Abstracts - Earli

some data of a broader study conducted in the domain of history that explored the relationshipsamong: a) individuals’ level of expertise, b) individuals’ level of epistemological understanding, c)individuals’ understanding of the epistemology of the domain, and d) learners’ beliefs aboutlearning and teaching in that particular domain. The sample included three groups: freshmen,senior students and secondary school teachers of history (N=150). The main conclusions of thisstudy are: a) individuals’ level of expertise seems to influence how they understand theepistemology of history, b) a higher level of epistemological understanding correlates negativelywith some views of history (e.g. history considered as a chronicle, history considered as anarration), c) a higher level of epistemological understanding correlates negatively with atraditional view of learning and teaching history, d) individuals’ level of expertise and theirepistemology of history influences some of their beliefs about learning and teaching history.Educational implications to explain the role of expertise and personal epistemology in learninghistory will be developed.Children’s perspectives on questionnaires of learning strategies and epistemological beliefs:Results of an interview study with elementary school childrenBarbara Moschner, University of Oldenburg, GermanyAndrea Anschütz, University of Oldenburg, GermanyStephan Wernke, University of Oldenburg, GermanyUta Wagener, University of Oldenburg, GermanyResearch about epistemological beliefs and learning strategies is a steadily growing area ineducational psychology and in the field of education. Subjects in most of the published studies areadults or teenagers, only a few studies deal with children or even elementary school children.Some experts doubt if children have epistemological beliefs, others question if they have thecompetence to talk about abstract concepts like beliefs about knowledge and knowing or learningstrategies. In addition measurement issues are far from being resolved. In our interview study welook at the understanding of questionnaire items concerning epistemological beliefs and learningstrategies. Do elementary school children get the meaning of standardized items used in wellknownquestionnaires? One important result of our study is that children are able to verbalize theirthoughts about epistemological beliefs and learning strategies. Merits and shortcomings ofmeasurements are discussed in the light of our findings. We address developmental prerequisitesand methodological problems concerning research in this age group. Finally we discuss therelevance of different measurements for future research with young children.A comparison of four different measures of epistemological beliefsGregory Schraw, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USALori Olafson, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USAMichelle VanderVeldt, California State University at Fullerton, USAThe purpose of this research was to compare four different measures of epistemological beliefs.Eighty students (20 graduate, 60 undergraduate) completed the measures, which included twomulti-item surveys (the EBI and CAEB), one holistic self-report based on short vignettes, and onegraphical display measure (4-quadrant scale). Data was collected in autumn, 2006 and will becollected in spring, 2007. We will compare correlations among the four factor scores from theEBI, two factor scores from the CAEB, three scores from the vignettes, and two scores from the 4-quadrant scale in order to establish convergent validity among the measures. We predict a highcorrelation (i.e., .50 to .70) among across measures. Students who report absolutist scores (i.e., abelief in simple, unchanging knowledge) on one measure should report absolutist scores on the– 169 –