Empirical Study On The Influence Of Postgraduates' Epistemological Beliefs Upon Learning Behavior

Recently, scholars in the educational field pay more attention to the influence of students' attitudes, beliefs on learning behavior. In the educational field, epistemology is the theoretical cornerstone of the whole education system, as well as basic problem to be solved; students' epistemological belief is one of the whole cornerstones. Students' Learning behavior is also an important subject concerned in education and psychology. However, there is no unified definition about the connotation of learning behavior in the theory circle so far. In this research, we define it as the behavior displayed by the learners in the learning process. Combining postgraduates' training mode currently in China, we can concretely consider the postgraduates' learning behavior as postgraduates' self-regulated learning and postgraduates' scientific research. Foreign researches related to personal epistemology indicate that students' epistemological beliefs are hided behind their cognition activities, the emotional feeling and behavior patterns, just like an invisible hand, to guide the learning process, thus affecting the learning result profoundly. According to the reviews, we mainly discuss the dimensions of postgraduates' epistemological beliefs and the impacts on postgraduates' learning behavior, aiming to distinguish concrete contents of postgraduates' epistemological beliefs, so that we could provide reference and guidance for amending and promoting postgraduates' epistemological beliefs, improving postgraduates' learning behavior.Firstly, through literature analysis, individual interviews and expert advisements, we get a theoretical model of postgraduates' epistemological beliefs and learning behavior. Base on the model, we developed Postgraduates' Epistemological Beliefs Scale consisting of four dimensions and Postgraduates' Learning Behavior Scale constructing of four dimensions through referring to Epistemological Questionnaire developed by Schommer, Epistemological Beliefs Inventory developed by Schraw and Motive and Strategies about Learning Questionnaire developed by Pintrich, self-designing some items based on literature review and individual interview.The scale developed in this research is issued in Dalian University of Technology, Dalian Maritime University, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, China University of Petroleum, and Qufu Normal University. Through empirical analysis of collected samples, the outcomes are indicated as follows: (1) We determine the dimensionality of postgraduates' epistemological beliefs, that is "fixed ability", "the structure of knowledge", "the source of knowledge", and "the speed of knowledge acquisition" respectively.(2) There is significantly positive correlation between dimensions of postgraduates' epistemological beliefs and dimensions of postgraduates' learning behavior.(3) Postgraduates' epistemological beliefs have positive influence on postgraduates' self-regulated learning and scientific research, could directly predict postgraduates' learning autonomy and scientific research ability to some extent.