Exploring learners’ beliefs about science reading and scientific epistemic beliefs, and their relations with science text understanding

ABSTRACT

The main purpose of this study was to explore learners' beliefs about science reading and scientific epistemic beliefs, and how these beliefs were associating with their understanding of science texts. About 400 10th graders were involved in the development and validation of the Beliefs about Science Reading Inventory (BSRI). To find the effects of reader beliefs and epistemic beliefs, a new group of 65 10th grade students whose reader and epistemic beliefs were assessed by the newly developed BSRI and an existing SEB questionnaire were invited to take part in a science reading task. Students' text understanding in terms of concept gain and text interpretations was collected and analyzed. By the correlation analysis, it was found that when students had stronger beliefs about meaning construction based on personal goals and experiences (i.e. transaction beliefs), they produced more thematic and critical interpretations of the content of the test article. The regression analysis suggested that students SEBs could predict concept gain as a result of reading. Moreover, among all beliefs examined in the study, transaction beliefs stood out as the best predictor of overall science-text understanding.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective domain
• reader beliefs
• epistemic beliefs
• science reading
• scientific literacy

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Fang-Ying Yang is a professor of Science Education at the Graduate Institute of Science Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan. She is currently the coordinator of an eye-tracking lab in the Graduate Institute of Science Education, National Taiwan Normal University. She is a skilled researcher in science education and has published papers on modes of learners scientific reasoning, development of learners epistemic beliefs, multimedia learning, and the process of science reading and comprehension.

Cheng-Chieh Chang is an assistant professor at the Center of Teacher Education, National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan. His research interests include digital learning, teacher preparation, and marine science education. He has published papers on learning in the digital environments and the interactive learning in secondary education. He is also an author of a popular high-school earth science textbook in Taiwan.

Li-Ling Chen is a doctoral student at the Graduate Institute of Science Education, National Taiwan Normal University. Her current research focuses on the process of science reading and the performance of problem-solving skills.

Yi-Chun Chen is a doctoral student at the Graduate Institute of Science Education, National Taiwan Normal University. Her current research concerns science reading and the relation between learners spatial ability and school achievement in science.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, ROC [grant number MOST-103-2511-S-003-008-MY3], [grant number MOST-104-2911-I-003-301].