Personal Epistemology of Engineering Students

Since Schommer first introduced a survey-approach to assess students' personal epistemology, there has been a proliferation of quantitative research on this topic area. Unfortunately, most of the previous studies did not differentiate domain-specific beliefs from general beliefs. The current study investigated both domain-general and domain-specific epistemological beliefs in engineering students in terms of how these two types of beliefs related with each other and with students' academic performance, as well as how they developed together during the semester while students were taking a major course. The findings suggested that there was a certain level of association between students' domain-general and domain-specific epistemological beliefs and such association would change over time. Dimensions of both domain-general and domain-specific beliefs were related with students' academic performance and changed over half of the semester. The study also suggested that the measures of epistemological beliefs, with regards to both domain-general and domain-specific aspects, had several psychometric problems. Implications for future study are provided.