignment), 2) Planning and Goal Setting (tactics a student uses to complete task), 3) Enactment (applying tactics from previous phase) and 4) Evaluation (learner evaluates success or lack thereof). Interviews with students after each phase, as well as looking at other researchers’ findings, led Muis to make some interesting propositions.
 
RESULTS
 
The first proposition is that epistemic beliefs are indeed one part of both the cognitive (mental) and affective (emotional) conditions of a task, no matter what the subject matter. The second proposition is that epistemic beliefs are a great determiner in what students expect the outcome of their task to be and goals they set for their learning project. Third, epistemic beliefs affect how high of standards they set for the results of their task. And last, self-regulated learning almost certainly plays a role in the epistemic beliefs that a learner develops.
 
IMPLICATIONS
 
Clearly, more research is needed to determine the processes students go through to develop their beliefs about learning and how those formed beliefs then affect their cognitive process in self-paced learning. Muis suggests that learners need to be led to be aware of how their beliefs about learning affect their attitudes, hopefully resulting in more effective education and higher standards being set in a self-regulated learning environment. This will also help students in the learning in which they engage throughout their lives.
 
Citation:
Muis, Krista R. (2007). 'The Role of Epistemic Beliefs in Self-Regulated Learning'. Educational Psychologist,42(3), 173-190
 
Submitted by:
                           Jill Mason
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Disclaimer

Any opinions expressed here, except as specifically noted, are those of the individual authors or commenters and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Department of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences, the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services, or Utah State University.