A COMPENDIUM OF SCALES for use in the SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING AND LEARNING

justification for knowing, which examines a person’s active inclination in using reasons and
evidence in knowledge construction.
Measuring Epistemological Beliefs
Existing instruments provide measurements for assessing development of beliefs, generic
beliefs, and discipline- or issue-specific beliefs about knowledge.
Measuring Development of Epistemological Beliefs
Epistemological Development
Kuhn, Cheney, and Weinstock’s (2000) instrument consists of 15 forced-choice items
representing five judgment domains (see Table 3). Each item describes a pair of contrasting
claims. The respondent needs to decide if one claim is right (i.e., a response of the absolutist
level) or whether both could be right (i.e., a response of the multiplist level). If the latter is
chosen, the learner has to decide whether one claim could be more right than the other (i.e., a
response of the evaluativist level).
Table 3
Instrument of Epistemological Development (Kuhn et al., 2000)
Judgment Domain Sample Item
Aesthetic Robin thinks the first painting they look at is better.
Chris thinks the second painting they look at is better.
Value
Personal Taste
Social World
Robin thinks lying is wrong.
Chris thinks lying is permissible in certain situations.
Robin says warm summer days are nicest.
Chris says cool autumn days are nicest.
Robin has one view of why criminals keep going back to crime.
Chris has a different view of why criminals keep going back to crime.
Physical World
Robin believes one book’s explanation of what atoms are made up of.
Chris believes another book’s explanation of what atoms are made up of.
The scoring essentially includes counting the dominating response conforming at the absolutist,
multiplist, or evaluativist level for each judgment domain. It was reported that more people
have demonstrated multiplist thoughts in the domains of personal taste and aesthestic
domains, and evaluatist thoughts in the domains of social and physical worlds (Kuhn et al.,
2000). Convergent validity was supported by studies comparing results of this instrument with
other similar ones with 70% - 80% reported compatibility in terms of identified epistemological
levels (Kuhn et al., 2000). This is a straight-forward instrument that is easy to understand and
administer. It can be administered in a group setting with an estimated completion time of 15
minutes. It has been found suitable for 5 th – 12 th graders as well as adult respondents (Kuhn &
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