Students’ Epistemic Beliefs in Sweden and Germany and Their Interrelations with Classroom Characteristics

ABSTRACT

In the field of epistemic belief research, more studies on how these beliefs are formed in different cultural contexts are called for. Moreover, there are strong assumptions that teachers’ instructional practices are paramount to the development of students’ epistemic beliefs. The current study aims at investigating differences between Sweden and Germany in both, and in their relationships. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 4,731 students in Grades 5 through 11. To sum up, latent multi group comparison revealed several differences in the level of students’ beliefs and classroom characteristics. Moreover, latent regression analyses showed that the observed classroom characteristics were significant predictors of students’ beliefs concerning the justification and development of knowledge, and that the prediction pattern differ between countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Students’ epistemic beliefs
• classroom context
• cross-country comparison
• national cultural differences

Acknowledgements

This study was financed by the Swedish Research Council, via grant number 721-2013-2180.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In this paper, we use the terms “sophisticated” and “naïve” in a theoretical sense, while we acknowledge that the productiveness of a belief is most likely to be determined by the context, as shown by Lindfors, Winberg, and Bodin (2017).

2 Except in the federal state of Berlin, where primary school comprises Grades 1 to 6.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council [Grant Number 721-2013-2180]; Vetenskapsrådet: [Grant Number 721-2013-2180].