Chen, J., & Turner, J. E., & Tang, M. (2019, June), Board 42: What Engineering Students Think of Knowledge in Their Discipline and How to Measure It: An Exploratory Study  Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--32347

\bibitem{asee_peer_32347}
  Chen, J., \& Turner, J. E., \& Tang, M. (2019, June), \emph{Board 42: What Engineering Students Think of Knowledge in Their Discipline and How to Measure It: An Exploratory Study}
  Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Tampa, Florida.
  10.18260/1-2--32347

Jinjushang Chen, Jeannine E. Turner, and Min Tang.  "Board 42: What Engineering Students Think of Knowledge in Their Discipline and How to Measure It: An Exploratory Study".  2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida, 2019, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2019.  https://peer.asee.org/32347 Internet.  13 Dec, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_32347}
  Jinjushang Chen, Jeannine E. Turner, and Min Tang.
  "Board 42: What Engineering Students Think of Knowledge in Their Discipline and How to Measure It: An Exploratory Study".
  \emph{2019 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition , Tampa, Florida, 2019, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2019.
  https://peer.asee.org/32347 Internet.  13 Dec, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_32347
author = "Jinjushang Chen, Jeannine E. Turner, and Min Tang"
title = "Board 42: What Engineering Students Think of Knowledge in Their Discipline and How to Measure It: An Exploratory Study"
booktitle = "2019 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition "
year = "2019"
month = "June"
address = "Tampa, Florida"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/32347}
number = {10.18260/1-2--32347}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This research paper describes an exploratory study to understand engineering students’ epistemic beliefs as well as the belief-measures. Recently, “engineering epistemologies” emerged as one of the five research areas for the burgeoning discipline of engineering education research. Epistemic beliefs, under this framework, refer to one’s beliefs about what knowledge is and what knowing is in the context of engineering disciplines. An understanding and appreciation of epistemology are needed to uncover students’ philosophical and psychological divergences towards learning and, thus, can help cultivate students’ skills to evaluate and justify their own/others’ ideas, opinions and beliefs. However, issues related to the poor reliability and factorial validity of self-reported instruments of epistemic beliefs cast doubt over the findings of any study that uses those measures. Our past study on engineering students’ personal epistemology also suggested the inadequacy of those quantitative measures, especially in terms of capturing facets of engineering students’ epistemic beliefs. Therefore, in this study, we adopted a qualitative approach to investigate the contextual nuances specific to the engineering domain that affect students’ interpretation of the questionnaire items and understanding of epistemic beliefs. Quantitative data from our past study were used to inform the interview question construction as well as to triangulate the findings. Fifteen undergraduate engineering students (11 males, 4 females) participated in the interview. From five categories of engineering majors (mechanical, civil, chemical/biomedical, electrical, industrial/manufacturing engineering), we interviewed three participants in each major. Using semi-structured interviews, we used the technique of cognitive interviewing. Hofer’s Discipline-Focused Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire was used as the basis of the interview protocol. This instrument measures students’ discipline-specific epistemic beliefs in terms of four dimensions: Certainty/Simplicity of Knowledge, Source of Knowledge, and Justification for Knowing, and Attainability of Truth. Six items from the four dimensions were selected to construct the cognitive interview protocol. Open-ended questions about students’ contextual awareness of epistemic beliefs, and their epistemic perception of experts in the field, were asked to elicit more information about their epistemic beliefs. Initial findings suggest that although the cognitive-validity of most items were good, we found belief-discordance between what students think the disciplinary knowledge should be and what they perceive of knowledge taught in school. Students commonly discredit subjectivity of knowledge in defining truth in the discipline, while embracing a certain level of uncertainty in knowing, in general. 
AU  - Jinjushang Chen
AU  - Jeannine E. Turner
AU  - Min Tang
CY  - Tampa, Florida
DA  - 2019/06/15
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Board 42: What Engineering Students Think of Knowledge in Their Discipline and How to Measure It: An Exploratory Study
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/32347
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--32347
ER  -