Abstracts - Earli

students, 50 humanity students) filled in domain-general and domain-specific epistemologicalbeliefs inventories. Subsequently they obtained a list with six tasks of different complexityaccording to Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson et al., 2002). For each of the randomlypresented tasks they completed a series of questions about their interpretation of the tasks, theirgoal setting and their planning of learning strategies. Results show that students discriminatebetween tasks and are reasonably well calibrated, e.g. their differentiations are related to taskcomplexity in a meaningful way. Furthermore, these metacognitive processes of discriminationand calibration are impacted by epistemological beliefs. For example, students who believed invariable and changing knowledge judged the use of deep processing learning strategies andmultiple information-sources more important across all tasks.Epistemic beliefs in context: evaluating knowledge in learning online through web searchesLucia Mason, University of Padova, ItalyAngela Boldrin, University of Padova, ItalyThis study focuses on a currently relevant issue: accessing, judging, and interpreting informationon the Web. It was aimed at investigating epistemic metacognition in context, that is, students’spontaneous monitoring and judgment of information when learning by surfing the Net, in relationto their individual characteristics. Students need to adopt a critical stance in order to be able tovalidate online information, distinguish between facts and opinions, supported and unsupportedknowledge assertions, recognize bias or commercial propaganda. For instance, in order to dealwith a large amount of information without being overwhelmed, they must ask themselves: "Is thispiece of information credible?"; "What is the evidence that supports it?"; "Is this consistent withmy own experience or knowledge?", "Do I know enough now or do I need more information?".Answers to these questions involve activating one’s epistemic beliefs (Hofer, 2004). We examinedwhether 80 students in grade 12/13 spontaneously activate epistemic metacognition while surfingthe Web to know more on a topic and the role of four factors that may contribute to it, that is, priorknowledge, expertise in online information searching, general beliefs about the Internet andargumentative reasoning skills. We also examined whether learning new knowledge was affectedby overall epistemic metacognition. Findings revealed that students spontaneously expressed mostreflections about the epistemic dimension: sources of knowledge. They also activated their beliefsabout the simplicity/complexity of knowledge, although less frequently. As hypothesized, bothargumentation skills and beliefs about Internet predict epistemic metacognition. In addition,expertise in online information searching influenced only the Internet surfing process. Finally,participants who expressed a more sophisticated level of epistemic metacognition learned moreand integrated knowledge more than students who did not critically evaluate information sourcesand activate non-supportive beliefs about knowledge during the search for knowledge. Theoreticaland educational implications are drawn.The interaction of personal epistemology and the level of expertise in academic knowledgeacquisition: The case of historyMargarita Limon, University of Madrid, SpainFrancisco Leal, University of Tarapaca, ChileThis paper will be structured in two different parts. The first one will include a concise review ofboth the theoretical frameworks and the empirical studies that have dealt with the interactionamong individuals’ level of expertise, their epistemological understanding and the learningprocess. I will suggest that individuals’ epistemology of the domain may be an additional elementto characterize the process of gaining domain specific knowledge. The second part will present– 168 –