Research On Cognitive Beliefs Of College Students

Epistemological beliefs refer to learner's intuition, latent beliefs about knowledge and learning phenomenon and experience, which include the knowing about a series of nature about knowledge experience and form, process, condition, result evaluation. In view of the problems in the contemporary researches of epistemological beliefs and basing on the new developments of epistemological beliefs, this thesis analyzes the structure, development characteristics, the influence to learning process and intervention of college students'epistemological beliefs systematically using the self-made college students" epistemological beliefs questionnaire, action control questionnaire, Biggs'revised two-factor version of the learning process questionnaire and Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT) through questionnaire and experimental measurement with theoretical analysis. The main conclusions are as follows:1. College students'epistemological beliefs consist of six factors:the certainty of knowledge, the simplicity of knowledge, acquisition of knowledge, ability to learn, speed of learning and the value of learning. College students'epistemological beliefs consist of dual components which involve an explicit component and an implicit component.2. The development of college students" explicit epistemological beliefs follows a raised pattern; the scores of the junior and senior are higher than the freshman and sophomore. There are different characteristics on gender, the scores of male sophomore are the lowest in four grades and the scores of female sophomore are not so. The grade developmental trend of different major students is approximately same but the rate is different:there aren't remarkable differences on the freshman and sophomore but there are significant differences on the junior and senior. The grade developmental trend of different collegiate type students is approximately same.3. The development of college students'implicit epistemological beliefs follows a raised pattern; the scores of the freshman are the lowest in four grades. There are same developmental characteristics on gender, the scores of the junior is the highest. There are different development characteristics on major:the scores of liberal arts sophomore are the lowest in four grades but the scores of science sophomore are the highest. 4. College students'epistemological beliefs have important influence on their learning process, the main conclusions are as follows:(1) College students' epistemological beliefs have direct and indirect influence on their action control through surface motive and deep motive. (2) College students'epistemological beliefs have negative influence on their surface strategy directly. College students' epistemological beliefs have indirect influence on their surface strategy through surface motive. College students' epistemological beliefs have indirect influence on deep strategy through learning motive and action control. (3) College students" epistemological beliefs have negative influence on surface approach and positive influences on deep approach, the relationship between epistemological beliefs and deep approach is partly mediated by action control.5. Intervention is effective to improve college students" epistemological beliefs, and the effectiveness can last a long time for the students of different epistemological beliefs level.