Cross-sectional study on Chinese secondary school students’ epistemic beliefs and fallacy identification

Wing Sze Wincy LEE, Victor C. W. CHAN

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlespeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Individuals hold different epistemic beliefs at different ages, and these beliefs can affect a wide range of reasoning tasks. The present study examined Chinese secondary school students’ epistemic beliefs at different grade levels, and how these related to the students’ abilities to identify various forms of fallacy with the use of a cross-sectional design. One hundred and forty-six Chinese secondary school students (Grade 7 N = 32, Grade 9 N = 40, Grade 10 N = 36, and Grade 11 N = 38) completed a 14-item Epistemic Beliefs Questionnaire and a set of fallacy tasks. CFA showed that the questionnaire measured the four dimensions of the secondary school student samples adequately. A non-linear trend of epistemic beliefs across different grades was found and analyses using MANOVA showed significant grade differences in the dimension of Certainty (Grade 7 vs. 10 vs. 11). χ² tests showed only significant grade difference in the fallacy of Appeal to Authority (Grade 7 vs Grade 9; Grade 7 vs. 10). Finally, only grade, but not epistemic beliefs, predicted fallacy identification (Appeal to Authority) when all variables were considered in the ordinal logistic regression model. The issue of epistemic dimensions change and students’ informal reasoning ability are discussed in light of the Chinese culture. Copyright © 2016 De La Salle University.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)11-19
JournalThe Asia-Pacific Education Researcher
Volume26
Issue number1-2
Early online dateDec 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2017

Citation

Lee, W. W. S., & Chan, V. C. W. (2017). Cross-sectional study on Chinese secondary school students’ epistemic beliefs and fallacy identification. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 26(1-2), 11-19.

Keywords

  • Epistemic beliefs
  • Chinese
  • Fallacy identification
  • Secondary school students

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