Reading and writing in Cordon, France–also known as “the balcony of Mont Blanc.” It’s surreal to be chewing on teacher epistemology with the snow-capped Alps in one’s full view. I write this blog in the village cafe, located right beside the bakery. I walked down from Richard and Marite’s chalet, nearly freezing in the cold since it had snowed this morning. But breathing the fresh mountain air and beholding the breathtaking view made the walk all worth it.
There have been two positive developments lately with regard to my research, the workload notwithstanding. First, I got a couple of emails from my statistics consultant, Tony Zosa, and he seems genuinely excited about the data emerging from the statistical analysis. I obviously don’t understand all of it yet, but he seems to believe that his choice of statistical tools is superior to those of Chan & Elliott. I can’t wait to hear him explain that! But he seems convinced as well that there are a lot of significant inferences that can be drawn from the data. That’s really exciting!
Secondly, I’ve been devouring the latest references sent by my supervisor–a set of new articles on epistemological research in Asia, just freshly published. Liem and Bernardo (2010) also confirm a suspicion that we’ve been nursing all these months as we discussed the results of our survey with regard to Certainty Knowledge: A number of the items deal more with whether or not effort will eventually lead to knowledge. Not exactly or directly measuring beliefs about the certainty of knowledge, are they?
Finally, Hofer’s overview article on the “burgeoning research on Asian epistemology” is quite encouraging and provides helpful directions. First of all, she affirms the use of Chan and Elliott’s revised version of the Schommer Epistemological Questionnaire (SEQ), known today as the Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ), citing it as the more reliable instrument in Asia. What I find most exciting is Hofer’s encouragement to future Asian researchers (like myself!) not to strait-jacket ourselves by simply allowing our instrument to limit our construct. In other words, don’t let the measure define what we’re supposed to measured. I find this consoling because I’m not happy about merely replicating the four-structure model of Chan & Elliott–or even that of Schommer. In his study of Filipino pre-service teachers, Bernardo (2008, 2009) has come up with a two-dimensional model of epistemological beliefs about learning–i.e., the simplicity and structure of learning. But beliefs about learning are, for Hofer and many like her, “less” epistemological compared to Certainty Knowledge, for example, or Authority/Expert Knowledge. This means that it makes sense to exert effort in reading the data beyond the usual light.
That sounds as exciting as skiing down Mont Blanc!
strugglingSCHOLAR 