Abstract

COGNITION AND INSTRUCTION, 1994,12(2), 151-1 83 Copyright O 1994, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Epistemological Beliefs in Introductory Physics David Hammer Education Department Tufts University Students' beliefs about knowledge and learning in a domain may have a significant effect on how they approach the material and on what they learn. This article describes a study of such epistemological beliefs in the context of an introducto~y physics course. I interviewed 6 students, meeting several times with each over one semester. The interviews involved avariety of conversations and tasks closely tied to the course. Through the development and use of an analytic framework, it was possible to characterize subjects' beliefs. The framework consisted of three dimensions: 1. Beliefs about the structure ofphysics knowledge as (a) a collection of isolated pieces of (b) a single coherent system. 2. Beliefs about the content ofphysics knowledge as (a) formulas or (b) concepts that underlie the formulas. 3. Beliefs about learning physics, whether it means (a) receiving information or (b) involves an active process of reconstructing one's understanding. The characterizations satisfied criteria of evident involvement in the subjects' work in the course and of consistency, across interviewing tasks as well as across physics content. That it